Vincy Crew

New Geek Out -- Thor in all his glory. Amazing trailer

2010-11-30T14:50:00.003-05:00

no words, just watch, and breath it in

thwe Victory of the Cross and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

2009-11-10T15:51:00.002-05:00

great video from AEI featuring Newt Gingrich and others discussing geopolitics of the Era.

Quiz time: Bush or Obama ?

2009-11-10T11:11:00.002-05:00

I stile this little ditty from the American thinker. Thanks gents, you are clearly more gifted than I. So here is a little quiz I want you to try. Examine each of these questions and ask yourself, is it Bush or Obama ?

Bush or Obama: The Quiz
By Randall Hoven
1. President Bush was famous for lacking "intellectual curiosity," while President Obama has been called "the smartest guy ever to become President." Who reads more books: Bush or Obama?

2. Bush was often considered to be in the grip of Big Oil. In contrast, Obama is a Harvard-educated lawyer. Which industry contributed more than five times as much as the other to politicians: the oil & gas industry, or lawyers/law firms?

3. Bush's Christian faith was at the core of his political identity, and he was considered to be in the grip of the "religious right," while Obama is considered more open-minded. In fact, Obama has said, "my faith is one that admits some doubt." Which one refers to Jesus more in public speeches?

4. Bush was criticized for excessive federal spending and running up huge deficits. Bush's deficit in 2008 was the largest in history. In fact, President Obama said,
It's a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they've presided over a doubling of the national debt ... What I won't do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place.
Whose deficit was more than triple the size of the other's: Bush's in 2008 or Obama's in 2009?

5. While Obama criticized Bush for "a doubling of the national debt," the federal debt held by the public went from 35.1% of GDP in 2000 to 40.8% of GDP in 2008 -- an increase of 16% as of fraction of GDP. What is it expected to be in 2016 under Obama's budget plan?

6. Obama criticized Bush for Guantanamo, military tribunals, wiretaps, troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and "signing statements." Which one of these Bush practices has Obama ended?

Answers:

1. Bush. Obama started reading a book in April and had not finished it by June, putting him on a pace of no more than ten books per year. Bush read forty to ninety-five books a year while President, not counting a new and complete reading of the Bible every year. Bush scored 1206 on his SAT, putting his IQ in the 125-130 range, smarter than 95% of the population and in the company of Lincoln, Rousseau, and Thackeray. He graduated from Yale and earned an MBA from Harvard. Obama earned a law degree from Harvard, but has not released any of his academic records. Despite what you might have heard, we know nothing of his IQ, test scores, or grades from any of the schools he attended.

2. Law firms. In the 2010 cycle so far, Lawyers/Law Firms have contributed $33,779,866 (81% to Democrats), and the Oil & Gas industry has contributed $6,293,631 (34% to Democrats). In the 2008 cycle, the numbers were $233,499,989 (76% to Dems) from lawyers and $35,564,322 (23% to Dems). In all, lawyers contributed about six times more to politicians than the Oil & Gas industry.

3. Obama. Per Eamon Javers at Politico, "As president, Barack Obama has mentioned Jesus Christ in a number of high-profile public speeches -- something his predecessor George W. Bush rarely did in such settings."

4. Obama's 2009 deficit, the largest in U.S. history. It was more than three times that of Bush's record 2008 deficit. Per the Congressional Budget Office, the 2008 deficit was $455 B, and the 2009 deficit was $1,417 B. As a fraction of GDP, it was the largest deficit since 1945.

5. The CBO expects the debt held by the public to be 77.1% of GDP in 2016 under Obama's plan, or an increase of 89% as a fraction of GDP, and the highest level since 1950.

6. None.
Guantanamo is still open and probably will be into 2010, maybe longer.
Obama is keeping military tribunals and clandestine wiretapping programs.
Obama plans to keep most troops in Iraq until the summer of 2010. Even then, he is talking of keeping about 50,000 troops there (compared to about 124,000 now). The number of US troops in Afghanistan increased from 37,000 in January 2009 to 62,000 by August 2009, and Obama is expected to send over 30,000 more. Total number of US troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan has increased under Obama so far (from about 184,000 in January to 186,000 in September).
Obama has used signing statements himself.

Old time values - Educational-Propoganda

2009-05-05T13:58:00.004-05:00

I hope this works - Tea Party in Dallas

2009-04-23T13:57:00.004-05:00

This young lady was one of the voices at the Dallas Tea Party last week. While she said a few things I think in error, the message was the most important part. Folks like this are an insiration to us all. Hope you enjoy this like I did

Time for some controversy

2009-03-18T12:04:00.005-05:00

Ok this post may cause some heart palitations but I hope you can spend the time to watch it. Of course it has an agenda, and the use of language and music to set tone produce an inherant sense of dread, but some of the info in this doc, is worth further investigation.

another blatant theft, this time, form the men and women in power.

2008-12-10T15:34:00.001-05:00

UN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History'

POZNAN, Poland - The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.
The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [See Full report Here: & See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' ]

Full Senate Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours – Stay Tuned…

A hint of what the upcoming report contains:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” - Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.” - Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata. # #

In addition, the report will feature new peer-reviewed scientific studies and analyses refuting man-made warming fears and a heavy dose of inconvenient climate developments. (See Below: Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History')

The Senate Minority Report is an update of 2007’s blockbuster U.S. Senate Minority Report of over 400 dissenting scientists. See here: This new report will contain the names, quotes and analyses of literally hundreds of additional international scientists who publicly dissented from man-made climate fears in just 2008 alone. The chorus of scientific voices skeptical grow louder as a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses and real world data challenge the UN and former Vice President Al Gore's claims that the "science is settled" and there is a "consensus." The original 2007 U.S. Senate report is available here: Full Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours – Stay Tuned…

Meanwhile, while the UN climate conference is in session here in Poznan, the bad scientific news for promoters of man-made climate alarm just keeps rolling in. Below is a very small sampling of very inconvenient developments for Gore, the United Nations, and their promoters in the mainstream media. Peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and prominent scientists continue to speak out to refute climate fears. The data presented below is just from the past week.
#

Peer-reviewed study: Half of recent warming was solar! - December 10, 2008

Excerpt: In this dose of peer-reviewed skeptical climatological literature, we follow Climate Research News. The blog was intrigued by a new article in Geophysical Research Letters that was accepted on Friday, December 5th. Eichler, A., S. Olivier, K. Henderson, A. Laube, J. Beer, T. Papina, H. W. Gäggeler, and M. Schwikowski: Temperature response in the Altai region lags solar forcing - Recall that the Siberian Altai Mountains are found at the intersection of Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. The authors looked at 750 years worth of the local ice core, especially the oxygen isotope. They claim to have found a very strong correlation between the concentration of this isotope (i.e. temperature) on one side and the known solar activity in the epoch 1250-1850. Their data seem to be precise enough to determine the lag, about 10-30 years. It takes some time for the climate to respond to the solar changes. It seems that they also have data to claim that the correlation gets less precise after 1850. They attribute the deviation to CO2 and by comparing the magnitude of the forcings, they conclude that "Our results are in agreement with studies based on NH temperature reconstructions [Scafetta et al., 2007] revealing that only up to approximately 50% of the observed global warming in the last 100 years can be explained by the Sun." Well, the word "only" is somewhat cute in comparison with the "mainstream" fashionable ideology. The IPCC said that they saw a 90% probability that "most" of the recent warming was man-made. The present paper would reduce this figure, 90%, to less than 50% because the Sun itself is responsible for 1/2 of the warming and not the whole 50% of the warming could have been caused by CO2 because there are other effects, too. Note that if 0.3 °C or 0.4 °C of warming in the 20th century was due to the increasing CO2 levels, the climate sensitivity is decisively smaller than 1 °C. At any rate, the expected 21st century warming due to CO2 would be another 0.3-0.4 °C, and this time, if the solar activity contributes with the opposite sign, these two effects could cancel. Even if you try to stretch these numbers a little bit - but not unrealistically - you have to become sure that the participants of the Poznan conference are lunatics.

Flashback: New scientific analysis shows Sun “could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth's average temperature” (LINK) & (LINK)

Dr. Bruce West, A U.S Army Chief Scientist, Says Sun, Not Man, Is Driving Climate Change – June 3, 2008 – (LINK)

21 spotless days and solar magnetic field still in a funk – Meteorologist Anthony Watts Excerpt: We are now at 21 days with no sunspots, it will be interesting to see if we reach a spotless 30 day period and then perhaps a spotless month of December.

New Arctic ice analysis reveals ‘No clear evidence of a delay in the start of the later summer/early fall freeze up or the start of the late winter/early spring melt’ – Excerpt: Based on analysis by William Chapman, author of The Cryosphere Today website, graciously prepared an analysis of the dates of the minimum and maximum Arctic sea ice coverage since 1979.

Oscillation Rules as the Pacific Cools – December 9, 2008 Excerpt: A cool wedge of lower-than-normal sea-surface heights continues to dominate the tropical Pacific, ringed by a horseshoe of warmer waters. The continuation of this long-term cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation stacks the odds against a wetter-than-average winter/spring in the southwestern United States. The latest image of sea-surface height measurements from the U.S./French Jason-1 oceanography satellite shows the Pacific Ocean remains locked in a strong, cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a large, long-lived pattern of climate variability in the Pacific associated with a general cooling of Pacific waters. […] Sea-surface temperature satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration mirror Jason sea-surface height measurements, clearly showing a cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation pattern, as seen at: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/sst/sst.anom.gif . "This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation 'cool' trend can cause La Niña-like impacts around the Pacific basin," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. […] This cool phase will likely persist this winter and, perhaps, beyond.

