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Opinionated Ranter - The Adventures of Being Awesome...

 
I am but a man trying to live the dream. This is how I see the world...

Opinionated Ranter - February 2007

KYOTO XIII

The debate goes on and more and more evidence points to the fact that Gore and Suzuki are way out of line with their predictions. Gore just received an Academy Award for hie propaganda film and, unfortunately, the majority of society seem to think this ex-veep has all the answers. As for Suzuki, consider that he, too, sometimes chooses his own comfort and convenience over the environment. The Suzuki-diesel-bus story, which is now making national headlines, has been an eye-opener for Canadians. He's not drastically changing how cross-country tours are done. He had all kinds of options on what mode of transportation to use. If he were practising what he preached, he would have chosen something much cleaner than a massive, diesel tour bus, which his own spokesman admitted was fancier than what they needed. Suzuki could have chosen biodiesel, a smaller vehicle or a hybrid. Yet he lectures us, ad nauseam, about the need to make daily choices to reduce our carbon emissions, telling us if we don't drastically change how we live, we're going to damage the Earth. Consider also that Suzuki's own group, the Suzuki Foundation, gets some of its funding from ATCO Gas, an Alberta-based natural gas distributor. And he and Gore deride Exxon for paying scientists to study global warming. Funding which has since been cut off. We're supposed to take these two as the gods who will save us from ourselves. Hardly.


Al Gore utility records show the family paid an average monthly electric bill of about US$1,200 last year for its 929-square-metre home. The Gores used about 191,000 kilowatt hours in 2006, bills spanning the period from Feb. 3, 2006, to Jan. 5 showed. That is far more than the typical Nashville household, which uses about 15,600 kilowatt-hours a year. In fact, it is more than ten times the average use. Okay, he has a big house to heat, but ten times? Gore's Nashville home is more than four-times larger than the average new U.S. home built last year, to the National Association of Home Builders said. So this translates into ten times the usage rather than four? A spokeswoman for Gore said he purchases enough "green power", renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and methane gas, to balance 100 per cent of his electricity. Gore apparently participates in a utility program that sells blocks of "green power" for an extra $4 a month and he purchases 108 such blocks every month, covering 16,200 kilowatt-hours and to help subsidize renewable energy sources. Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, said, "The group disputes whether global warming is a serious problem. We wanted to see if he was living by his own recommendations and walking the walk." His group said Gore used nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours last year and his average monthly electric bill was $1,359. Johnson said the figures were obtained from Nashville Electric Service. Johnson says it's unclear whether global warming is caused by humans and that the threat outlined in Gore's documentary is exaggerated.

And both Gore and Suzuki want to be leaders. Gore as a possible president of the USA and Suzuki as the pre-eminent scientist whose views should be taken as gospel. Sorry, I for one don't buy it. I've seen enough of the ‘do as I say, not as I do' way of leadership. I'd rather have someone leading me who knows more about what I go through in my day to day struggles.
Johnson has a valid question. He says that "it's unclear whether global warming is caused by humans." Many other people are saying the same thing, but Gore and his followers try to shout them down at every opportunity. Man produces greenhouse gases and greenhouse gases cause global warming, most scientists agree, but how do greenhouse gases cause global warming? Of all the elaborate computer models incorporating a multitude of gases and other climatic factors, none have been conclusive. This is confirmed by more and more scientists, as they look for debate into the issue, but ignored by the ‘science is settled' crowd. Dr. Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center has been pursuing an explanation for why Earth cools and warms. His findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the mathematical, physical sciences and engineering journal of the Royal Society of London, and they don't point to us. Svensmark's study had its origins in 1996, when he and a colleague presented findings at a scientific conference indicating that changes in the sun's magnetic field could be related to the recent rise in global temperatures. He was castigated in the press by the chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, the chief agency investigating global warming, who said, "I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible." Others accused them of denouncing the greenhouse theory, something they had not done. Svensmark and his colleague had arrived at their theory after examining data that showed a surprisingly strong correlation between cosmic rays and low-altitude clouds. Earth's cloud cover increases when the intensity of cosmic rays grows and decreases when the intensity declines. Low-altitude clouds are significant because they, in particular, shield the Earth from the sun to keep us cool. Low cloud cover can vary by 2% in five years, affecting the Earth's surface by as much as 1.2 watts per square metre during that same period. "That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watts per square metre estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution," Dr. Svensmark explained.
The sun's magnetic field deflects some of the cosmic rays that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, and so limits the immense amounts of ions and free electrons that the cosmic rays produce. Something changed in the 20th century: The sun's magnetic field more than doubled in strength, deflecting an extraordinary number of rays. The question was, could the lessening of cosmic rays in this century have limited the formation of clouds thus making the Earth warmer? To answer this, Svensmark undertook an elaborate laboratory experiment in a reaction chamber the size of a small room. His team duplicated the chemistry of the lower atmosphere by injecting the gases found there in the same proportions, and adding ultraviolet rays to mimic the actions of the sun. The results were rather stunning. A vast number of floating microscopic droplets soon filled the reaction chamber. These were ultra-small clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules that had been catalyzed by the electrons released by cosmic rays. "We were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons do their work," Dr. Svensmark remarked.
Svensmark has never disputed the existence of greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect. In fact he believes that an understanding of the sun's role is needed to learn the full story. However, not only does no climate model today consider the effect of cosmic particles, but even clouds are too poorly understood to be incorporated into any serious climate model. And Gore and his henchmen don't want you to even think about clouds as a possible source of global warming.
His cry of ‘the sky is falling and it's all man's fault' might ring a bit too false for his liking.
Sources: Lawrence Solomon The Deniers Pt. VI The Financial Post Kristin Hall Gore Overuses Electricity CNEWS Tom Brodbeck Suck It Up, Suzuki The Winnipeg Sun
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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IV

A teaser today folks. Let's look at how the convict on death row spends his day. With the help of Mary Vallis' series ‘Playing God: The Fight To Kill The Death Penalty', here it is for your enjoyment:

Capital Sentence Unit (CSU) Daily Routine (New Jersey) After first shift officers have come on duty, inmates on CSU are awakened at 6:30 a.m. and eat breakfast in their individual cells. Each day at 8:30-10 a.m., 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., 4:30 - 6 p.m., and 7:30-9 p.m., there is a recreation module. Inmates come out of their cells, two at a time, for quiet recreation. They can play cards, do puzzles, etc.
On opposite days, they have outside recreation at 7:30 - 9:30 a.m., and 12:15 - 2:15 p.m. Inmates go to recreation, three at a time, for physical recreational activity. They can play handball, play basketball, jog, do chin-ups and push-ups, etc.
They eat lunch at approximately 11 a.m.
In the afternoon, when second shift officers come on duty, 15-minute showers are permitted.
CSU inmates are permitted two phone calls a day. Attorneys can be called at any time, provided the telephone is not being utilized.
They eat dinner between 4 and 4:30 p.m.
Window visits are permitted between 4 and 5 p.m., and 5 and 6 p.m. (one family/personal visitor in the unit at a time). Visits must be scheduled 48 hours in advance and only can be from immediate family members. In the event there is no immediate family, an alternative visitor or visitors must be put on an approved visitors list. This list must be approved by the administrator.
Since there are only three visitor's booths, only three visits are conducted at one time. These are non-contact visits, and only two visits are permitted per month.
Attorney visits are contact visits and must be scheduled 24 hours in advance. There is no limit on the number of attorney visits and no time limit on their visits.
Inmates are locked-in at 9 p.m. but there is no official lights out.
All traffic is stopped whenever CSU inmates leave the unit. They are accompanied by officers and a supervisor and are handcuffed and wearing leg-irons.
Friday is cleanup day on the unit. Inmates clean and mop their cells and the unit.
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TAKING A BREAK FROM KYOTO

I thought I'd take a break today to bring you some of the views others have of Gore, Suzuki and Kyoto in general. The following comes from letters to the editor, in their entirety. Anything in brackets is the editor's reply. Enjoy.

