There is much nashing of teeth and wringing of hands still going on over the Israeli Defence Forces incursion into the Gaza territory which has been going on for now 22 days.

All of the usual suspects, the UN, the EU, Sid Ryan of CUPE, the Canadian Postal Workers Union, Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Bono, you know, all of REAL deep thinkers of the Culturati and their house organs such as the New York Times, The Guardian and of course, the Toronto Daily Star have jumped on the “proportionality” gap between the IDF 22 day incursion and 7 years or so of missile attacks from Gaza into Israeli territory.

Sadly, their idea of proper proportion is limited only to the number of casualties that are reported each day by both sides. One would think that after the enormous body of evidence of fake reporting, staged ambulance’s “destroyed” by “the jews” and a parade of photo shopped images of “Israeli atrocities” that surfaced after the Israeli incursion into Lebanon to stifle the exact same kind of attacks from Iran’s other puppet outfit, Hezbollah, that we would have learned our lessons about just who is the truly aggrieved party in this dispute.

It would seem that just because the Hamas missile launchers are just not very good at it, and that they do not kill as many Israeli citizens as they set out to do, that somehow, the Israeli response should be similarly ineffective “just to be fair”.

This is of course utter nonsense and just continues the constant stream of guilt ridden angst that emanates from the Leftist wing of almost every democratic country that can afford to be smug and point fingers at Israel because they are not in range of Hamas nor Hezbollah rockets. If Jersey City was lobbing missiles across the Hudson River into Manhattan on a daily basis Mayor Bloomberg would be calling on President Bush/Obama/whomever to turn New Jersey into a glass slag heap with B-52’s within a week.

What was proportional about the NATO intervention into Yugoslavia? Who, outside of the borders of that sovereign nation was under threat before British, US and Canadian aircraft destroyed all of their bridges and their electric grid?

What was “fair” about turning mud huts into dust all over Afghanistan with missiles and bombs from B-52’s and Tornadoes sent under the auspices of NATO to retaliate for Sept. 911?

No talk of proper proportionality then. Just heated, war time rhetoric and blood lust screaming from every major news outlet in the free world.

Hamas has received much better missiles from Iran lately. The Russian made Graz for instance. Do you think it would be OK with her critics if Israel just waited until one or two of these missiles actually hit Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona? Would a toxic cloud of radioactive dust settling down over Jordan, Egypt, Syria as well as Gaza and the West Bank spur condemnation of the Hamas rocket attacks?

The only thing disproportionate about all of this is the talking heads once again blaming the victims of aggression for fighting back instead of just meekly being led off into the ovens once again.

A master of satire over at the Peoples Cube blog put together the following mockup of a New York Times front page back in 2006. I think it speaks volumes about the mindset of today’s so called Main Stream Media and also explains why the NYT’s is today considering a financial bailout from a rich Mexican. Print media have dug themselves into a cavern of debt and well deserved disrespect with their out of touch view of the world as it is today. The sooner they either wake up and start reporting the news instead of writing the news the better. Otherwise, “Asta La Vista, Baby”.

From The Peoples Cube.

Sunrise and sundown, Moon rolls thru the nighttime, Till the daybreak comes around....... In keeping with our musical theme we thank the late, great, Harry Chapin for the Circle Song, a lovely ditty that neatly ties up in a geometric bow, so to speak, the ebb and flow of birth, life, death and infinity. Not to be constrained by music, we sneak in a little Sam Jaffe reference from Ben Casey MD.

I am reminded of a circle when I see in today’s (July 25/08) National Post, a snippet of an article referencing a professor of some kind of science from Carnegie Mellon in PA, who, according to the article, has pronounced cell phones for toddlers as dangerous and deadly and all but declared that your new iPhone, RaZr, LG, device is nothing more then a battery operated cancer generator.



This seems to dovetail nicely with the pronouncement last week from those noted scientists at the Toronto Board of Health who, in total defiance of the conclusions reached by an exhaustive study released two weeks ago by Health Canada which concluded that there was ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE to support any such stupid claims, released their own press release which claimed that it just sort of made sense that cell phones emitting all of those nasty X-Rays and stuff so close to your brain must be bad and even though we can’t prove it we are sure that the medical study never really looked at the long term effects of cell phone use on toddlers who after all, had to be protected at all costs.