Report: Sea Level rise 'has stumbled since 2005' – Meteorologist Anthony Watts – December 5, 2008 Excerpt: We’ve been waiting for the UC web page to be updated with the most recent sea level data. It finally has been updated for 2008. It looks like the steady upward trend of sea level as measured by satellite has stumbled since 2005. The 60 day line in blue tells the story. From the University of Colorado web page: “Long-term mean sea level change is a variable of considerable interest in the studies of global climate change. The measurement of long-term changes in global mean sea level can provide an important corroboration of predictions by climate models of global warming. Long term sea level variations are primarily determined with two different methods.” - Yes, I would agree, it is indeed a variable of considerable interest. The question now is, how is it linked to global climate change (aka global warming) if CO2 continues to increase, and sea level does not?

Peer-Reviewed Study: Recent worldwide land warming' NOT 'a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land' - WorldClimateReport.com – December 3, 2008 ‘Rethinking Observed Warming?’ Key quote: “Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land.”

Alert: 2008 will be coolest year of the decade!- December 5, 2008 Excerpt: This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07. [Note: For evidence of the panic apparently gripping the promoters of man-made climate fear, read the quotes in the article from the warming partisans absolutely assuring everyone that cool temperatures are “absolutely not" evidence that global warming is on the wane. Those same voices are usually absent when it comes to linking heat waves to global warming. ]

Flashback: Global Cooling? - 'Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof' - National Post – October 20, 2008

Report: NASA’s James Hansen "adjusts" a cooling trend into a warming trend - December 9, 2008 Excerpt: "[H]ere is what the data looks like before and after NASA GISS adjusts it. These are the USHCN “raw” and “homogenized” data plots from the GISTEMP website. The before and after is quite something to behold. ... What was down, is now up." "How not to measure temperature, part 79"

Geophysist: ‘It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history’ – ‘Alarmists are in denial and running for cover'- Washington Times

By Geophysicist Dr. David Deming, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma who has published numerous peer-reviewed research articles. Excerpt: Environmental extremists and global warming alarmists are in denial and running for cover. Their rationale for continuing a lost cause is that weather events in the short term are not necessarily related to long-term climatic trends. But these are the same people who screamed at us each year that ordinary weather events such as high temperatures or hurricanes were undeniable evidence of imminent doom. Now that global warming is over, politicians are finally ready to enact dubious solutions to a non-existent problem. […] To the extent global warming was ever valid, it is now officially over. It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history, next to Aristotelean physics, Neptunism, the geocentric universe, phlogiston, and a plethora of other incorrect scientific theories, all of which had vocal and dogmatic supporters who cited incontrovertible evidence. Weather and climate change are natural processes beyond human control. To argue otherwise is to deny the factual evidence.

Climate Chancellor' No More – Der Spiegel Excerpt: Angela Merkel is facing withering criticism for remarks she made on Monday that seemed to back away from her earlier commitment to tackling climate change.

Alert: Under the Weather: Internal Report Says U.N. Climate Agency Rife With Bad Practices - Fox News – December 4, 2008

Excerpt: As more than 10,000 delegates and observers gather in Poznan, Poland, to discuss the next phase in the battle against "climate change," a U.N. agency at the center of that hoopla badly needs to do some in-house weather-proofing. […] But the WMO, the $80 million U.N. front-line agency in the climate change struggle, and the source for much of the world's information in the global atmosphere and water supply, has serious management problems of its own, despite its rapidly expanding global ambitions. The international agency has been sharply criticized by a U.N. inspection unit in a confidential report obtained by FOX News, for, among other things, haphazard budget practices, deeply flawed organizational procedures, and no effective oversight by the 188 nations that formally make up its membership and dole out its funds. The inspection was carried out by a member of the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), a small, independent branch of the U.N. that reports to the General Assembly and is mandated to improve the organization's efficiency and coordination through its inspection process. […] WMO did not respond to a series of questions from FOX News regarding its future programs, sent on the eve of the Poznan meeting.

16-year-old suggests sheep dung can help save planet Card business has really dung good - Daily Post North WalesExcerpt: The company makes its products at the Twll Golau Papermill in Aberllefenni Slate Quarry using sustainable fuel and materials. Every sheet of paper is made from recycled materials, including sheep dung, waste paper and discarded rags, using processes designed to affect the natural environment as little as possible. […] Katie 16, from Tal-y-Bont, Conwy, was appointed to help spread the word on how Wales can reduce its carbon footprint and is urging other North Wales businesses to follow Creative Paper Wales’ example and adopt innovative approaches to the design and manufacture of products and the delivery of services.

Lord Christopher Monckton: 'Companies could be sued over climate change' Excerpt: The alarmist faction knows that, if it were to bring a case against a corporation whose executives were not minded merely to believe in the extremist presentation of "global warming" just because it is temporarily in fashion, they would lose. The case of Dimmock v. Secretaries of State for Education and for the Environment in the UK in 2007 was a very clear warning. The UK Government threw all of the resources of the taxpayer and of the Meteorological Office at the case, attempting to defend Al Gore's sci-fi comedy horror movie against the plaintiff's allegation that it was serially and seriously inaccurate. The Government failed and was humiliated. The judge, having heard both sides, said bluntly of Al Gore, and particularly of his unscientific allegation that sea level was about to rise by 20 feet, that "the Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view". A few more judgments like that and the "global warming" fantasy would rapidly collapse. End of scare.

OOPS, We Forgot Siberia! (M4GW) - Weather Stations in Coldest parts No Longer Reporting

Excerpt: The thing that these skewed chart never take into account is that when the Soviet Union fell in 1990 the number of reporting weather stations went form a high of 15,000 in 1970 to 5,000 in 2000. This takes some of the coldest places on the planet out of the equation like Siberia. # #

why I could never vote for a democrat (if I was American)

2008-10-23T09:14:00.003-05:00

this post I just blatantly stole from the always talented and supremely sharp brother Bob Parks. It's long, and to some it may seem boring. But this is the history of the Democrats and race both at a federal level and state level. This is not to say I would always vote Republican as I have disagreed with more than a few lately but the party of the white man ain't party even if they changed their signage.

Imagine what the next two weeks would be like if Democrats had to explain why they say they "are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws" while having to explain why they terrorized and oppressed blacks, voted against most of the civil rights laws, and lied about it for decades…?

October 13, 1858
During Lincoln-Douglas debates, U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) states: “I do not regard the Negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever”; Douglas became Democratic Party’s 1860 presidential nominee

April 16, 1862
President Lincoln signs bill abolishing slavery in District of Columbia; in Congress, 99% of Republicans vote yes, 83% of Democrats vote no

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

July 17, 1862
Over unanimous Democrat opposition, Republican Congress passes Confiscation Act stating that slaves of the Confederacy “shall be forever free”

January 31, 1865
13th Amendment banning slavery passed by U.S. House with unanimous Republican support, intense Democrat opposition

April 8, 1865
13th Amendment banning slavery passed by U.S. Senate with 100% Republican support, 63% Democrat opposition

November 22, 1865
Republicans denounce Democrat legislature of Mississippi for enacting “black codes,” which institutionalized racial discrimination

February 5, 1866
U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA) introduces legislation, successfully opposed by Democrat President Andrew Johnson, to implement “40 acres and a mule” relief by distributing land to former slaves

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

April 9, 1866
Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Johnson’s veto; Civil Rights Act of 1866, conferring rights of citizenship on African-Americans, becomes law

May 10, 1866
U.S. House passes Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the laws to all citizens; 100% of Democrats vote no

June 8, 1866
U.S. Senate passes Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the law to all citizens; 94% of Republicans vote yes and 100% of Democrats vote no

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

January 8, 1867
Republicans override Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of law granting voting rights to African-Americans in D.C.

July 19, 1867
Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of legislation protecting voting rights of African-Americans

March 30, 1868
Republicans begin impeachment trial of Democrat President Andrew Johnson, who declared: “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government of white men”

September 3, 1868
25 African-Americans in Georgia legislature, all Republicans, expelled by Democrat majority; later reinstated by Republican Congress

September 12, 1868
Civil rights activist Tunis Campbell and all other African-Americans in Georgia Senate, every one a Republican, expelled by Democrat majority; would later be reinstated by Republican Congress

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

October 7, 1868
Republicans denounce Democratic Party’s national campaign theme: “This is a white man’s country: Let white men rule”

October 22, 1868
While campaigning for re-election, Republican U.S. Rep. James Hinds (R-AR) is assassinated by Democrat terrorists who organized as the Ku Klux Klan

December 10, 1869
Republican Gov. John Campbell of Wyoming Territory signs FIRST-in-nation law granting women right to vote and to hold public office

February 3, 1870
After passing House with 98% Republican support and 97% Democrat opposition, Republicans’ 15th Amendment is ratified, granting vote to all Americans regardless of race

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

May 31, 1870
President U.S. Grant signs Republicans’ Enforcement Act, providing stiff penalties for depriving any American’s civil rights

June 22, 1870
Republican Congress creates U.S. Department of Justice, to safeguard the civil rights of African-Americans against Democrats in the South

September 6, 1870
Women vote in Wyoming, in FIRST election after women’s suffrage signed into law by Republican Gov. John Campbell

February 28, 1871
Republican Congress passes Enforcement Act providing federal protection for African-American voters

April 20, 1871
Republican Congress enacts the Ku Klux Klan Act, outlawing Democratic Party-affiliated terrorist groups which oppressed African-Americans

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

October 10, 1871
Following warnings by Philadelphia Democrats against black voting, African-American Republican civil rights activist Octavius Catto murdered by Democratic Party operative; his military funeral was attended by thousands