Letters to the editor - The National Post - Feb 27, 2007
Congratulations to Al Gore on his Oscar win. His achievement is all the more noteworthy, given the Academy's traditional reticence to recognize works in the field of science fiction.
G. Davis, Toronto.
*********************
In the fantasy society that the United States sometimes is, it would only be normal that film actors become president (Ronald Reagan) or state governor (Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger). It is only a small step from here for a former vice-president to become a movie star.
Al Gore's got his Best Documentary Oscar on Sunday night using film as a propaganda tool, as Leni Riefenstahl did with Triumph of the Will in 1935. This Hitler-commissioned work became arguably the first and best political documentary of all time.
The Gore-y Inconvenient Truth is of a meaner sort. It pretends to use science, but instead wallows in exaggerations and unsupported extrapolations and uses the persuasive media of the film to put scary computer scenarios on the screen as if they were fact.
Sadly, this propaganda film is widely shown in schools. I would not want impressionable children to see it.
Albert Jacobs, Calgary.
*********************
Letters to the editor - The Toronto Sun - Feb 27, 2007
Apparently the Oscars have gone green. I was deeply moved as I listened to Melissa Ethbridge, Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio tell me all the things I could do to help reduce greenhouse emissions. I suppose the hundreds of people sitting in the audience that night were all crowded around a bus stop at the end of the show. Surely there weren't close to a thousand limousines -- all sporting V8 engines or greater -- driving one or two people at a time back to their immense mansions with their industrial sized air conditioners keeping them at unnaturally cool temperatures. I couldn't imagine that the incredibly wealthy members of the academy all have gigantic, heated swimming pools, hot tubs, sports cars, SUV's, private planes and such. Surely these advocates of ecology don't ever use their extreme prosperity to be the largest consumers and therefore garbage producers on the planet. Sarcasm aside, isn't it a touch hypocritical that the very group of people who probably pollute more per individual than 99.9% of the world's population have named themselves the champions of the environment?
Nick Hoekstra
***********************
Your article about Al Gore's visit to Toronto ("Tree huggers gored," Michele Mandel, Feb. 22) and the Feb. 24 letter from Grant Kelly both portray Gore and David Suzuki to be hypocrites for getting to and from their lectures in gas-powered vehicles. To be fair to these two, both tours are spending substantial amounts of money to buy carbon offsets to make up for the trips. While buying these offsets isn't a perfect solution, at least these men are making a legitimate effort to practice what they preach and you should give them some credit for it.
Jeffery Nichols
Kingston
(Carbon offsets are being viewed rightly, with increasing skepticism, because they are essentially a small financial penalty one pays to be able to go right on polluting)
************************
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SOCCER and the HIJAB

What should be a non-story is likely to develop into a full blown question of Muslim rights vs a soccer league's tournament.

This past Sunday the Nepean Hotspurs Selects forfeited a game, and the tournament, when a referee said 11-year-old Asmahan (Azzy) Mansour couldn't wear her hijab while playing. The team was playing in a major tournament in Laval, just north of Montreal and attended by almost 300 teams over three weekends. The coach pulled his team in protest and two other teams followed suit


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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT III

James Abbott is the police chief of West Orange, N.J. and has dedicated his life to making his state safer. He is a registered Republican with a lifelong career in law and order, 27 years with the local force, and he was also a long-time supporter of the state's death penalty. But after New Jersey Senate President Richard Codey appointed him to the state's death penalty study commission last year, he changed his mind. Not for emotional or moral reasons, but instead, a practical one.

Abbott believes New Jersey's capital punishment system is broken beyond repair and doesn't serve anyone well, not the killers waiting in limbo to be killed, not the families of victims waiting for closure and certainly not the taxpayers who are footing the bill. He says, ""If capital punishment was actually used, I may have voted differently. But it hasn't been used, it's not being used and I have no confidence that it's going to be


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KYOTO XII

Most scientists who are labelled as "deniers" for their views on global warming cringe at the thought of disagreeing with colleagues who think that the science is settled. They do their best to avoid making waves, and they fear being marginalized as cranks who disagree with the scientific consensus. Dr. Richard Lindzen is an exception. He takes his protests about the abuse of science to the public, to the press, and to government. And his detractors can't dismiss him as a crank from the fringe because Lindzen is a critic from within, one of the most distinguished climate scientists in the world. He is a past professor at the University of Chicago and Harvard, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a lead author in a landmark report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the very organization that established global warming as an issue of paramount importance. In other words, just the type of man the likes of Gore and Suzuki don't want you to listen to.

Lindzen prides himself on the contribution he and his colleagues have made to the IPCC and is more than a bit disappointed in the way it is misrepresented. He says, "Almost all reading and coverage of the IPCC is restricted to the highly publicized Summaries for Policymakers which are written by representatives from governments, NGO's and business; the full reports, written by participating scientists, are largely ignored." These unscientific summaries are often written to further political or business agendas and then become the basis of public understanding. The ‘science is settled' crowd will tell you that ex-Veep Gore and Suzuki have no political agenda, but a true scientist knows the science will never be settled and looks forward to continuing debate on the subject of global warming. Gore and Suzuki don't


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TIME

My wife and I were discussing the value of time the other day. I came to the conclusion that with all our modern conveniences and technology, time just is not that important to the majority of people today. They seem to waste a lot of it, and have no consideration of yours.

I am currently attending physio-therapy to overcome a work injury. The receptionist asked what time I'd like to book my appointments for. Knowing that they opened at 8AM, and not wanting to screw up the rest of my day, I told her 8AM


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KYOTO XI

It seems David Suzuki is becoming a bit more unhinged each day that passes and he is challenged to defend his stance on global warming. As word spreads that it is not the imminent danger he makes it out to be, he gets more and more upset. He seems to think that because he was a reputed environmental scientist that people should just take his word for everything that spews out of his mouth. He doesn't like opposition or debate and can't handle it like a true scientist would.

Consider what he wrote in the Toronto Sun on Feb. 12 of this year. "We all need jobs and a sustainable economy that does not deplete the natural services we all ultimately depend on for our health and survival." Yes, indeed we do. But the Liberals sat on implanting any solutions to global warming for 13 years because they knew they couldn't do anything about it without devastating the economy. On Feb. 17, just 5 days later, he writes, "We need to create targets and time lines to reduce pollution to levels that do not jeopardize our natural systems. It means our environment, not our economy must be the real bottom line." I would hazard a guess here that Suzuki has all the money he needs and to hell with those of us who need real jobs. He goes on to say, "Just when I start getting down, after a long bus ride when the audience faces start to fade from memory and I start to wonder - did it really make a difference?" Sure did. The bus he's riding is designed to move 30 people at a time. He has between 7 and 8 at any given time. The bus uses diesel fuel, hardly a fuel that doesn't emit greenhouse gasses. Even Willie Nelson uses bio-diesel in his bus


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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT II

DNA evidence weighs heavily on whether or not capital punishment should be continued. Cases such as that of Kirk Bloodsworth, sentenced to death in Maryland for raping and murdering a nine-year-old girl before a DNA test identified another man as the killer, are giving Americans pause for thought. And perhaps well they should.

Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is an ex-con who spent 9 years in prison after being convicted twice for the rape and murder of nine-year-old Dawn Venice Hamilton in Maryland. He is also the first death row inmate in the United States to be exonerated by DNA evidence. He was convicted once, appealed, convicted again and then set free. I see no problem here. This was all done within a 10 year time span. Those who keep appealing for the most miserable of grounds irk me. Ten years is a long time and it should be long enough to clear up any DNA evidence, lying witnesses or incompetent representation. When those appeals go on for 20 or 30 years, can we not say enough is enough and let's be done with it


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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT I (a)

I really didn't want to get personally wrapped up in this series. I just wanted to report something that caught my fancy. However, the comments I received on the first article would have been too long to reply to in that forum, so I've decided to do another article, as an aside, to deal with them. To get it out in the open, I am an advocate for the death penalty. Now that that hurdle is out of the way, let's begin.

Don Lee says, "To a liberal, any punishment that fits the crime is going to be "inhumane". I think he's right. When one looks at the conservative justice meted out to offenders in a society such as Islam, one sees that the punishment is in full agreement with the crime. As barbaric as it is to us, a thief will have his hand cut off, a rapist will be castrated the hard way, with a sword, an adulterer or adulteress might well be stoned to death. As I said, this is very barbaric to our way of thinking, but I can't help but feel that because we hear so little of crime under Islamic rule, is it not a deterrent that makes one think twice before deciding that the crime is worth the punishment? San Francisco Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk were killed by a fellow named White who said he OD'd on eating Twinkies. I'm not sure of how the case was resolved, but it sounds like the jury bought the defence and didn't have him put down. Lawyers know better than anyone that justice must not only be done, but also be seen to be done


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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT I

Mary Vallis is writing a series about capital punishment in the US entitled ‘Playing God: The fight to kill the death penalty' in the National Post. Her first focus is on the state of New Jersey which has nine murderers on death row. None of them are even close to feeling the pinch of the needle in the arm. If anything, she writes, their chances of dying by lethal injection, or even being executed at all, are getting slimmer by the day. It seems that New Jersey, which restored its death penalty in 1982, has not killed a death row inmate for 44 years. One of the inmates is nearing 80 and is in poor health. It has been suggested he could die of natural causes before he is executed. Why is this?
As Ms Vallis writes, "With an execution looming last year, the Democrat-controlled state legislature imposed a one-year moratorium on lethal injection and created a commission to review the state's death penalty. Last month, the commission recommended the state abandon capital punishment because the death penalty "is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency." New Jersey could thus become the first state to legislatively abolish the death penalty since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976."
The national mood on capital punishment is shifting because of scientific evidence suggesting innocent people are on death row, and growing concern that the most common method of execution, lethal injection, is inhumane. Now remember that in the past, these criminals were hanged before that punishment was deemed inhumane. Witness the outcry recently at what happened in Iraq when the hangman misjudged and the criminals head was torn from his body. Inhumane? Maybe. But he still suffered a quicker death than those he had sentenced to die. Besides, he wasn't going to be using the head anymore anyway


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PROBLEM CHILDREN

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the classroom, the Vanier Institute for the Family recently released a report stating that if today's youth seem incorrigible, it's because there are more problem children now than 50 years ago. This seems to be common knowledge to anyone who grew up in the 50's and 60's, or even prior to that time, and why the Vanier Institute would spend money on such a study is anyone's guess. But it's nice to feel vindicated.

Anne-Marie Ambert, a professor of sociology, recently retired from York University in Toronto, authored the study in which she points the finger of blame points at everyone: parents, schools, neighbourhoods and the media. "In the past, parents used to receive the support of their neighbours," she said. But now people are often afraid to intervene if they see children or teens misbehaving in the neighbourhood or at the mall. Juvenile delinquency rates increased from the 1960's and have peaked in the mid-1990's, and although they have subsequently declined, these rates, as well as those for most problematic behaviours, have remained high among boys and have continued to rise among girls, the study says. The paper is a review of hundreds of studies, mostly from Canada and the United States, that looked at various causes for the rise in children's behavioural problems and found these behaviours to range from lying and running away, to fighting and bullying, theft and vandalism. The study looked at poverty, peers, parenting, schooling, media, personality, genetics and communities. In short, they covered all the bases


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ROSIE

I heard on the radio today just how over the top Rosie O'Donnell has become. You know, The Rosie of Rosie and The Donald fame?
Seems she just needed a cruise ship to schlep her and her entourage around for a couple of days. I don't know if she cried and pouted or started ranting about discriminating against queers, but she talked Norwegian Cruise Lines into bumping the entire passenger list so she could have her way.
I assume most of these people, the original passengers that is, save for quite a bit of time and look forward to the cruise with eager anticipation as the day of departure looms near


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ROCK STARS

Guess who showed up in Toronto the other day with all sorts of groupies clamoring for tickets to see him? Right, former US Veep Al Gore, whose conversion from wooden politician to inspired eco-warrior brought him to Canada to promote his popular Oscar-nominated climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" to sold-out audiences in Montreal and Toronto. I guess he's finally found his true calling. Instead of lying to people about politics, he is now lying to them about the effect glo-bull warming is going to have on us lowly minions.
Activists who have served for decades in the trenches of Canada's environmental movement welcomed the events, crediting Gore's newfound celebrity status with helping to silence naysayers in Canada and bringing badly needed credibility to the science of global warming. It's not what the ‘Deniers' are saying, but they are to be ignored as they disagree with Gore and his companion David Suzuki. The Deniers say that Gore, Suzuki, the UN and the IPCC are all ignoring the true reality of glo-bull warming and their ‘scientific credibility' is suspect to say the least. My earlier articles on Kyoto spell out what some of the scientific community has said about this subject, but as I stated, they are ignored or dismissed in favour of giving the Gore/Suzuki tag team the answers they want.
Stephen Hazell, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada says, "(Gore) has given the claim that this is a serious issue a lot more credibility." And here I used to think the Sierra Club was one of the last bastions of reasoned thought. I guess I had it wrong


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KYOTO X (cont'd)

"A great melt is on in Antarctica. Its northern peninsula -- a jut of land extending to about 1,200 kilometres from Chile -- has seen a drastic increase in temperature, a thinning of ice sheets and, most alarmingly, a collapse of ice shelves. The Larsen A ice shelf, 1,600 square kilometres in size, fell off in 1995. The Wilkins ice shelf, 1,100 square kilometres, fell off in 1998 and the Larsen B, 13,500 square kilometres, dropped off in 2002. Meanwhile, the northern Antarctic Peninsula's temperatures have soared by six degrees celsius in the last 50 years. Antarctica represents the greatest threat to the globe from global warming, bar none. If Antarctica's ice melts, the world's oceans will rise, flooding low-lying lands where much of the world's population lives. Not only would their mass migration spawn hardships for the individual families retreating from the rising waters, the world would also be losing fertile deltas that feed tens of millions of people. This chilling scenario understandably sends shudders through concerned citizens around the world, and steels the resolve of those determined to stop the cataclysm of global warming." So writes Lawrence Solomon in his continuing series on global warming and its Deniers.
As he goes on to explain, the above scenario is hokum. At the South Pole, temperatures have actually fallen since 1957. Neither is Antarctica's advance or retreat a new question raised by the spectre of global warming. This is one of the oldest scientific questions of all about the Antarctic ice sheet.
Dr. Duncan Wingham is Professor of Climate Physics at University College London and Director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. Wingham has been pursuing this polar puzzle for much of his professional life and, except for an accident in space, he might have had an answer by now. Wingham is Principal Scientist of the European Space Agency's CryoSat Satellite Mission, a $130-million project designed to map changes in the depth of ice using ultra- precise instrumentation. Sadly for Dr. Wingham, and for science as a whole, CryoSat fell into the Arctic Ocean after its launch in October, 2005, when a rocket launcher failed. He will now need to wait until 2009 before CryoSat-2, CryoSat's even more precise successor, can launch and begin relaying the data that should conclusively determine whether Antarctica's ice sheets are thinning or not