Well, here we go again, we are doing it for the children. When you do not have any evidence, or facts on your side, you throw out the old, “if it can save the life of just one child, it is worth it to ...................” you know the rest, you have seen it a thousand times. It never fails to stir the mothers instincts of a dedicated group of worriers who invariably show up on the evening news, crying huge tears and bawling that “Somebody’s got to DO something” before their baby dies.

So that must pretty much wrap it up, eh?. First Toronto Health Board, a known font of really important thinking, and now a study from prestigious Carnegie Mellon University. Bye, Bye Health Canada’s, multi-million, multi-year, multi-patient, study. We now have a new truth with confirmation from a University!

Well, not so fast. I just happened to notice two days ago, a little meme on the Interweb about a professor at Carnegie Mellon, the department head of some scientific discipline or other, who had sent out an EMAIL to all department staff, expressing his concern about and advising against the extended use of cell phones and in particular, he advised, that children not be allowed to spend hours a day with cell phones pressed against their tender little skulls or they might get cancer sometime, maybe, much later in life.

This was the sort of memo I used to send out when I was a captain of industry to my troops in July warning people about to go on summer vacation not to swim for 3 hours ( yes, I am that old.) after eating and to watch out for poison ivy while camping.

Further reading of this guys motivation and source of information that formed the basis of his concern reveals that. A: The wife of his best friend and fellow faculty member is suffering from brain cancer. A tragedy to be sure and I am equally certain that being able to point to a cell phone as the source of this poor woman’s pain would be comforting. You know how that goes, “It wasn’t anything I did or ate, it was the damn cell phone company’s fault. B: The professor also noted that a city in Canada, (Toronto) had recently declared cell phone use dangerous and especially for children.

Circle closed! Some numbskulls at TB of Health manufacture a concern out of whole cloth to fit in their weekly press release and then some head of department reads that, sends out an email and the next thing you know, the National Post publishes the news as a fully qualified pronouncement regarding something as important as Cell phones causing cancer.

There are a lot of very frightened people out there friends, and they seem to really need to cajole, bully, persuade others to share their fears in some kind of twisted need for verification of the validity of said fear. I wish I could say this was amazing but it is not, it is as common as dust these days.

It went like this: Birth, Life, Death, Infinity. It did not read: Birth, Life lived in fear, Death, Infinity.

All my life’s a circle, sunrise and sundown..... Somedays, the circle is smaller then other days.

30

So goes the old song. I can close my eyes, actually, I can do it without them being closed but I never miss the chance these days to snatch a few moments of snooze, and hear Dionne Warwick crooning the words to Burt Bacharach’s tinkling on the ivories. Great song, but a scary premise when you take those words and paste them on almost any news item of the day here in good old Hogtown.

Killing me softly...... with new bicycle lanes on Eastern Avenue. I know, this seems silly and makes no sense to anyone who doesn’t know or care to know what or where Eastern Avenue is. But just think about this. Toronto Council voted last year to create more bike lanes in the downtown core, this time on Eastern Avenue, a four lane, the last four lane, road into the city centre. This came on the heels of constricting Dundas Street, the other four lane road headed downtown, to two lanes plus bike lanes two years ago.

They waited until the daily rush traffic moved to Eastern Avenue, just a few blocks south of Dundas, and then this week, new paint, and voila, a four lane roadway becomes a two lane roadway and another Snaildarter or rare Salamander is saved from extinction. An enterprising news crew spent a day counting traffic. The count? 12 bicycles and hundreds of cars, backed up, angry drivers, road rage, council rage, cyclist rage and, (if you happen to believe in these sorts of things.) tons and tons of evil carbon emissions floating up into the air from said stuck cars to block the sun and endanger the children.

Killing me softly.... This move comes just days after Toronto Council, yes those same jokers who are always crying poor to the Provincial and Federal Governments, voted to spend $11 Million to study tearing down a large section of the elevated Gardiner Expressway which, I detect a pattern here, is an incredibly efficient transportation corridor bringing cars, trucks, (read employees and essential goods like food, fuel, supplies) into the downtown core.

The study is to come up with a plan to tear down this roadway and replace it with an 8 lane boulevard of some description which is projected to cost $300 Million, have zero affect on traffic flow and of course be revenue neutral or some other such tripe. None of this latter part is even remotely true of course, it is just pap to get people to sign off on the study. The chances of any city ordered study coming up with a plan for an eight lane roadway are pretty remote unless of course, two of the lanes are for bicycles, two for buses, two for pedestrians and two for cars who purchase special passes allowing them into the downtown core.