October 18, 1871
After violence against Republicans in South Carolina, President Ulysses Grant deploys U.S. troops to combat Democrat terrorists who formed the Ku Klux Klan

November 18, 1872
Susan B. Anthony arrested for voting, after boasting to Elizabeth Cady Stanton that she voted for “the Republican ticket, straight”

January 17, 1874
Armed Democrats seize Texas state government, ending Republican efforts to racially integrate government

September 14, 1874
Democrat white supremacists seize Louisiana statehouse in attempt to overthrow racially-integrated administration of Republican Governor William Kellogg; 27 killed

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

March 1, 1875
Civil Rights Act of 1875, guaranteeing access to public accommodations without regard to race, signed by Republican President U.S. Grant; passed with 92% Republican support over 100% Democrat opposition

January 10, 1878
U.S. Senator Aaron Sargent (R-CA) introduces Susan B. Anthony amendment for women’s suffrage; Democrat-controlled Senate defeated it 4 times before election of Republican House and Senate guaranteed its approval in 1919. Republicans foil Democratic efforts to keep women in the kitchen, where they belong

February 8, 1894
Democrat Congress and Democrat President Grover Cleveland join to repeal Republicans’ Enforcement Act, which had enabled African-Americans to vote

January 15, 1901
Republican Booker T. Washington protests Alabama Democratic Party’s refusal to permit voting by African-Americans

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

May 29, 1902
Virginia Democrats implement new state constitution, condemned by Republicans as illegal, reducing African-American voter registration by 86%

February 12, 1909
On 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, African-American Republicans and women’s suffragists Ida Wells and Mary Terrell co-found the NAACP

May 21, 1919
Republican House passes constitutional amendment granting women the vote with 85% of Republicans in favor, but only 54% of Democrats; in Senate, 80% of Republicans would vote yes, but almost half of Democrats no

August 18, 1920
Republican-authored 19th Amendment, giving women the vote, becomes part of Constitution; 26 of the 36 states to ratify had Republican-controlled legislatures

January 26, 1922
House passes bill authored by U.S. Rep. Leonidas Dyer (R-MO) making lynching a federal crime; Senate Democrats block it with filibuster

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

June 2, 1924
Republican President Calvin Coolidge signs bill passed by Republican Congress granting U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans

October 3, 1924
Republicans denounce three-time Democrat presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan for defending the Ku Klux Klan at 1924 Democratic National Convention

June 12, 1929
First Lady Lou Hoover invites wife of U.S. Rep. Oscar De Priest (R-IL), an African-American, to tea at the White House, sparking protests by Democrats across the country

August 17, 1937
Republicans organize opposition to former Ku Klux Klansman andDemocrat U.S. Senator Hugo Black, appointed to U.S. Supreme Court by FDR; his Klan background was hidden until after confirmation

June 24, 1940
Republican Party platform calls for integration of the armed forces; for the balance of his terms in office, FDR refuses to order it

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

August 8, 1945
Republicans condemn Harry Truman's surprise use of the atomic bomb in Japan. The whining and criticism goes on for years. It begins two days after the Hiroshima bombing, when former Republican President Herbert Hoover writes to a friend that "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

September 30, 1953
Earl Warren, California’s three-term Republican Governor and 1948 Republican vice presidential nominee, nominated to be Chief Justice; wrote landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education

November 25, 1955
Eisenhower administration bans racial segregation of interstate bus travel

March 12, 1956
Ninety-seven Democrats in Congress condemn Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and pledge to continue segregation

June 5, 1956
Republican federal judge Frank Johnson rules in favor of Rosa Parks in decision striking down “blacks in the back of the bus” law

November 6, 1956
African-American civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy vote for Republican Dwight Eisenhower for President

September 9, 1957
President Dwight Eisenhower signs Republican Party’s 1957 Civil Rights Act

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

September 24, 1957
Sparking criticism from Democrats such as Senators John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, President Dwight Eisenhower deploys the 82nd Airborne Division to Little Rock, AR to force Democrat Governor Orval Faubus to integrate public schools

May 6, 1960
President Dwight Eisenhower signs Republicans’ Civil Rights Act of 1960, overcoming 125-hour, around-the-clock filibuster by 18 Senate Democrats

May 2, 1963
Republicans condemn Democrat sheriff of Birmingham, AL for arresting over 2,000 African-American schoolchildren marching for their civil rights

September 29, 1963
Gov. George Wallace (D-AL) defies order by U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson, appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, to integrate Tuskegee High School

June 9, 1964
Republicans condemn 14-hour filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act by U.S. Senator and former Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd (D-WV), who still serves in the Senate

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."

June 10, 1964
Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) criticizes Democrat filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act, calls on Democrats to stop opposing racial equality. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced and approved by a staggering majority of Republicans in the Senate. The Act was opposed by most southern Democrat senators, several of whom were proud segregationists—one of them being Al Gore Sr. Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson relied on Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader from Illinois, to get the Act passed.

August 4, 1965
Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) overcomes Democrat attempts to block 1965 Voting Rights Act; 94% of Senate Republicans vote for landmark civil right legislation, while 27% of Democrats oppose. Voting Rights Act of 1965, abolishing literacy tests and other measures devised by Democrats to prevent African-Americans from voting, signed into law; higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats vote in favor

February 19, 1976
President Gerald Ford formally rescinds President Franklin Roosevelt’s notorious Executive Order authorizing internment of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WWII

September 15, 1981
President Ronald Reagan establishes the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, to increase African-American participation in federal education programs

June 29, 1982
President Ronald Reagan signs 25-year extension of 1965 Voting Rights Act

August 10, 1988
President Ronald Reagan signs Civil Liberties Act of 1988, compensating Japanese-Americans for deprivation of civil rights and property during World War II internment ordered by FDR

November 21, 1991
President George H. W. Bush signs Civil Rights Act of 1991 to strengthen federal civil rights legislation

August 20, 1996
Bill authored by U.S. Rep. Susan Molinari(R-NY) to prohibit racial discrimination in adoptions, part of Republicans’ Contract With America, becomes law

And let's not forget the words of liberal icon Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood…

We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population….

So while we hear accusations of racism by partisan journalists, hints of a lack of pride by those admonishing blacks who won't vote Obama, calls of voter disenfranchisement from groups attempting to rig the vote and using poor blacks as cover to do so, remember which party did everything they could to keep blacks down and would never envision a black man heading their ticket 100 years ago.

The kneejerk response from Democrats always is that they've"grown". They kneejerk about the DIxiecrats becoming Republicans. However, that is also a lie.

Former Democrat Senator Bob Kerry maintained that all the Dixiecrats became Republicans shortly after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, another big lie. Richard Russell, Mendell Rivers, Clinton's mentor William Fulbright, Robert (former Klan recruiter) Byrd, Fritz (Confederate flag on the SC state house) Hollings and Al Gore Sr. remained Democrats till their dying day.

Most of the Dixiecrats did not become Republicans. They created the Dixiecrats and then, when the civil rights movement succeeded, they returned to the Democratic fold. It was not till much later, with a new, younger breed of Southerner and the thousands of Northerners moving into the South, that Republicans began to make gains.

I contend that until Democrats acknowledge their past and continue to deny blacks their true history in this country, racism will always be used as a wedge, causing economic turmoil and social alienation, while making the very blacks who recite this revised history look like fools.

Black Republicans

2008-09-10T08:57:00.001-05:00

This video reminds me much of my own fathers position on conservatism. It echoed so clearly I had to post this as this point of view has coloured my own worldview for many years.

Orson Scott Card's latest musings ... borrowed

2008-08-26T13:34:00.003-05:00

I visit Orson Scott Card's website monthly, a fan of his writing, and a fan of his work in the world of comic books, my personal favourite medium when I came across this. I was dumbfounded at how eloquently he stated a position I have long held, largely due to my Vincentian immigrant father. Having come from the old school in a 3rd world country like St Vincent, he instilled a set of values in me that instantly recognized the truth in Mr Card's writing. I have copied it here so people may look back in acknowledgement of his accuracy and prescient prose. Like him I have no fear of Obama, but rather the people behind the senator. Not being American my point of view is somewhat different, I think Obama needs to be elected to prove the vapid nature of these neo libs. Already the voices of grass roots conservatives and republicans are finding each other on the net. I think Barrack is the catalyst that will wake us up, to unite, and provide actual vision for the future. No utopian plan, just common sense approaches to policy and development. It is a shame that the sacrifice must first be made. That Mr Obama's ties to, and influence by far left neolibs, the modern day incarnation of socialists and communists alike, will bring about decline before we as conservatives of multi ethnic origins can unite under the banner of Conservatism to bring about true positive change. Maybe it is my youth, recently reaching 29, but I feel that like a drug user or alcholic our increasingly left of liberal north american culture must first hit bottom, rock bottom, from these same socialist politcies in order for the next shift to be ushered in. All that said here are Orson's words to clearly state what 10 pargraphs of my runon sentences can't as clearly and concisely.

By Orson Scott Card August 10, 2008

Nobody Was Listening

It's not enough for someone to tell you the truth -- you have to be willing to hear it.

I learned of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn when his books began appearing on bestseller lists and as Book-of-the-Month Club selections. I read Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and August 1914, and I knew I was reading the words of a hero -- a man unsparing in his vision, who spoke truth to power.

Then Solzhenitsyn was ejected from the Soviet Union. In a rare moment of cleverness, the Communist overlords whom Solzhenitsyn exposed and criticized realized that the best way to silence him was to send him to the West, where the American Left, which already dominated our cultural elite, would find him just as uncomfortable a fellow citizen as the Communists had found him.