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KYOTO IX (cont'd)

Dr. Christopher Landsea is a respected scientist, one of the best in his field. He is with the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory, and was a contributing author for the UN's second International Panel on Climate Change in 1995. The IPCC called on him as a contributing author for its "Third Assessment Report" in 2001, and again invited him to participate when they called him to be an author in the "Fourth Assessment Report." This report would specifically focus on Atlantic hurricanes, his specialty, and be published by the IPCC in 2007. So why is he a Denier?
The IPCC's Kevin Trenberth, the very person who had invited him, was participating in a press conference. The title of the press conference was perplexing: "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity."
Dr. Landsea had not done any work that substantiated this claim. Apparently nobody had. Even more perplexing was the fact that none of the participants in that press conference were known for their hurricane expertise. To Dr. Landsea's knowledge, none had performed any research at all on hurricane variability, the subject of the press conference. He knew that all previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability showed no reliable upward trend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Not in the Atlantic basin nor in any other basin. To add to the utter incomprehensibility of the press conference, the IPCC itself, in both 1995 and 2001, had found no global warming signal in the hurricane record


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WHO CARES ?

Stop the presses! Hold everything! Get the women and children off the streets! The sky is falling! This is bigger than glo-bull warming! Brittney has shaved her head!
Who gives a rat's patoot? Other than gossip columnists who want you to think this is a bigger story than Kennedy's assassination.
Apparently this twit was incoherent, mumbling, twitching and on the edge of a nervous breakdown when she cut off her locks. Hmmm, I thought that was her normal behavior. Now it is splashed all over the media, who remind us that we should CARE about this


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ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS 4 (cont'd)

Okay, so I'm not the coldest beer in the fridge, but does anyone else have a problem with this?
I written about illegal immigrants in the past and stated my position that they should be deported and put back in line to apply for legal entrance into the country. Along comes a story out of Vancouver about Amir Kazemian, an Iranian illegal who has been holed up in a local Anglican church under the protection of sanctuary. He has been surviving on a $500 per month stipend from church members and earns a small income buying and repairing broken electronic items via the Internet. Obviously, the man is starving and I don't mean that as a joke. The fact that he is Iranian also causes some pause. Why did he come to Canada in the first place? What was he running from? If deported back, will he face torture or death? We don't know at this point. What we do know is that he has been in sanctuary for two and a half years. Now the question is, Why? Well it seems that Mr. Kazemian applied for refugee status here. He lost that claim and has exhausted all other avenues of appeal. He was ordered deported in June, 2004. That's when he fled. Now, he wasn't taking anyone's job, so that is a non-issue. But immigration officials decided he wouldn't be tortured or put to death if he was sent back to Iran. Mr. Kazemian apparently called police to the church after receiving a fraudulent cheque someone had given him to pay for an item he was selling. The attending officer ran his name through the police computer system and saw the arrest warrant that's been outstanding since his deportation order. The officer apparently didn't understand the tradition of ignoring arrest warrants for people living in church sanctuary and thus arrested him. Mr.Kazemian spent the weekend in detention terrified he'd be sent back to Iran. I can imagine his worry. But there is a happy ending here. After tying up our court system for years and being found ‘deportable', after running from the law for over two years, after relying on the charity of church members to feed, house and clothe him, Mr. Kazemian has been granted permanent resident status by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It is no wonder Canada is looked upon as the laughing stock of the world when it comes to opening its borders to everyone who washes up on our rocks in a flimsy raft. I doubt that the USA would have been so generous to this man. From what I've read, Australia would have booted him post-haste. But Canada seems to be the country of suckers. Give us your poor, your ill, your down trodden, your terrorists, your criminals, hell we've got a great big country to populate. The original order should have stood and Mr. Kazemian should have been sent back either to face the consequences or get in line to apply for legal entry.
Sources: Iranian Man Allowed CanWest News Service
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SHARIAH LAW III

Shariah law is used mainly, but not exclusively, to settle domestic or civil disputes in the Muslim world. As I've written here before, it is law which keeps women under the total control of their husbands or any other male in the Muslim community. Some people think it is fair and just, and that might be true if you are a sadist. If you have any reasoning ability, you will see that it is merely a way of treating women worse than a slave.
Countless numbers of women's groups, both Muslim and non-Muslim, opposed the introduction of Shariah law into our judicial system here in Canada. And well they should. And better that they won and we don't recognize it here.
A blogger named Bhumika commented on one of my articles on this subject and said the problem is not confined to the peoples of the mid-East. She is from Pakistan and says that even Hindus and Buddhists treat their women like dirt, not just Muslims. I filed this little tidbit away until I saw a National Geographic Special on TV the other night. It focused on Muslims and the role of Shariah law in Pakistan


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GREY MATTERS

Cpl. Bruce Moncur is a soldier in the Canadian army. He was stationed in Afghanistan and got wounded. A lot of our men and women have been either wounded or killed. So what makes Moncur such a standout? He happened to lose about 5% of his brain due to the attack that wounded him, 30 others and killed Pte. Mark Graham.
Moncur is resting and rehabilitating at his home in Harrow, Ont. and wonders what the military considers fair compensation for his injuries. How much cash will he get? "I am not sure," he says, "We are in negotiations." Believe it or not, there are guidelines in place to help determine this. It's called the new Veteran's Charter where just about every scenario has been considered, with $250,000 tax-free being the high end of what someone can get in compensation for losing a body part.
This Charter, called a meat chart by soldiers, takes many things into account when determining how much each piece of a GI's body is worth. For example, someone who loses fingers or a hand and used to play the piano will receive more than someone with the same injury who didn't play


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THE ABYSS

The other day, Michael Coren wrote an interesting piece in the Toronto Sun. He was lamenting the life style we enjoyed some fifty years ago. You remember, the days of ‘Father Knows Best', ‘Leave It To Beaver' and ‘The Donna Reed Show'? He waxed a bit nostalgic and then wrote, "Whether it's politics, economics, culture or morality, the culture, society and various pundits always assume that things are getting better -- that we're making progress and that what we have and what is to come is superior to what was. Problem is, it's mostly nonsense." And he goes on to give proof that he's right. "If any of us point to the past and argue that just half a century ago the world was more civilized, gentle, kind and moral we are dismissed --at best -- as nostalgic cranks," he adds.
But when he gets into it, he does show us what we had then compared to what we have now. The 1950's were oppressive, confining and prudish. Perhaps, but since then the teenage suicide in North America has increased by 5,000%, a figure so extraordinary that you probably think it a misprint. It is not.
In 1958 a cross-section of school principals was asked what were the five most challenging problems they faced in dealing with students. The answers then? Not doing homework; not respecting property, such as throwing books; leaving lights and/or doors and windows open; throwing spitballs in class; running in the halls. In 1988, only 30 years later, the same question was put to a similar group of teachers. The answers now? Children having abortions; young people infected with AIDS; incidents of rape; widespread use of soft and increasingly hard drugs; a fear of murders and guns and knives in class


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KYOTO VII (c)(cont'd)

Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez from Quebec, has had a private member's bill pass through the House of Commons that, unfortunately, has the backing of all three opposition parties. The bill passed by a vote of 161 to 113 on Wednesday, but must now pass the Senate before becoming law.
Canadians should be afraid, very afraid. This bill would require Ottawa to honour Canada's Kyoto commitments and reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions by more than a third over just the next five years. There are only two ways to achieve this goal by 2012. The federal government could force a radical change in Canadians' lifestyles, restricting automobile use, limiting electrical consumption and shutting down industries employing hundreds of thousands of workers, thereby sending our economy into a tailspin, or it could send tens of billions of tax dollars abroad to buy "carbon credits" from developing and underdeveloped nations. Mr. Rodriguez, his Liberal caucus mates and environmentalists are reassuring Canadians that the emissions targets imposed by the new bill could be achieved with very little pain for ordinary Canadians. This is hogwash.
There is no technology yet that would enable a nation of 32 million to cut hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide output in five short years. There are no hydrogen cars, no emissions-free smelters, no solar-powered 18- wheelers. In order to reach our Kyoto targets by this date, Canada would have to shutter all its coal-fired power plants, plus all its auto plants and Alberta's oilsands. You don't think this won't have an effect on the economy? Even the Liberals, in the late 1990's, through their own economic forecasts projected 450,000 lost jobs from such reductions. That's a major reason why they did nothing to enforce Kyoto restraints for the 13 years they were in power. Rodriguez's bill would consign us all to freezing together in the unemployed darkness. And it wouldn't even do any good against global warming. The Kyoto accords are more about symbolism than substance. None of the large developing nations, China, India, Indonesia or Brazil, is covered by its rules. Not only do they not have to scale back their emissions under Kyoto, they are not even required to hold them constant. Their emissions may grow without penalty. Russia and the former Soviet bloc states, which were covered by Kyoto, have since been exempted from its emission targets. How does all this add up to reducing greenhouse gasses? In simple language, it doesn't


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SEAL HUNT II

The federal government is considering changes to rules governing the annual seal hunt to keep sealers and observers further apart. Phil Jenkins, of the Federal Fisheries Department, said the department has received over 2,000 responses to its request for public comment on a proposal to extend the exclusion zone around seal hunters from 10 to 20 metres. "It's all about safety for both the sealers and the observers," Jenkins said in an interview. "The idea is to bring down the emotional temperature out on the ice and allow sealers to go about their business without disruption." About time I would say. I would love to see this change made.
Last year, you will recall Paul McCartney and Heather Mills took a photo op session to show the world how they are opposed to the hunt. With what's happened to this pair in the past year, I doubt Sir Paul will be back. As for Heather, she got nipped by a seal when she got too close to it, trying to make a cutesy picture. I doubt if she'll be back either. Bridget Bardot chimed up and said she was against the hunt, and you've got to hand it to her, at least she's consistent. But since losing her sex appeal, she's got nothing better to do than fight for ‘animal rights' anyway. I wonder when she will do a photo op with the African warthog?
The safety aspect of this rule change should not be lightly overlooked. Last year some protesters got too close to a sealing boat and were rewarded for their efforts by the hunters throwing pails full of seal guts upon them. Tempers can run hot out there on the ice. None of the hunters were charged. The protesters were for getting within the 10 metre limit they are not supposed to enter. It will be up to Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn to make a decision about the rule change and hopefully it will be made sometime before the hunt starts in late March


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THE SEAL HUNT

The great Canadian seal hunt is set to begin sometime next month and already it is causing controversy. Of course, it always does, but somehow those who are against it refuse to listen to facts, relying instead on the pap that is fed to them from people in PETA and other animal rights organizations.
Britain is probably the first objector, saying that they are concerned about the "reported cruelty" of the annual harvest, and promising to lead the push for a Europe-wide ban on seal products. A little bit too much Paul McCartney/Heather Mills I think, but at least they are going about it the right way. Keep the protesters on that side of the pond and don't let them interfere with what's more than just a tradition in Canada. Many people have written about the Europeans greed for seal skin items, and if that market dries up, the sealers will quit this hunt.
Hardly likely. James Wright, the Canadian high commissioner in London, fired off a letter to British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett and Trade Minister Ian McCartney blasting the latest British move, insisting that the U.K. government is "well aware that independent veterinary experts consider the hunting practices employed to be humane" and urging a "science- based dialogue" on the issue. But PETA and the others ignore this


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SHARIAH LAW II

Some time ago, I wrote an article entitled ‘Shariah Law'. It involved a woman and her child who were stabbed by her husband. He is doing some time and she wants to divorce him and return to Lebanon. She was reluctant to return because she would be under Shariah law that might not recognize her divorce. This was in court transcripts and seeing as how the couple was from Lebanon, I thought they might know what they were talking about.
I got taken to task by a Muslim who said I knew nothing of Shariah law. I don't claim to be an expert, I never did, so I did a bit of research. I found that I was right in my beliefs and my Muslim detractor didn't know what he was talking about.
Our province outlawed Shariah law over the objections of some rabid Muslims who wanted to use it to punish other Muslims according to the fundamental scriptures of the Quar'an. Unfortunately, though this law has passed, it has not yet been enacted. Why seems to be anyone's guess


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KYOYO VIII (b)(cont'd)

Let's take another bit of a rest here before addressing the actual issue at hand and focus on Dr. Davis Suzuki.
Dr. Suzuki is a learned man who gained his reputation in the environmental field. His TV series ‘The Nature of Things' was a wonder to watch and very, very informative. I watched it every chance I got and it taught me a lot about the world we live in. Unfortunately, Dr. Suzuki's fame seems to have gone to his head and he is now thoroughly ensconced in the ‘sky is falling' camp of people like Al Gore.
An aside here, an American reader asked me who Suzuki was as he thought Suzuki was an automobile manufacturer. I don't know if there is a connection, but Canada's Suzuki is America's Gore. I hope that clears things up a little bit


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MISTAKEN IDENTITY

An interesting article crossed my desk the other day, so I thought I'd share it with you.
It seems an ethnic Chinese Malaysian was mistakenly given by doctors to a Malay Muslim couple at birth nearly three decades ago. Now, we've all heard of hospitals mixing up babies and wonder how it could ever happen. I'm not about to go into how or why it happens. I just want to concentrate on the ramifications of this case in particular.
Zulhaidi Omar, 29, is in for a battle as he tries to renounce Islam. Why? Because the Malaysian constitution does not allow Muslims to renounce their religion, and doing so is considered apostasy and punishable by jail in several states


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KYOTO VIII (a) (cont'd)

I'm going to step aside from the regular articles concerning Kyoto and global warming for a bit to address some concerns that have recently arisen. On another blog there are comments from readers espousing the danger we all face in this nefarious thing that is Making Al Gore more newsworthy than he deserves to be.
These commenters have swallowed his line along with his hook and sinker. They claim to have university educations, but you'd never know it by the way they write. I only have a college education but I don't need to pump myself up to the level of self importance that these people do. They claim to talk to scientists, but don't tell you what esteemed genius gave them the ‘facts' they spout. Of course, these people are just bloggers, the same as me, so if you consider the source, they are no more informed than I am. However, it is my intention to list the CV's of those people who have made this series possible and the sources I have used to garner the information. I have not spoken to any of these scientists, but they are well respected, published people, which is more than I can say for the detractors who claim to ‘talk to scientists'.
One fellow wrote in to discredit the global warming Deniers by saying they were funded to the tune of $10,000 each by Enron to refute global warming. If this fellow had done even the least bit of research, he would have known that Enron was a company brought into bankruptcy years ago and is nothing more than a reminder of corporate greed today. Exxon was the one who originally offered the money and then withdrew the offer when they saw how the optics could work in favour of Gore and his tribe. The scientists were never put on Exxon's payroll. They worked under whatever grants the government gave them, and we all know that can be a mere pittance at times