Killing me softly......Little Davey Miller, Mayor of all the people, hails from England you see, and he has fallen in love with the “Congestion Tax” implemented by his hero and political inspiration, “Red” Ken Livingston, until recently Mayor of the City of London. Miller wants to implement a congestion tax, highway tolls, and if he could get away with it, an immigration entry tax levied at the city’s borders on anyone entering by bus, train, car or horse drawn vehicle.

Every time he floats these ideas, a couple of adults come out of hiding and speak publicly about how stupid they are and he backs off. Then a while later, one of his pet clones on council comes up with a back door way of sneaking up on the same plan couched in terms filled with references to “the children”, “global warming initiative” or that all encompassing, means nothing phrase, “sustainable development”.

Killing me softly......This week also saw the knuckleheads vote to send city staff out on a one year mission to record, catalogue and report on SHADE! That’s right, council has authorized a massive study to find out all we can about shade in the city, how much we have, how to make more, likely how to tax it, and who is going to pay for it. The councillor behind the motion berated skeptics with the appropriate magical, shut your mouth, words. “Because of Global Warming, we have an epidemic of children getting skin cancer” which was of course enough to snuff out all hope of any meaningful debate on the useless, huge waste of millions of dollars.

Even the study sited, which was one of those, 1 out of 4 people has mental health issues, vagaries that mean absolutely nothing, only said that 1 out of 7 children born today will (likely?) develop skin cancer in their lives. So of course, the alarmist faction jumps up with a burning need to DO SOMETHING FOR THE CHILDREN’S SAKE! . And they all fall down and vote to spend money on this outrageous study.

It should come as no surprise to those of you fortunate enough to live in what Torontonians refer to as “Fly over country”, that these city dwellers really cannot understand why the rest of the country either actively hates Toronto, or just wishes that it would slide into Lake Ontario sometime soon.

I can only offer this explanation and fervent wish. They are all NDP’rs who have fallen into power and are trying to do to the City what Mr. Rae did to the Province when he was very briefly Premier.

My wish is that “this too will pass”, and these pinheads will venture too close to the Sun and their wings will melt and they will finally come down to earth with the rest of us.

30

Do not worry. Today’s leading scientists have things well in hand. The fight to save the planet from anthropogenic Global Warming caused by the insidious method of releasing “Greenhouse Gases” into the atmosphere is being fought, and won, on many fronts.

Today we pay tribute to the government led program from those progressives in Argentina, who have come up with the following solution to their major “Greenhouse Gas” emission problem.




This 21st century mechanism does exactly what you would think the very first time you see it. It effectively captures cow farts which, as every frightened Al Gore sycophant knows, is mostly methane and therefore BAD since methane is one of the deadly “Greenhouse Gases” that are destroying the planet and killing all of the Polar Bears.

The Argentinean scientists, working on a government grant to study this problem and come up with a solution, have calculated that up to 30% of Argentina’s annual Greenhouse Gas emissions emanate from the nether regions of the abundant cow population.

The Argentines could take a page out of the Quebec City playbook and utilise the clever device used by Caleche drivers and also capture cow flaps which, when dried, can be burned quite efficiently in that old campfire out there in the middle of the Pampas with happy Gaucho’s all around. The future is indeed bright.

Here in Canada, over 30% of our Hot air emissions (which surely come under the category of “Bad” gas) originate with Politicians. I eagerly await the engineering study that will be undertaken by the NRC to re-size and re-shape the Argentine solution to fit our emitters. I can see Elisabeth May and Stephan Dion dancing at the Inaugural ball wearing the socially responsible gas capture devices. The start of a new fashion trend for sure.


30

After being warned by all the usual alarmist suspects that this summer the Polar Ice Cap could melt and be ice free for the very first time in the planets known history, the photo below appeared in wide circulation.



I found another picture of the USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole in 1962 but this one had the date and the nice signatures so I decided to use it. I hope it helps you get through the night knowing that the Chicken Little’s of the Climate Change wing of humanity got it dead wrong once again.

Cruise lines who specialise in Northern Ice voyages sometimes advertise that it may be possible to have a “dip at the North Pole” in one of the open patches of water that appear on a fairly regular basis near Santa’s home base.