They were right. Starting at the moment of his famous address at Harvard in 1978 (see http://snipurl.com/harvardspeech), Solzhenitsyn became, in effect, mute. Why? Because the cultural elite of the West is just as unhappy to hear itself criticized as the political elite of the Soviet Nomenklatura. How dare Solzehenitsyn fail to recognize that the American intellectual establishment was not in possession of Truth! How dare he point out that in our arrogance, we of the West were as blind to our own doom as the Communists?

Let me quote just one passage from Solzhenitsyn's speech: "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations.

"Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life."

He saw this in 1978. It is so clear today that he was right -- but how many of us saw it then?

Our intellectual elite today has only the courage of bullies. They can jump on individuals who dare to depart from their absurd and contradictory dogmas, calling them vicious names and doing all they can to silence them. But they haven't the courage of their own convictions.

They thrill at causes like saving Darfur, saving the desaparecidos of Argentina, saving just about everybody. The problem is that all this "saving" can only be done by the use of or the threat of America's overwhelming military force. All the "negotiations" they call for to solve such problems are absurd if there is no credible threat of force behind them.

Yet they cannot bear any actual use of force. A young intelligence officer I know well told me of his work in excavating the mass graves of Saddam's victims in Iraq. "That was when I knew that President Bush was right to invade this country," he told me. But the intellectual elite, which should have championed the liberation of Iraq from a genocidal dictator, still excoriates George W. Bush for having done what they keep calling for "someone" to do -- he put a stop to a vile dictatorship that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocents.

The intellectual elite is full of screamers and name-callers, accusers and slanderers. President Bush is accused of doing too much and doing too little. But with rare exceptions they don't volunteer for the military; when in office they don't support the military; they don't have the personal or institutional courage to recognize the real-world implications of their own moral poses.

In short, as Solzhenitsyn saw thirty years ago, America has decided to strut like an imperial power even as our supposed intellectual "finest" refuse to be the kind of people who deserve to lead.

The whole world would love to have our prosperity. But the whole world does not admire our moral emptiness, our hedonism, the stupidity with which we destroy our core institutions in the name of transient fads, our undependability, and the cowardice of those who vote for war and then undercut their own troops so they can appear "peace-loving" at election time.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died last week. For the last thirty years of his life he was almost unheard-of. He was dismissed by our media elite as a has-been, a grumpy old man who dared to criticize them as scathingly as he criticized the Communists. They declared him No Longer Interesting.

But he is as important as he ever was. He was mostly right about the Soviet Union; he was mostly right about us.

In the Soviet Union, he was seen as dangerous.

In America, he was rendered powerless by sheer inattention.

Just as Americans who speak the truth to the elitists who want to be our overlords are dismissed as cranks, fanatics, madmen. Supposed defenders of liberty want to pass laws that would destroy their opponents on talk radio. Supposed defenders of tolerance seek to silence any who would express their religious views as part of our political conversation. Unsupported assertions are taken as facts by people who claim to be intellectuals. The edicts of judges, unfounded in law, are worshiped, while they treat democratically enacted laws with contempt. They want to have their way without a breath of dissent; they refuse to admit that anyone who disagrees with them might know something useful.

And when someone says the kinds of things I am saying right now, their response is never reasoned argument. Instead they make personal attacks, call for boycotts, or seek to marginalize their opponents. I have seen it myself this week, as my attempts at a reasoned examination and defense of marriage has raised a firestorm among people who count themselves as intellectuals but give no evidence of any ratiocination beyond repeating the slogans of groupthink.

We are what Sozhenitsyn accused us of being. Unwilling to listen to and learn from him, we are acting out the tragicomedy of national decline. Is there still greatness in us? Just as the dying British Empire, led by the genuinely brave Winston Churchill, had one last paroxysm of greatness in World War II, we may be enacting our last spasm of courage under the leadership of George W. Bush.

In the election coming in November, we face the kind of choice that shapes the future of nations. On the one hand, we have an irascible Republican who is wrong as often as he is right, but at least has the courage to act according to his conscience often enough to earn the enmity of party hacks.

On the other hand, we have a candidate who has shown himself to be a complete captive of the intellectual elite, voting their party line in Congress, sneering in private at ordinary citizens that he does not even try to understand, wrapping himself in ersatz victimhood, changing his mind whenever it seems politically prudent while denying that he ever had any other view.

We are at the great political divide, and most Americans -- especially the young, who have been so grossly miseducated by the intellectual elite -- are getting their news from comedians who parrot the slanders of the elitists.

Solzhenitsyn saw what we seem determined to ignore: Power is fleeting, and so is freedom. The "world's only superpower" can only maintain the current world order if it acts with courage and vigor to stop the enemies of freedom and prosperity.

The great network of trade that creates the prosperity of our nation and the rest of the world rests entirely on the Pax Americana that is enforced by American arms and American honor.

The mad views of our intellectual elite are a luxury that is utterly dependent on our incredible prosperity and on the freedom enforced by the American military. The self-discipline and sacrifice of our soldiers are treated with disdain by the very people who seek to have the control of them.

Obama doesn't even have the courage to admit that he was wrong about Iraq, and that his long-touted plan to withdraw from Iraq immediately was insanely self-destructive all along. Now he adopts exactly the position that President Bush has always had, and pretends that he has not changed his mind.

And the media, supposedly the guardians of truth, let him get away with it. President Bush is constantly called a liar when they know he did not lie; Obama is never called a liar when the comparisons between past statements and present ones are there to be seen by anyone.

Thus the intellectual elite embraces lies and frauds, posing right along with the poseurs, not even interested in the statements of those who recognize the patterns in history that Solzhenitsyn saw.

We have decided, as a nation, to break ourselves, even to die, like children leaping off the roof with a superman cape tied around our necks, because we refuse to consider the consequences of our choices. We follow fashion and refuse to listen to sober warnings. We leap into vast social experiments with no evidence of their efficacy or necessity, while demanding the end to a war against relentless foes determined to destroy precisely those aspects of our culture that the intellectual elite most treasure.

The intellectual elite blithely accuses its foes of being fools, liars, madmen; but when someone correctly names their plans and dogmas as foolish, false, or insane, they are quick to call such criticism unfair and intolerant.

History is on Solzhentsyn's side. Nations that behave as large portions of our population are behaving do not long endure. Fools say that Obama, as president, would raise our stature in the world; they do not understand that our stature in the world depends entirely on the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, under the leadership of the courageous President who did what was right and necessary to uphold the freedom of the West.

If we elect a president who behaves like our intellectual elite, full of talk but afraid to take necessary action, slave to fashionable dogmas but incapable of questioning any of the dogmas of the Left, happy to let courts dictate against the will of the people, creating contempt for democracy, and unwilling to admit error even when the evidence of error is overwhelming, then we will deserve, as a people, the inevitable outcome.

I fear that the line we would cross by choosing the candidate of the intellectual elite may be one across which we may never return, try though we might. We would end up with lifetime judges eager to destroy fundamental institutions, a demoralized military incompetently led, and a national policy without principle or purpose.

Not because Obama himself embodies all these negatives, nor because McCain embodies all virtue, but because Obama would bring with him into office the cynical, reckless, cowardly, and willfully blind intellectual elite to which he owes his first and greatest allegiance ... and McCain would not.

Solzhenitsyn is dead. His messages did not die with him. But if it is not heeded, what difference does it make that some of us keep trying to issue the warning?

Democracy is the best form of government only when the people take responsibility for making wise, informed decisions with forethought about their consequences. Not that any form of government will be better; but when the people choose bad leaders and throw away good ones, the democracy will not last.

It can be argued that in America, democracy is already almost gone anyway. But what remains is worth defending to the last breath of possibility. Is this election that last breath?

I fear yes; I hope not. Meanwhile, too many Americans continue to think that empty slogans are a substitute for courage and honor.

Zo, rants on politricks

2008-05-07T09:06:00.003-05:00

Black & White on the Grey Matters (Jermiah Wright)

I had to post this up here, been listening to this guys stuff on My Space and had to share.

Outrageous, the Canadian Government is actually OK with this

2008-01-23T09:47:00.000-05:00

Filed In Triplicate

OFFICIAL INVESTIGATIVE HEARING REPORT
FORM AHRCC-1069(C)

Please enter all data legibly

CASE ID #: ____169953______

HEARING DATE / TIME: ____1/11/08_11:00 AM_____

LOCATION: ____AHRCC Hearing Room 8B, Calgary_______

PRESIDING CLERK: ___Shirlene McGovern_________

PLAINTIFF(S): ____Mohamed Elmasry, Syed Soharwardy___

REPRESENTING: __Canadians United To Kill the Infidel and Drive the Jews to the Sea_____

PLAINTIFF GENDER: _x__ Male ____ Female ___ Transgender ___ Hermaphrodite

PLAINTIFF AGE: __refused__

PLAINTIFF ETHNICITY:

___ White / West European ___ Black / African ___ Indigenous / Inuit / Pacific Islander
___ East Asian ___ South Asian _x__ Middle Eastern / Arab ___ South European / Swarthy / Bohunk
___ Jamaican ____ Mexican/Central American ___ South American ___ Antarctican
___ Croatian ___ Serb __ Serbo / Croat ___ East Central Albanian-Slavic __ Hutu __ Tutsi
___ French

PLAINTIFF RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION:

___ Christian (Catholic) ___ Christian (Protestant) ___ Christian (Eastern / Russian Orthodox)
___ Sunni Muslim ___ Shiite Muslim _x_ Wahabbist Muslim ___ Buddhist ___ Hindu
___ Atheist ___ Zorastrian ___ Confucian __ B'hai ___ Wiccan ___ Satanist ___ Scientologist

PLAINTIFF IMMIGRATION STATUS:

___ Native-born Canadian ___ Naturalized Citizen ___ In-Process ___ Work Visa
___ Student Visa ___ Travel Visa ___ Welfare Visa ___ Will get around to paperwork eventually

PLAINTIFF SEXUAL ORIENTATION (check all that apply):

_x__ Heteronormative ___ Gay ___ Lesbian ___ Bi-Curious
___ B&D (Dominant/Master) ____ B&D (Submissive / Slave)
___ Cross-dressing ___ "Water Sports" _x__ Animal Play ___ Curling Fetish
___ Cleveland Steamer / Dirty Sanchez ___ French

Note: The Alberta Human Rights Commission offers all employees $200 gift card bounty bucks for all newly discovered oppressed ethnic, religious, or sexual classifications! Alert your supervisor to see if you are eligible for this exciting bonus program!