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KYOTO VIII (cont'd)

Sir Nicholas Stern was the former chief economist of the World Bank and he is well ensconced in the Suzuki/Gore camp of the effects of global warming. He is as hysterical as these two to such an extent that his proclamations about the dire effects of global warming caused British Prime Minister Tony Blair, among others, to urge immediate action to stem global warming. That's right folks, immediate action. You see, if we don't act now, we'll all be literal toast within hours.
His study has caused some prominent environmentalists to denounce his findings as outrageous and bereft of credibility. His greatest critic is Dr. Richard S.J. Tol, who issued a stronger denunciation, and has better environmental credentials, than Sir Stern.
You see, Tol doesn't think the evidence is in on global warming and its effects so he doesn't think there's any reason to rush into action. That makes him a Denier. But Tol is no fringe outsider to the scientific debate. He is at the centre of the academic investigation of global warming, a central figure in the scientific establishment that has been developing the models and the knowledge to understand the global warming phenomenon. At the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, considered by the Suzuki/Gore crowd to be the authoritative body in the field, Tol is involved as an author in all three of its Working Groups. He is also an author and editor of the United Nations Handbook on Methods for Climate Change Impact Assessment and Adaptation Strategies, and a mover and shaker in the prestigious European Climate Forum. This man is not some lunatic looking in from the outside. He takes global warming seriously and has dedicated his professional life to making a contribution for the better in climate policy and related fields


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LICENCE PLATES

A friend of mine, Jim Stillman, recently wrote a blog (on AC) on personalized licence plates that are for sale in Florida. Jim is an ex-lawyer and makes well thought out points. I am glad I never had to face him in a court of law. He would have sliced and diced me, chewed me up and spit me out without a second thought. We may not agree on a lot of things, but I learn something every time I read an article of his.
Jim complains about the latest plate for sale because it shows a representation of the Confederate Flag. His major point is that this plate is offensive to a number of people who are trying to get away from the notion that southerners still believe that slavery is, or was, justifiable. I won't argue either way on that point here.
What got to me was the fact that some people find it offensive. Being from Canada, I've never had to deal with the issue of the ‘Stars and Bars' in the same light as those in the southern US have. I've always considered it a bit of a novelty and anyone I've ever spoken to hasn't taken any offence to it. Living in an area that was one of the last stops on the Underground Railway you'd think there would be plenty of opposition, but it seems not to be the case


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KYOTO VII (cont'd)

As I mentioned in my last article, Dr. David Suzuki seems to think that the media are portraying the debate about the Kyoto Accords as accurate. I take great exception to this. Mr. Lawrence Solomon has done some deep digging and written, in a series of articles, what the main stream media don't want you to know.
Dr. Suzuki's celebrity seems to have gone to his head and he is doing everything in his power to convince us that because we didn't address the matter of global warming sooner, we are all likely to fry by about 4 PM next Friday.
Politicians worldwide have jumped on this bandwagon, and while I admit the warming problem should be dealt with, I have to question the urgency of it


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JOHN HOWARD

John Howard, PM of Australia, made news the other day when he criticized Barak Obama for saying the US should pull out of Iraq by March 31, 2008. S L Bradish wrote a post about this and most of her readers agreed with her that Howard was right on the money. In essence, what he said was that the terrorists would love to see the Democrats voted in so they could mark that date on their calendar and sit and wait until the Yanks were gone. Then they could crawl out from under their rocks and start the whole nasty business anew.
Bradish did have a dissenter to her views who said Howard should mind his own business and stay out of American politics. When Bradish replied and hauled him up short on his comments, he typically took a coward's way out and started calling her names. Hardly the way to have an intelligent debate.
The Australians see Howard as a liberal, whom they equate with the American Republicans. I have to wonder if their liberals are so right-winged, what are their conservatives like? Descendants from Attila the Hun? Maybe, just as their seasons are in reverse to ours, so are their politics. It is the only thing I can think of


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ORGANIC FOOD

I just got finished watching a program that delved into the growth in market share of organic foods. It really is quite remarkable and I am not about to debate whether organics are healthier for you or not. In fact, it seems the jury is still out on that, with no conclusive proof one way or the other.
What piqued my interest is the cost of this stuff. I see it when I go grocery shopping and pass it by strictly due to price. Maybe it would be better if I did eat some of it, but I won't put out the money they are asking for it.
‘Regular' butter costs about $3.00, organic butter goes for $9.00. I am hedonistic enough to spend that other $6.00 on something I really want other than butter


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ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS III (cont'd)

Some time ago, I wrote a couple of articles on illegal immigrants. I took the stance that illegal is illegal, and those caught by immigration officials should accept their deportment and get back in line to apply for legal entry into our country.
Then, along comes a story, as reported in today's Toronto Sun, that I suppose is to make any hardliner take another look at the issue. So I did.
Carlos Moura is a Portugese bricklayer who has been living, with his wife, Sonia, and their children, Camila, 11, Bernardo, 10, and little Steven since for the past six years. A monkey wrench in the works now crops up in the form of 11-month-old Michael, who was born here in Canada


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ISLAM VI (cont'd)

ISLAM VI (cont'd)
I caught a National Geographic special on TV the other night and what I saw made me sick.
A reporter was interviewing Palestinian Muslims, trying to find out what makes these people tick. She focused on the extremists and went well out her way to explain not all Muslims or Palestinians feel the same way. However, her report certainly was an eye opener


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KYOTO VI (cont'd)

I recently wrote my fifth installment of this series and I directed readers to www.nationalpost.com to read a series of articles they had printed under the heading ‘The Deniers'.
This series goes into much more detail about the fallacies of Kyoto than I care to, but suffice it to say that each article revolves around a respected scientist who seems to have been ignored when the politicians and main media report on the effects of global warming.
I've ranted against people like David Suzuki, whom I once had great respect for, and Al Gore, and lumped all those who believe in their ‘the sky is falling' message as people who are basically too lazy to do any research themselves to find out whether the emperor has any clothes or not


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ANNA NICOLE SMITH

Okay, I'm not really sure why I'm wasting my time on this. Put it down to a slow news day. Anna Nicole Smith is dead at age 39.
The death of anyone is tragic, but I can't believe the amount of press this item is getting. It reminds me of the old days when people lined up to see the freaks in the circus side-show.
As a testament to man's ingenuity, Ms Smith was more plastic than true skin and bones and we should perhaps worship the plastic surgeons, who no doubt gained valuable experience for reconstructing burn victims, rather than her. She went on to become a Playboy Playmate of the Year, which I'm sure made her parents and kids very proud


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MISS FAITH

Miss Faith blogs on this site and for anyone with an open mind, her articles are well worth reading. She recently posted with an article titled ‘Whining Christians'. As a Christian, although not fanatical about it, the title intrigued me so I made it a point to read this blog.
She claims that a number of Pagans recently held a Pagan Pride Festival where they could gather and try to show people what their beliefs are and spread a message of religious tolerance. They had to apply for a permit from Richmond Hills Park in Grand Rapids to do this, which they did and which was granted. They held a peaceful meeting and did not force their views on anyone.
Along comes a group calling themselves ‘The Worldwide Street Preacher's Fellowship'. With a name like that, you just know trouble is around the corner. This ‘Fellowship' seems to go cross country ‘saving' humanity from heathens, Pagans, Wiccans, and just about any other religion that doesn't agree with them