I have to assume that now that the good folks of BC are paying 2 cents more per litre of gasoline as a Carbon Tax so that the Government of BC can “fix” the problem of Global Warming that pictures like this will not be possible in future generations. The Pole will ice over once again and forever. I would be willing to bet that, once the goal of the iced over North Pole is met, that the 2 cent (7cents by then) will never be rescinded.

Or, maybe not. But if it is, I am dead certain that it is not my fault. The planet may be warming, I happen to think that this is a good thing. I often see a photo from the Glacial Highway in the Rockies which shows a sign post which says that, (sic)”This glacier was at this point in 1954” or some other silly time frame. Of course the background shows the current glacier location to be a couple of thousand feet further up the valley. Proof positive, many say, that the ice sheet is retreating and we are all going to die.

I am tempted to put a sign on my front lawn which says, “The Glacier was at this point 17,000 years ago! Repent!” All of North America was under ice less then 17,000 years ago. A blink in geologic time frames. When I think of this fact, I feel good about warmer weather. I don’t feel responsible for it, but I feel happy that it is warmer today then it was “then”.

A knucklehead of the first order is appearing this week before the US Congress making grand statements about how we are all going to die from the heat unless we listen to him and floating the idea that any corporate oil types and/or political leaders who do not listen to him should be placed in jail.

Mr. James Hansen ( a NASA scientist, which is kind of scary) is appearing on or nearly on the 20th anniversary of his historic (in his mind) first appearance before Congress wherein he claims that he was the very first to blow the whistle of despair by telling us that the earth is getting warmer and (you guessed it) we were all going to die.

To help you put this pinhead’s credibility in perspective, I have cadged this nifty chart from the wonderful Small Dead Animals blog which shows just how much the planet has warmed up since Mr. Hansen’s first alarming statements.

I hope it is both self explanatory and that it has a calming effect on your anxiety quotient. Lord knows we could all use any respite from the caterwalling din that we hear on a daily basis.

So, the good news is that not only is this mythical warming not happening, it is not your fault either.

More on this in our next post.

Well, I don’t really plead. I wouldn’t want to give “Them” the satisfaction of thinking that I succumb to their self appointed ‘moral’ authority to insist that I am guilty of anything their tiny minds can come up with.

But I do insist that I am NOT guilty as charged of any or all of a litany of so called “crimes”.

Today’s crime:

Giving natives Small Pox impregnated blankets 400 years ago so that I could steal their land and condemn them to a horrid future of bad water, booze filled days and nights, a propensity for blockading highways, smuggling cigarettes and casino ownership.

I did not do that. I don’t know that anyone actually did those things and I frankly don’t care. It was a long time ago, get over it. My ancestors in Malta were not very good fighters who lived on a small island with lots of fresh water and pretty, dark haired girls with big hazel coloured eyes. They were conquered by everyone with a boat big enough to get there and land.

You don’t see roving bands of Maltese people dressed in Camo and beating drums demonstrating in front of the Phoenician Embassy for some kind of reparation payments. Maltese people aren’t hunkered down in run down huts in the back woods, (well, back shrubs) of the island of Comino waiting for “Whitey”, (or would it have been “Brownie”? I must look up some old photos of Phoenicians to be sure.) to come and make things right.

Malta was even over run by the British, who took over the island to use as a hospital during the Crusades to liberate the Holy Land from the “Heathen”. Thus the birth of the St. John’s Ambulance organization and the Knights of Malta. The Brits stayed for 400 years, until they were asked to leave by the far Left government of one Dom Mintoff, an early clone of Jack Layton, who seemed really surprised that they picked up and left. Dom was left with a lot of unemployed ship yard workers who used to look after the Royal Navy and did not last much longer in office.

However, the Maltese people got over it. The aforementioned “Heathens” who were the subject of those Crusades? Not so much. As a matter of fact, they seem to be capable of holding a grudge for about as long as the myriad of tribes scattered throughout Canada waiting for “someone to DO something” and make things better.

Hint: Apologies and big fat guilty cheques from the weak kneed politicos of the day are not going to make things better. You need to stop blaming me and get on with life. Invent pastizi, learn how to make nice lace doilies, cut the tails off of your cats or something to help you move on. Just like the Maltese people did.

Tomorrow’s sin? BURNING THE PLANET!!!