DEFENDANT(S): ______Ezra Levant, Publisher, Western Standard magazine________

IF NOT WHITE MALE, PLEASE EXPLAIN ____________________________________

NATURE OF COMPLAINT:

Plaintiffs accuse defendant of republishing Danish caractures charictures cracatuires cartoons of Mohamed, subjecting the Prophet and Islam to ridicule and in violation of AHRCC Form 18-55-d, Guidelines on Canadian Blasphemy Reduction Act of 2006.

DAMAGES SOUGHT:

Retraction, formal public apology, two goats, $4,500, conversion to Islam, beheading

CLERK OBSERVATIONS (use extra sheets if necessary)

Defendant acknowledges awareness of charges against him. He is represented by counsel but insists on opening statement and filming the hearing. Despite warnings and brochure on self incrimination he proceeds.

Defendant states he is attending under protest and would do crime again. States belief that AHRCC has no authority to prosecute. Under eye contact, defendent's counsel shrugs. Defendant says hearing in violation of "separation Mosque and State" (note: potential violation of Section 118-c(a) AHRCC Innuendo Act?). Claims "original intent" of Commission not to enforce Islamic law. Defendant apparently unfamiliar with AHRCC interoffice memo HVM-d11, "Koranic Compliance Guidelines for Non-Muslim Associates."

Calls Commission "dump for junk," cites previous cases. Calls AHRCC "joke," "pseudo court," "Judge Judy." Cites critical statements of Commission founder, even though he doesn't work here any more. Says authority unlawful, unconstitutional. Counsel seems oblivious to client's contempt, is seen reading "Highlights for Children" magazine from waiting room.

Starts yapping about British common law, Magna Carta, Canadian law, UN Declaration of Human Rights, other documents of white male privilege, etc. Subject seems agitated. Stuff about conscience, religion, expression blah blah blah. Seems to be stonewalling because none of this has any reference in my copy of Publication AHRCC-0503(k), "Hearing Guidelines for Human Rights Clerks." Long diatribe about Sharia Law, radical Islam.

Sorry, I crossed my arms and kind of spaced out there for a second to look at that nice big landscape painting in the hearing room. Does the Commission gift shop have prints? Anyhoo, defendant still seems agitated, and offers thanks to (probably also racist) magazine donors. What is this, the racist Oscars?

QUESTION PHASE

Pursuant to Section 3:"What was your intent in publishing the offensive materials?"

Defendant tries the old interrogation ju-jitsu, asks "why is that relevant?" I tell him "because of Section 3, part B." ZING! Take that, Mr. Clever Racist. He tries it again; "are you saying one answer is wrong and another is right?" Feel like I'm in an Abbott and Costello routine. "If I said hypothetically that it was to instill contempt would that be contrary to law?" I advise him I will check on the AHRCC website updates. Says intention was to demonstrate he has right to publish whatever the hell he wants. Must check to see how this is classified in AHRCC intent classification guidelines. Now starts saying AHRCC/government has no right to question what is in his mind. Probable violation of AHRCC-0944(d) "How To Read Defendant Mind."

Bingo! Have defendant dead to rights. Admits he published material to "take advantage of maximum freedom," "without reservation," "for the most unreasonable reason." Admits guilt in offending plaintiffs. Looks like another AHRCC Interrogator of the Month Award and $500 bonus for "McGovern of the Mounted"! LOL

More agitation from Defendant. Apparently knows hearing is not going well. Calls me "thug" (AHRCC-0773, Prohibited Phrases Glossary). Claims plaintiffs would have me in burqqa. is this a subtle sexist harassment suggestion that defendant would rather see me in flimsy peek-a-boo negligee? Says he is not seeking to be exonerated. Wish all cases were this easy, I'd be happier at bonus time! LOL

Defendant says some snippy remark about "irony of 'Human Rights' Commission." I tell him he is entitled to his opinion. He says "I wish that were a fact," all smart-alecky. I hand him AHRCC Pamphlet 7401, "Your Canadian Rights To Keep Your Opinion To Yourself."

I explain to defendant plaintiffs' concern that cartoons will incite violence against Muslims. Defendant says only violence against Alberta house of worship was his synagogue, said firebombed by Muslim man. Oh boy, here we go we go with the tired old firebombed synagogue Jew sob story. Defendant seems to think it funny that firebomber ignited himself. Classic Zionist blame-the-victim-ism, as noted in AHRCC Bulletin 19332-h, "Know Your Typical Zionist Oppression Techniques."

More objectification, more blame-the-victimism. Defendant calls plaintiffs' home countries "hellholes," blames violence on lack of free speech. Clear cut violation of AHRCC Rule Directive AA45-33, "Disparagement of Non-Western Cultural Norms." Says that even if assigned apology he will not mean it. Now says apology is cruel and unusual punishment, and will "rot in hell" before he says apology. Geez, make up your mind. But if he admits he won't say what he means, how do I know he meant that? My head hurts. I'm going to look at the nice painting again.

Pursuant to Informational Directive CGR-4419, I explain to defendant how the Commission process is designed to be fair and that cases can be decided in either direction. Defendant immediately becomes argumentative, claiming that is not the case. Pursuant to Informational Directive CGR-4419(b), I explain to him that just because they have not been decided in either direction in the past, it doesn't mean that can't hypothetically be decided that way in the future. This only seems to agitate him further, and continues to express contempt. However this case is decided, he better be ready for some serious punishment.

I can't believe this is still going on, I'm late for lunch and defendant is toast, but keeps yapping. Starts asking a bunch of questions like "Who should determine what speech is reasonable?" "Who should determine what is offensive?" Umm, heh-looo Ezra -- what am I, a potted plant? I didn't spend 2 years getting my M.A. in Hate Speech Detection at McGill for this kind of treatment.

Now he says he "hopes to be convicted and sentenced." Great. Thanks for not telling me that up front Ezra. Otherwise I couldn't spend the whole morning listening to your stupid long-winded yapping about freedom of speech and 800 years and the Magna Carta and thoughtcrimes blah blah blah, with nothing to distract me except the painting and doodling on my legal pad, and that stupid green pop can of yours that just left a big ring on my new desk.

DEFENDANT ATTITUDE ASSESSMENT TEST (DAAT)

Cooperativeness__
Back-Sass ________
Contrition _________
Cheerfulness______
Overall Attitude___

MITIGATING FACTORS TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION

Magazine out of business. I don't think his counsel was very competent, as he allowed defendant to say all that hurtful stuff

RECOMMENDED ACTION

Retraction and apology seems reasonable. May help him with anger issues. Split the difference on economic reward to $2250, one goat. 100 hours of mandatory Islamic counseling, after which beheading option will be reconsidered.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I'm late for lunch.

THIS SPACE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK

H/T to IowaHawk

Ok this is what passes for a Human Rights Council and this is the language they use. I'm upset. I do not understand how this ocuntry came to this. True my dad only came here in 72 so we are relative newcomers to this country, but damn, this is depressive.

Fun, a laugh, and more is had

2007-12-28T13:45:00.000-05:00

Just some foolishness. I was on the University of Chicago Law site recently, and got into some exchanges with some commenters. I came of as smug, I think, but I wanted to debate the issues Americans have with Mormons in an intellectual and non judgemental fashion. this was impossible given the commentors on this site. I posted it up here so you can see what went down.

I am very late to this one, and I don't know enough about your founding fathers to offer an expert opinion on much here. Upon reading all of the comments here, I find bigotry rampant in here. Is it not possible to have an elevated discussion without reveling in ones own biases? It seems to me to be the mark of a poor argument, and a shallow mind. If you have a good point to argue, then go at it with examples and evidence. Straw man arguments and passionate personal testimony are for youtube, not this venue. Don't cheapen this blog.

Posted by: LeGioNofZioN | December 18, 2007 at 09:05 AM

Bigotry is a tough word. I think this venue is for passion and hyperbole and off the cuff remarks. It is where I can say everything I wanted to say to uptight religious nuts in class that I couldn't. The classroom and the courtroom are for reasoned and measured argument. This is a blog for f's sake you know? Where else can I make fun of Mitt Romney for his religious undergarmnets and his ass-backward "beliefs." Seriously, seer stones? Native Americans as a tribe of Israel? Golden tablets? Faces in hats? The inability to translate the same damn stones twice in the same way!? Coming up with a divine explanation of that too!? (Perhaps my favorite aspect of the insanity that is Mormonism)

Mitt's religion has a special place in my U of C Physics educated heart because it took already completely nonsensical beliefs and simply altered and added to them new layers of nonsense! I love it because it is even more absurd that the ghost stories on which it was based.

This is a blog! A blog. A blog. No more, no less. There are places for reasoend and measured argument, whole institutions in fact, and blogs aren't (and shouldn't) be one of them.