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A PISSED OFF DADDY

A story comes to us today via the Associated Press that chronicles the dilemma of a father getting upset with his 2 year old daughter. Now, we've all been there. Raising a child through the ‘terrible two's' is enough to make anyone apoplectic. Admit it, you've tried to reason with your two year old in the grocery store and when you discovered there was nowhere to send him/her for a ‘time out', thought s of justifiable homicide entered your mind.
Apparently, William Lorenzo Page, 23, of Braddock, PA., thought this was just the ticket for him. Page told police he woke up early Saturday and found the girl awake and playing near a mirror in the hallway, and we all know just how annoying that can be. I mean, it was Saturday morning, for gawd's sake. So he did what any normal father would do and he got mad when the girl wouldn't go back to bed. The little girl obviously tormented him to his breaking point and so he hit her so hard she hit her head and became unconscious. Now that the little girl is ignoring him completely, Daddy Page is at somewhat of a loss as to what to do with her. So he took her outside wrapped in a blanket and left her. On a wooded knoll about 10 minutes away from the family's home. Police said tiny footprints in the snow suggested she had gotten up and wandered around before she died. The girl went missing Saturday morning and was not found until Sunday. An autopsy revealed she died from hypothermia, but the Allegheny County Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide because investigators said it was unreasonable to assume the child got to the wooded location alone. The trek to the wooded knoll entailed climbing 17 snowy steps up to it. Hardly a journey a 2 year old could have made by herself. Especially when you consider the police had to search in 20 degree weather for two days before finding her. Daddy Page has been arrested on charges of criminal homicide, kidnapping, false reports and simple assault. He did not have an attorney in court Thursday morning, and was jailed without bond. The really sad part about this is that Page will probably get a minimal sentence and once that is served, be allowed to live the rest of his life in relative comfort. A life he denied his daughter. We can only hope that whatever sentence he is given must be served in a federal penitentiary. Convicts have this nice way of dispensing the justice our legal system fails to do.
Sources: The AP
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KID'S ESTEEM

I caught a show on TV the other day that delved into the question of whether or not our children have too much self-esteem. From what I've seen in the last few years, I'd have to answer a resounding yes.
Back when my sons were involved in minor hockey, some nut bar came up with the idea of not keeping score. It was wrong, in this person's eyes, to degrade any player by making him/her face the fact that they had lost a game. In the days of shinny hockey, before the parents got involved and started setting rules, we'd come home from school, strap on our skates and look for the nearest frozen pond to play on. Sometimes a hockey game would break out and though some goals were questionable, you had winners and losers with the losers going home to eat dinner and swearing they would beat the other side next time.
I started to pay attention to this ‘let's not keep score' philosophy and enlisted the aid of my sister, who was a teacher until she retired. She told me that she was not allowed to mark papers in red ink as that might make little Johnny feel degraded. The marks didn't change, but they all had to be in either blue or black pen. Red made you an outcast loser and the whole class would know about it


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P C POLICE

We are raising a generation of wimps. I heard on the radio this morning that somewhere in England, they hold a festival that included things like a sack race, a three-legged race and a an egg-in-spoon race.
Because little Johnny might stumble and fall during any one of these events, he might get bruised. So, the insurer told the organizer that if these events are included in this year's festivities the insurance premium would be doubled.
The organizers had no choice but to cave and thus these events are not included


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KYOTO V (cont'd)

Has the world gone mad? This little item appeared recently in the paper:
"Yesterday (Feb. 2, 2007), the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued the executive summary of its long-awaited Fourth Assessment Report on global warming. Awkwardly, the 21- page document "summarizes" a much longer report that has not yet been finished -- though that report apparently has already been formally adopted before actually existing. Few of the breathless observers commenting on the new IPCC document seem much bothered by this exercise in time travel. As with past Assessment Reports, the easily digestible and more sensationalistic summary document will attract uncritical attention while the technical document it purports to summarize languishes in obscurity. The authors of the IPCC report concluded that the evidence of climate change is "unequivocal," and that it is "very likely" human activities is causing most of this warming."
Read that a couple of times. A summary of a paper that has not even been published yet. The document is collecting dust while the politicos ‘summarize' it


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ISLAM V (cont'd)

Well, let's see here. Palestinians seem to be weary of bloodshed and exasperated with their warring leaders. They have thus agreed to peace talks between Hamas and Fatah. No one though is holding out much hope for success. Sunni's vs Shi'ite's. Is this anything like liberals vs conservatives? Okay, we don't go around murdering people, but over there it is quite common if you want to get your point across. More than 80 Palestinians have died in Gaza and hundreds have been wounded and kidnapped after two moths of fighting between Hamas and Fatah gunmen.
Hamas' exiled supreme leader, Khaled Meshal, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah's leader, were scheduled to be in Mecca, the Saudi Arabian holy city, for the talks."Wahid Abu Assab, who sells pirated CDs and DVDs in Ramallah, located in the relatively calm West Bank said, "I wish they'd all go to hell. Only God can help the people of Gaza, not Abu Mazen (Abbas) or Meshal. These people have been killing our country. It is as if they don't want us to have our own nation." Gee, where have we heard that before? Diana Buttu, a Canadian-born Palestinian living in Ramallah, and a former legal adviser to Abbas, has a law degree from Queen's University and a PhD from Stanford University. She said, "They are not fighting for our national liberation or even for cleaner streets. In fact, it is not exactly clear what they are fighting for at all."
And so the world watches and waits. This certainly is no way for these people to act. If they can't get their act together, how will they ever overcome The Great Satan, the USA? They must learn to live together first and defeat the enemy at the gate. Once they have us all on prayer mats, they can go back to murdering each other. They have to realize that one enemy must be destroyed before the in-fighting can be resumed. Buttu said, "The most residents of Ramallah seemed to hope for from the Mecca talks is a more durable ceasefire. At best they may agree to stop shooting each other for a while


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MISS CANADA

Who is Nazanin Afshin-Jam and why do you care? Sit back and relax, and I'll tell you the tale.
We are all familiar with various beauty contests, Miss USA, Miss World, Miss Universe, ad nauseum. The contestants show off their talents, pose in swim suits and answer the age old question of what they'd do to make the world a better place to live on. The usual answers are that they'd all want world peace and failing that, would like to land a job as a soda jerk. It's all very predictable and too boring to be of much interest anymore.
The winners get to wear their crown for a year and attend earth shattering moments like cutting the ribbon at the latest supermarket opening. The recent news about The Donald giving Miss USA another chance because she was in over her head smacks of Bill Clinton giving instructions to Monica on how to do it gently


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APOLOGIES

S L Bradish recently wrote an article in which she mentioned my blogs on global warming. I appreciate it as I admire and respect S L for her writing and her thoughts. If you want to know just how two-faced the Democrats are, I urge you to read her articles, found on thei site under 'The Political Brief.'
I tried to put some links on her comment section which explain the fallacy of global warming and why scientists are recanting what they once said about it or worse, ignored totally by the politicians.
The links didn't work and I apologize to any and all who tried them. I don't know why they came up the way they did, but that is history now


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REFUGEES

Just when you thought it couldn't get any crazier, along comes another liberal to try and gain her 15 minutes of fame. In question is Janet Dench of the Canadian Council for Refugees. And just what is this poor, misguided soul carping about? The treatment of refugees in the USA.
Now, we all know that there are genuine refugees who need our help. There are also those who claim refugee status in order to jump the queue in front of legitimate claimants. That really is neither here nor there, but the genuine refugees deserve all the help we can give them.
Ms Dench's problem stems from the fact that she believes the US should be taken off the list of ‘safe havens' for refugees to apply to. The US, you see, has a nasty habit of weeding out the real from the illegitimate and will deport the illegals back to where they came from. In her eyes, this automatically exposes them to torture in the country they ran away from