P.S., it isn't a "bias" to reject organized religion and irrational authority outright as a scientist. It is the effective use of reason. And if Mitt wants to scare the uneducated religious masses with stories of the secular boogiman, he and all religions are fair game.

Posted by: LAK | December 18, 2007 at 01:56 PM

No sir, that is bigotry and and outright lack of respect for others religious beliefs. I for one am highly skeptical of Mormon claims, but it is not my faith, and I respect the right for those that follow the Mormon path wihtout idiots like us constantly criticizing them. In Canada we have no protection of speech like you Americans do. Right now our Human Rights Council in in the process of prosecuting a magazine for printing an excerpt of a book critical of Islam, and simultaneously an individual for noting on a blog post that the investigator in question was oppposed to free speech. Be careful what you say and where you say it, were it on a Canadian blog you could be prosecuted just like the man I spoke of. You have freedom in your own country but not outside of it. You are an intelligent person LAK and I do like many of the points you bring up, but your bigotry betrays you and mutes the veracity of your points. Try a little less Keith Olbermann and a little more Walter Cronkite, it makes for stronger healthier debate.

Posted by: LeGioNofZioN | December 19, 2007 at 08:06 AM

You're right.I have outright disrespect for others' or any religious beliefs. I'm a University of Chicago Student. Damn right I think anyone who believes in a thesitic God who meddles in human affairs is some kind of borderline insane person.

People need to wake up get some courage and realize that the institutional religious structures that came before us infect us and need to be cast out.

I'm a secular humanist. I beleive in love, in humility, in almost all judeo-christian values, and a lot of eastern religious values as well. Do I need some institutionalized storyboard to come to these beliefs? No.

Take a look around. Religion is ruining the world. F religion. It is for small minded idiots.

Seer stones? Faces in hats? Not being able to translate the same tablets twice with the same seer stone and then saying God wanted it that way?

How could you resepct anyone who believes that? How? And why, pray tell, would I?

Cowards. Profound, deep cowards. The lot of 'em.

You think God impregnated a human to ultimately sacrifice him to save the souls of humans that have original sin thanks to the first woman? For god's sake man.

That these people are infecting the University of Chicago and our government should be of great concern, as they are the ones who believe in profiting and killing in the name of their God.

Posted by: LAK | December 20, 2007 at 11:59 AM

Ok I get it, we differ on respecting religious freedom of practice. Fair enough, so you wish to unload your pent up frustration on believers in this forum. It seems to me that it's not the religious people who are the cowards in this matter. If you have such animosity for believers, why don't you sit down and engage some in real life, not on some anonymous blog post?
If you truly think religion ruins the world, then why not move elsewhere, to a place where very few believe. I suggest Canada. You may have to give up some of your valued freedoms in the process, but most people up here are fairly irreligious. As long as you live in a country where religious practice is protected you will never be rid of them. Can you live your whole life knowing that ?Canada does not engage in widespread protection of religious practise. you can be free of people wishing you merry Christmas, if a mormon or jehovah's witness comes to your door you can sue them through our human rights commission. We never even got involved in Iraq, we should be your heroes.
One day you will learn the error of your thinking on this matter, and that will happen sooner if you actually leave the protection of your home country and see what the real world is like, away from colleges and unversities, when you actually have to deal with people on an individual basis. I may share some of your skepticism but you lack the practical experience to temper it with rational thought and respect for others. That may be an explicitly Canadian concept but I'm sure even an American can grow up and see the world as being far more complex than your personal vantage point allows. I highly suggest travel, to Europe, Africa, East Asia and the West Indies. It will benefit you greatly in your personal development. cheers and best wishes on your advancement LAK.

Posted by: LegioNofZioN | December 21, 2007 at 09:00 AM

What makes you think I don't engage religious people in real life? I do and always have. I also treat them with respect in person, to be certain. I've travelled far and wide. Don't be such a presumtuous self-satisfied smug F, you know? Blog anonymity has its uses and advantages. In fact my closest intellectual companion as a philosophy major was a Christian. I'm not sure why you would be so presumptuous as to extrapolate on my needs and who I am based on blog postings. Bizzare. Perhaps you should direct your judgements inward before you go off thinking you know someone by hwo they write on a blog? A bit self-satisfied are we?

Move to Canada? Are you kidding? I hope so. Where should I move? Toronto? I live in a major U.S. city where the secular educated upper middle class is free from Jesus signs and those who would tell women what they can and can't do with their own f-ing bodies, for the most part. I live in a city where people live and work together despite their diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, brought together by that great secular uniter: wealth. It's fantastic. I work and party with (secular) muslims and jews and catholics and protestants, even a few mormons.

That's more than can be said for Mitt Romney's church that was outright and explicitly racist until what, 25 years ago? And I'm supposed to respect him when he says secularism is some kind of evil? No, we secular atheists have every right to this country as much as he does. Probably moreso insofar as our beleiefs are based on reason - you know that universal human capability that brought you such progress as antibiotics, indoor plumbing and the electric guitar. The Church? They liked to kill scientists for suggesting the Earth was not at the center of the solar system.

I'll take my Coasts and Chicago for my secularism thanks. I don't need to freeze my arse off just to get away from religious nuts. Nor do I need to be told how to talk and when, espcially on some blog, and especially by some smug Canadian. For F's sake.

"jesus don't want me for a sunbeam"

Posted by: LAK | December 21, 2007 at 12:30 PM

LeGioNofZioN: Your idea of bigotry is anyone who disagrees with you too strongly on matters that are important to you. The whole idea of freedom of religion or non-religion and of speech is to permit argument, ridicule, derision and all forms of attack, except ad hominem sputterings, against one's ideas or belief systems to see whether, in the broad commerce of ideas, they are worthy or not. Face it, Mormonism fails and fails miserably under this test, as do too many belief systems build on myth and wild fantasy, especially those which contravene demonstrable fact, well established history or accepted archeology, e.g., the idea that the Garden of Eden is in northwest Missouri is absolutely laughable, but many, if not most Mormons believe it.

Whether you like this situation is wholly irrelevant. It is the likes of you who seek to muzzle many of the rest of us by engaging in what? . . . ad hominum attack, i.e., accusations of bigotry against those who point out the sheer folly of the beliefs you hold dear or wish to protect from scrutiny; just as too many Jews accuse those who disagree with their ideas, of being anti-Semitic.

So what happens when ideas and beliefs fail in the market place of thought? Believers or their proponents retrench, talk only to like minded people and learn to preach to the choir. When that happens, it is a mark of an idea’s or belief’s general failure, whether it is recognized or not. Religious belief systems’ central hallmark is just such a failure. One need only look at the diversity of beliefs addressing the same points of fact across Christian and other belief system denominations to recognize the absurdity of it all as a matter of reason. “Facts” based only on beliefs are generally just so much nonsense.

Posted by: Kimball Corsonk | December 22, 2007 at 11:04 AM

I am self satisfied in this, because all I was calling for was reasoned discussion and not hyperbole. LAK all of your assertions ring hollow given the content of your discussion. If you treat religious people who have arguably foolish belief systems in real life with respect why would you reduce your point of view on here to simple accusations, when none of them are present to even discuss with. It's just a bash fest with no reason brought forth at all. Maybe growing up in Toronto has put me at an advantage you lack, I was born into multiculturalism, i did not come by it as a youth or student. Growing up around Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Zoarastrians, and Buddhists I am sensitive to bashing of any faith without reasoned discussion. something your diatribes lack. To assert that secular humanists deserve your country moreso than the faithful is evidence alone of your prejudice. I think we all deserve equal footing with none more priveledged than the next. that is equality, not quantifying the foolish nature of beliefs and putting believers lower on the equality scale as a result. And for the record Toronto's weather is fairly benign, akin to Manhattan's. LAK you seem like you have a spark of high intelligence, I wait for the day you have the wisdom to match it.

Kimball, I think you missed a lot of what I said earlier. It is not bigotry to disagree with me, but LAK's earlier ramblings smacked of ad hominen attacks with very little reasoned argument peppered to create the appearance of reason, albeit in a facile manner. I too am highly skeptical of the Mormon faith, but would prefer to discuss it on its merits and failings in a reasoned manner than to simply attack without any balance or someone knowledgeable enough to defend it (I am not attempting to be its defender, just searching for some enlightened argument). In the grander scheme of things, as I noted earlier, our laws and point of view on bigotry seems to be different from what many americans think. no wonder given your value of free speech, something that is not protected outside your country. What I pointed out was that LAK's writings would most definitely be considered bigotry in my country. Were he writing on a Canadian site or blog he could be brought before our Human Rights Council and charged accordingly. i was urging reason as your laws protect speech within your country but not outside of it. Laws and the internet are changing daily and outside of America you are not protected in the manner you are inside your safety zone.

now to bring some of my points to the table about Mormons. I have a little bit of experience with them as my sister fell for their sales pitch and briefly joined them a few years ago. What served as the catalyst for her leaving was a class they taught in Barrie (a suburb 1 hour north of toronto where she lived at the time). this class was how to be a good wife, and while this may work for some people, it seems archaic compared with modern concepts like feminism and individual self determination. they taught that a wife should not contradict her husband ever, unless the health and welfare of the family is threatened. they also advised her to believe her husband to be right in most matters due simply to the fact that he is a man. Now upon hearing this, my little sister could not in good conscience continue to attend the church. If young girls are taught this kind of foolishness, then what kind of women will they grow up to be ?

Now that is a reasoned and detailed account of legitimate criticisms of the Mormons, based on what they teach and not the obvious implausibility of their origin story. On balance, Mormons do have the highest concentration of intact nuclear families, at least in your country. So along with the obvious negatives, there are some positives.