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KYOTO IV (cont'd)

It seems David Suzuki and Al Gore are running into some opposition over their view of global warming. The scientists they chose to ignore in their findings on the subject are coming back to haunt them.
Nir Shariv is an astrophysicist and one of Israel's top young scientists. He recently described the logic that led him, and almost everyone else, to conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming.
Step One. Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect


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HUNGER

It seems we have three men, terror suspects detained on security certificates, who are being "left to die" by an unaccountable federal government that is refusing to act on their complaints or intervene in their months-old hunger protests, according to their supporters. The men, Mohammad Mahjoub, 45, in day 71 while Mahmoud Jaballah, 44, and Hassan Almrei, 33, in day 60 of hunger strikes, are in this position over alleged conditions at the holding facility near Kingston, Ont., where they've been detained without trial or full disclosure of evidence.
These supporters claim that the men have been denied medical care and phone privileges and have been subjected to daily humiliation by staff at the facility. They are calling the facility "Guantanamo Bay North", referring to its similarity to the American detention camp in Cuba. This is an expected cry form the liberals who refuse to do anything against the threat of terrorism but ignore it. Apparently, Matthew Behrens of the group Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada thinks Ottawa is unaccountable under the security legislation and has ignored the plight of the hunger strikers, leaving them to die in vain. I don't think so.
A hunger strike is a self inflicted means of protest and can be called off at any time by the striker. It is a very useful tool though. If they carry out their threat, they die as martyrs to the cause. If the government steps in and force feeds them, then their rights have been violated. It really is a no-win situation for the strikers keepers


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HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

Just a blurb that came my way the other day. I thought I'd share it.
When the cut and runners want to withdraw from Iraq at the highest possible speed, do they really know what they are talking about?
From an editorial in the Post, we have the following


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SEXTUPLETS

About a month ago, sextuplets were born to a B.C. couple. The first in Canada. This caused a great sensation throughout the various media and perhaps rightfully so. It is not every day that something like this happens. The group was born almost three months premature. A minor miracle in itself. But the story doesn't end there.
Two of the six have died in the meantime. Health care workers monitoring the situation have determined that some of the survivors need blood transfusions to live. And therein lies the rest of the story.
You see, the parents are Jehovah's Witnesses. They do not believe in blood transfusions. The B.C. government has walked in and removed 3 of the remaining 4 in order to give them the transfusions they need to live. Remember now that these babies are barely over a month old. I've always said that if a child of mine needs a transfusion and my religion disallows it, the religion can go to hell. Any one who would rather see their child die because of what they, not the child, believe, are nothing less than murderers


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KYOTO III

I've spoken about this before and the evidence just seems to get stronger, day by day, that it is a bad deal. Our PM, Stephen Harper, has been raked over the coals for a letter he wrote some time ago describing the Accord as a ‘money sucking scheme'. He was right when he wrote that, but he is busy trying to garner votes for the upcoming election and so is starting to waffle on this idea. I had expected much more from him.
I already wrote about the upcoming UN address that will ignore the majority of science and instead focus on what the tree-huggers want us to believe. Now comes an article from Tom Harris, an Ottawa-based mechanical engineer and executive director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project and Dr. Ian Clark, a science adviser to NRSP, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Ottawa where he focuses on the study of paleoclimatology and isotope hydrogeology.
Despite what many would have you think, Kyoto is not about all the noxious gases that are in our atmosphere. It focuses on CO2 emissions. As Messrs Harris and Clark point out, Global warming alarmists are rarely challenged to back up their claims with hard science these days. Consequently, everything from sea level rise to droughts to melting ice caps and drowning polar bears are blamed on global warming brought on by man's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Alternative viewpoints are carefully screened out of government pronouncements and few in the public seemed to even notice


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ONE FOR QUEBEC III (cont'd)

Maybe we're making some progress. The town of Herouxville made the news on a local US station here today. It seems not only Canadians are sick and tired of kissing the hind ends of immigrants who wish this country was just the same as the one they left. I always thought that you went somewhere to better your station in life, not keep it the same.
I remember going to Cuba for vacation. I ran into a bunch of fellow travellers who wanted Cuba to be the same as Canada. Same food, same amenities and for gawd's sake, speak English. That's not what I wanted. I wanted to see and speak with the locals and enjoy authentic Cuban cuisine. I made my way around the country with my handy-dandy English-Spanish dictionary and had a whale of a time. If I wanted all things Canadian, I could've stayed home and saved a pile of money and aggravation.
So why do immigrants who come here, not on vacation but, to make a new life, insist on everything being just the way it was in the country of their origin


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THE U.K. RAIDS

Well, it looks like the Democrats have it right. We should cut and run out of Iraq as fast as possible. The terrorists pose no threat to us and the Iraqi population can take care of itself without outside interference. Maybe we're spoiled on this side of the ocean. The Dems seem to know for a fact that there are no terrorist cells hidden in Canada or the US, so why worry about what happens over there? It isn't our problem.
You may have a bit of a hard time convincing the people of the West Midlands in England about that. The police on Thursday questioned nine terror suspects who were arrested for reportedly planning to torture and behead a British Muslim soldier and broadcast the killing on the Internet. But that's a problem English people have to contend with. It couldn't possibly happen here. The alleged plot, said by British media to mirror the brutal killings of foreign hostages in Iraq, was in its final stages and uncovered during a six-month surveillance operation by anti-terror officers in this city (Birmingham) of more than one million in the heart of England.
The soldier believed to be targeted in the kidnapping was a lance corporal in his 20's who was on home leave after serving in Afghanistan. Gee, sorry about his luck. Thank God nothing like this could ever happen here. What destroys the terrorists claim of wanting peace is that the Defence Ministry said 330 Muslims are serving in the British armed forces. The suspects are believed to have drawn up a list of Muslim soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, The London Times reported. The suspects had narrowed their targets to a shortlist of three men, We don't know if the fellow in question was a Muslim or not, but were these terrorists trying to show force in order to convert the Muslim soldiers to join their side


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THE U.K. RAIDS

Well, it looks like the Democrats have it right. We should cut and run out of Iraq as fast as possible. The terrorists pose no threat to us and the Iraqi population can take care of itself without outside interference. Maybe we're spoiled on this side of the ocean. The Dems seem to know for a fact that there are no terrorist cells hidden in Canada or the US, so why worry about what happens over there? It isn't our problem.
You may have a bit of a hard time convincing the people of the West Midlands in England about that. The police on Thursday questioned nine terror suspects who were arrested for reportedly planning to torture and behead a British Muslim soldier and broadcast the killing on the Internet. But that's a problem English people have to contend with. It couldn't possibly happen here. The alleged plot, said by British media to mirror the brutal killings of foreign hostages in Iraq, was in its final stages and uncovered during a six-month surveillance operation by anti-terror officers in this city (Birmingham) of more than one million in the heart of England.
The soldier believed to be targeted in the kidnapping was a lance corporal in his 20's who was on home leave after serving in Afghanistan. Gee, sorry about his luck. Thank God nothing like this could ever happen here. What destroys the terrorists claim of wanting peace is that the Defence Ministry said 330 Muslims are serving in the British armed forces. The suspects are believed to have drawn up a list of Muslim soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, The London Times reported. The suspects had narrowed their targets to a shortlist of three men, We don't know if the fellow in question was a Muslim or not, but were these terrorists trying to show force in order to convert the Muslim soldiers to join their side


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