Posted by: LegioNofZioN | December 24, 2007 at 08:26 AM

You're a family bigot. You can't just concluded that having intact nuclear families is a positive without reasoned measured argument! You're better that that. Bigot. Actually those intact Mormon families contain the highest concentration of clinically depressed people in the country. Look it up. So much for that naked conclusion. Hypocrisy. You certainly don't need fear of god to figure out how to sacrifice for family and love. Well, idiots apparently do, and then they hate themselves for their false consciousness and inauthenticity. (Then again, severe depression is a great recruiter for religious ranks and irrational beliefs, so maybe the Mormon elders aren't as dumb as I think)

LegioNoofZion,

You're exactly what is wrong with the left. It is your fault GWB has been so successful and idiots vote for him. You are the reason the right has gained popularity after FDR. A living example of how the left has been rendered a bunch of useless wusses for fear of disrespecting those who are WRONG. There is right and wrong in the world. Tolerance has its limits. Cultural relativism is a joke. The enlightenment is as real as that internal combustion engine you use to cart your frigid Canadian ass around in the snow. People who believe in dogma and doctrine are not on the same ethical or intellectual footing as those of us who reject dogma and other irrational sources of authority and use our brains to conclude how best to think and act.

Why would I respect someone's beliefs when I know they are false, and harming them and the rest of the world? And what isn't substantive about pointing out that Smith had pages of his translation taken away from him (by his skeptical wife, right?), and couldn't retranslate the same tablets with the same seer stone in the same way, and then claimed an angel or God told him not to? That is patently nuts. Somebody's got to point it out. Funny even. And a substantive fact by which to conclude Mormons are COMPLETE IDIOTS. And then I pepper it with hyperbole like "Insanity!" It is. As is the story of Jesus, and Buddah, and Mohammed. Yea for blogs. A wonderful place to vent in a world where I have to smile politely at my co-worker who asks me if Jesus has saved me.

Religion is a cultural disease. An infection. In all its forms. That's not to say certain ethics, morals and spiritual practices they uphold are wrong, love and humility and self examination and ritual and family and selflessness are all wonderful things that exist and can flourish outside the confines of religious dogma. Time to start helping people here and around the world give up their desperate clutch on illusions, or else I fear our days are really numbered, by religion itself (Should I respect Osama's religion by your calculus too? Do tell me where you draw the line my pantie-waisted Canadian friend.)

And welcome to the U of C. Home of some of the finest rational atheist minds in the country. Deal with it. I'll take the U of C physics department over Jesus anyday. I worship at the alter of Michelson, Morely and Fermi. U of C pride.

Posted by: LAK | December 24, 2007 at 12:00 PM

LegioNofZioN : Reasoned discussion and supposed "facts" based on faith are antithetical. There can be no reseasoned discussion of the virgin birth, the purge of oringinal sin (wash away vs the immaculate conception of Mary), the resurrection, walking on water, the assention, etc, etc, or LAK´s points regarding absurd Mormon beliefs based on faith. Reason goes out the window when faith raises its ugly head on matters of fact. I have faith the moon is made of cheese. If you tell me that ain´t so, do you show disrespect to my religious beliefs? I think so, under your view of things. How much faith-based nonsense are we to put up with? How can we remain respectful in the face of such nonsense? Reason and faith based beliefs are and have been at war for ages. One cannot claim both and remain reasonable. To do so is itself unreasonable.

Posted by: Kimball Corson | December 24, 2007 at 07:06 PM

LegioNofZioN: And you did not hear me. Freedom of religion and speech allow one to make a horses ass out of himself, but those doctrines also require that he suffer the consequential responses. The market place is that of ideas. The only acceptable currency is reasonable discourse. Faith based anything fails almost by definition if it is not based on demonstrable fact or highly reasonable probabilities. To not be so based largely leaves the oprtion of being faith based. Ergo, the problem.

Posted by: Kimball Corson | December 24, 2007 at 07:12 PM

And dear LAK, whose head is in the right place, does bait the religion bear, eliciting responses that prove our points. Religion just cannot take good reasonable discourse and scrutiny, no matter how it is dished out. Faith in the ethers and flights of fancy are required and they are precisely what we rail against. That we elect leaders who have such faith and flights and that they then rely on them to lead us is an absolute travesty of our own making and another reason democracy does not work well. It presumes a sensible electorate and no country seems to have one these days. Here in Nicaragua, Ortega is back in power and the Congress and Supreme Court are shut down as a result of his policies, with no budget passed for the country and millions in foreign aid about to be lost. It is a bitch having to rely on a thousand point of light, driven by dim wits.

Posted by: Kimball Corson | December 25, 2007 at 07:20 AM

And dear LAK, whose head is in the right place, does bait the religion bear, eliciting responses that prove our points. Religion just cannot take good reasonable discourse and scrutiny, no matter how it is dished out. Faith in the ethers and flights of fancy are required and they are precisely what we rail against. That we elect leaders who have such faith and flights and that they then rely on them to lead us is an absolute travesty of our own making and another reason democracy does not work well. It presumes a sensible electorate and no country seems to have one these days. Here in Nicaragua, Ortega is back in power and the Congress and Supreme Court are shut down as a result of his policies, with no budget passed for the country and millions in foreign aid about to be lost. It is a bitch having to rely on a thousand point of light, driven by dim wits.

Posted by: Kimball Corson | December 25, 2007 at 07:23 AM

Pardon the double post. The fist comment did not post and then did later after the second one was launched.

Posted by: Kimball Corson | December 26, 2007 at 07:43 AM

I seem to have struck a nerve. Well that need not be a negative thing. "God could be an invention. Then again, absence of God could be an invention -- by scared and threatened people who are too weak to follow His laws and are terrified of judgement." The most compelling case for disbelief seems to be heavily pregnant with the idea of escaping judgement, just read Darwin's theory of evolution. Be careful with the notion that knowledge means wisdom. There are fools who do not believe, geniuses who do, and vice versa. It signifies nothing. It was popular among rationalist thinkers in the late 19th century to make the assumption that advances in textual analysis, along with archaeological discovery and scientific breakthrough would disprove the Bible. Still waiting. Virtually every time we find out something new in these fields it supports rather than challenges Scripture. From evidence of the flood of Noah's time to Roman writings about Jesus and his fantastic claims coming from disbelievers. Yes I believe, and yes I do not require insurmountable proof to do so. I recently read a wonderful article that put succinctly a point of view that I share, "...If God were good, then He would make Himself obvious. Not really. God makes himself just sufficiently evident to allow us freedom. If He were easy to find, we'd all believe and thus have no real choice. If He were almost impossible to find, it would be cruel and unfair. He chooses the middle path. He's there if we seek to look, but not so if we don't care. He's the great lover, not the satanic rapist. He desperately wants us to love Him and return to Him, but we have to make that decision ourselves" without a doubt none of this will win either of you over. I do not expect it to. I spent enough time trying to call for balance in the discussion of Mormons to find no one here feels balance over rhetoric to be advantagous. Fine enough. I needed to assert my belief into this discussion since neither of you are here to discuss or debate Mormons, but instead to uphold your righteous crusade against the foolish believers that make your world such a horrible place to live. Horrible enough to talk about it, but not terrible enough for you to actually do something about it. LAK from your writing alone, such venom, such hatred, you must have been mistreated by someone strong in belief. I hope you can find some internal peace in time. Kimball I don't really disagree with anything you have said. though your arguments on faith or more appropriately those who believe is straw man at its worst. If someone has faith in something you can't accept because it is nonsensical or outright rubbish, then does that make the person less of a worthwhile being ? Are they less deserving of your respect because of the contempt you have of their faith ? I disagree with Mormons like both of you, but I can engage one without disrespecting him or her at the same time. I know LAK lacks the subtlety or nuance to engage in purely reasoned discussion about what we find negative in the faith, but I think we could hash out a good list of issues without poking holes in their origin. I want to engage based on what they teach, but I concede their origin story is something I have a hard time avoiding myself. I find myself playing devil's advocate just to try and make this a conversation and not a hate rant. I guess this thread digressed and we couldn't hold it together.

Posted by: LegioNofZioN | December 27, 2007 at 09:46 AM

Does Traditional "Christianity" Follow Christ, OR Anti-Christ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2feGxxdTtRY

Posted by: ecothearcy | December 27, 2007 at 03:32 PM

"It was popular among rationalist thinkers in the late 19th century to make the assumption that advances in textual analysis, along with archaeological discovery and scientific breakthrough would disprove the Bible. Still waiting."

"Virtually every time we find out something new in these fields it supports rather than challenges Scripture. From evidence of the flood of Noah's time to Roman writings about Jesus and his fantastic claims coming from disbelievers. "

WHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA???????????????????????????????????????????

I should have know you were an ignorant creationist. Yes, the world is 6000 years old. Carbon dating doesn't work. That dinosaurs and mammal fossils are never found together, let alone human fossils, is a function of what? The flood?

OMG I can't believe I wasted my time with someone who believes the world is 6000 years old. F Me.

Legion, where do you draw the line with your wishy washy reasoning? Am I to respect Osama's religion that calls for my death and killing of innocents in the name of God?

Un f-ing real.

Posted by: LAK | December 27, 2007 at 06:56 PM

"absence of God could be an invention -- by scared and threatened people who are too weak to follow His laws and are terrified of judgement."

Perhaps the dumbest thing I have read in years. I pray to your God that you didn;t attend the University of Chicago. If you did, I ain't giving them another cent.

No, I didn't get wronged by someone of [irrational] "faith," all Ihave to do is turn in my TV to see how wrong organized religion is and how stupid those are who believe in it.

I'm not scared of God's judgment, I'm scared of the judgement of the invisible hairless purple cats that live in trees that rule the Universe.

COWARD.

Posted by: LAK | December 27, 2007 at 07:02 PM

ahhh yet another nerve struck. Well while we are off topic at least it is engaging. LAK you have stated much that I never claimed. Carbon dating does work, it may not be the most exact science(as in specific year other than year range) but it gives us a damn good idea. the reason dinosaur and human fossil's aren't found together is because we never existed in tandem. Respecting religion, which I never asked, and respected a person's choice of faith are two differing things. I respect their right to practise their faith free from our objections so long as they do not advocate hurting people, violence is where I draw the line. That is a pretty common sense line to draw I don't think there is much contention in that. Not to say they cannot be criticized, but criticisms can be constructive or hurtful. I prefer to foster discussion as opposed to wallowing in my own ignorance. And here we get to your real problems LAK. Damn, psyche students would love to have you on a couch for a while. Your anger at religion is over what you have seen on your TV, now for a rational person wouldn't you agree that given the media's penchant for focusing on what they want and not what actually happened that maybe you haven't got the entire picture here ? Playing with half a puzzle still gives you at best only half the image. You have yet to construct a coherant argument I can at least give you some credit for, after all I am Canadian. I like giving people the benefit of the doubt, and I know you have it in you from previous discussions. I baited you and I am waiting for a worthwhile response. Forget the purple hairless cats, they are more forgiving if you leave them alone, focus instead on only what I have said. why not take this chance to open up and learn something about yourself, if you are comfortable to talk about it of course. I'll star it off. How old were you when you first started feeling animosity towards faith in general or religious people in specific ?

Posted by: LegioNofZioN | December 28, 2007 at 08:54 AM

I have no use for you. Sorry Bud. This is my last exchange with someone like you. You have *nothing* to offer me.

You can end like a good Christian by explaining to me why I should respect Osama Bin Laden's "faith" which warrants killing innocent people in the name of his God. And If I shouldn't respect his faith, what criteria am I supposed to use in rejecting it? The tenants of your faith? If so why your faith over his? Or ethics? And if its ethics, why should his faith be the only one subject to ethical scrutiny and reason? Or do you walk on water and know people who live more that 120 years?

Oh, and if you're not some creationist, do feel free to clarify what you meant by your hysterical quotes above too.

You didn't go to the U of C did you? Did you go to college at all?

Good luck. You'll need it.

"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."
-Einstein

Posted by: LAK | December 28, 2007 at 09:57 AM

no doubt you have no use for me, I'm a bit too challenging. To clarify I did not attend U of C. I came to this site by way of a high school buddy who does. You can draw your own line, as you already have, as to when to respect and when to show distain or contempt for and I draw mine as I previously stated when violence becomes part and parcel. That includes my own religion thank you. I am not telling you how to make a judgement, just that yours is hastily acheived and not as perfect as you may think. If you truly dwelt on this you will find your own answer, but from your comments I doubt you will spend much time in the forseeable future.

The hysterical quotes were bait to confirm my earlier assertion that your unreasoned hatred is not ruled by reason despite your claims to the opposite. Religious people are not always so narrow minded as to not have thought on our own about what we believe. Just because your country has a region where few people think deeply enough about the divine, doesn't mean that everywhere else religious minded people are so dim. As you have not even deemed me worthy to offer any thing for my consideration other than wild accusations, I will take solace in the fact that you closed your comments with a quote from Einstein as opposed to something original.

I will return the favour in my own manner,
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish." Universal.

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." just for you LAK

"Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population. " On tolerance without venom.

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind." From my personal collection

And finally "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."

All of these quotes were from Einstein.

Anyone can use quotes, they do nothing but offer a second opinion confirming our own prejudices. I'm half offended by your lack of arguable material and half content with the knowledge that at least you may learn something if you take anything I said to heart. If you hit up Toronto would love to argue over a good drink(out of igloo season obviously).

Posted by: LegioNofZioN | December 28, 2007 at 10:56 AM

If that sounded smug to you as it does when I read it back, my apologies, I just traded in my civic hybrid for a buss pass to help alleviate all this smug in the air.

Posted by: LegioNofZioN | December 28, 2007 at 11:00 AM

one more vid on the force Unleashed

2007-09-27T16:28:00.000-05:00

This game is going to be so sick I'm getting wood already. Well maybe thats a bit of an overstatement, but this is the game I was waiting for most patiently. The more they talk about this, the more I know I need it the day it comes out. Watch this and talk amongst yourselves.

another letter to an editor, some people just need education

2007-09-25T09:31:00.000-05:00

I found the argument advanced that religious schools are a form of segregation inflammatory rhetoric and baseless. Over 50 thousand Ontario pupils are currently enrolled in religious schools are they segregated from the rest of us? The word segregation brings to mind government enforced separation between groups, as experienced by blacks in the US prior to the late 60's. That is clearly not what has been going on for decades nor what happens with kids in religious schools. I never attended any religious schools and I see the value in diversity of schools, but I am tired of the attacks. I think it is a specious argument to infer religious schools would be homogenous culturally. The last time I checked Christians existed in most areas of the world, from Australia through Africa into Europe across through the former USSR into South Asia. The same can be said of Islam whose practitioners are in North America, Europe, Africa etc. If the people who are members of two of the three most prolific religions of the last 500 years have multiple ethnicities and cultural backgrounds why would the students attending these schools be any different ? I concede the students would have minimal interaction with other students of differing religions but I never found diversity of religion paramount in my education coming up in the public education system. There are many valid reasons to oppose publicly funded religious schooling but segregation and cultural endogamy aren't even worthy of mention. I think the argument is used as a smokescreen for personal prejudice against either faiths in general (by proselytizing athiests)or Muslims in specific (by people with a hatred or distrust of Islam). It seems the great and tolerant Canadians are not as tolerant as they once thought they were.

Roots Gospel - Luciano

2007-09-05T10:53:00.000-05:00

Luciano's classic song set to beautiful and timeless art and imagery.

more great Union Station

2007-09-05T10:37:00.001-05:00

This is my favourite song by Alison Krauss and Union Station. enjoy.

Great music -- calming

2007-09-05T10:34:00.000-05:00

Now I love alison Krauss as some of you know, but this ... this is hopefully the first of many videos I will post up of her and her angelic voice. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

and now for something completely different

2007-09-04T10:59:00.000-05:00

OBNOXIOUS AND FUNNY, BUT JUST AS CREDIBLE AS 9/11 CONSPIRACIES.

The solution to gun crime

2007-07-18T08:42:00.001-05:00

Too funny, the complete solution to gun violence. Funny.

God, Church and we

2007-07-13T11:35:00.000-05:00

Good video has a good point. I'm personally more than guilty of this type of stuff myself. Enjoy the music, much respect to Shaggy for raising such a topic

Realities of Communism

2007-06-22T09:34:00.000-05:00

This is a an interview from the early to mid eighties from a member of the soviet government. What's sad is that he speaks the truth and like he says to someone demoralized by the school system no amount of proof can educate someone short of being crushed under the yolk of communism

nuthing but goodness

2007-06-21T10:32:00.000-05:00

Jerry Falwell, the end of controversy

2007-05-16T09:05:00.000-05:00

Rest In Peace

It is with no surprise that some callous people are actually celebrating the death of Jerry Falwell. I was not a supporter of his, but I wish to take this time to recognize his immense contributions to society in general and to both conservatives and Christians more specifically. Jerry tried to do for evangelicals what the Catholics had done successfully in the past, infratructure. Schools, homes for unwed mothers, and support for the underpriveledged and downtrodden. This is his true legacy. That of lives helped and uplifted in the name of God. He was never a stranger to controversy whether it was abortion or homosexuality he stated his views and beliefs clearly every time and stood by his positions in the face of heavy opposition. He was not a fashionable man, he was a man of God who tried to serve faithfully. To all of his family and followers I offer my sincere condolences and encouragement. Follow his example, the real example not what the media will pull out of their bag of tricks, and help those around you in any way you can.

God Bless Jerry Falwell, and keep his soul safe.

Transformers game, sweet as it is

2007-05-03T12:22:00.000-05:00

ok this just blew me away -- this is one good looking game.

Oxford Union allows continued American existance

2007-05-03T08:58:00.000-05:00

Caught this post off Neal Boortz site today. I can't lie it caught my eye.
What follows is a blatant copy and paste job of the article, which I feel sums up my own opinions of the United States of America in a very balanced light. Bolding by myself to highlight key points.

Washington diary: Land of ideas
By Matt Frei
BBC News, Washington

I am happy to report to you that the Oxford Union, in its infinite wisdom, has allowed America to continue existing.

After a raucous debate in front of a packed house, the motion - "this House regrets the Founding of America" - was overwhelmingly squashed.

My colleague Jonah Goldberg, from the National Review, made a witty and punchy case for the birthright of America, lambasting the Union for a motion that "sounded like a bad joke".

Peter Rodman, a former US assistant secretary of defence, entered the fray with patrician aplomb and, for what it's worth, this was some of my contribution to joust for the country where I keep my toothbrush and pay my taxes:

It is very easy to find Americans who disagree with its current direction. But you'll be hard pressed to come across those who regret its very existence in a fit of collective self-annihilation. The confusion of one with the other strikes me as the fundamental flaw of this motion.

Let's say you didn't need to regret the founding of America, because it had never been founded. How different might our lives look? We would not be listening to George Bush's fluent Texan. We would never have had the benefit of Donald Rumsfeld one-liners or clogged our arteries on a Big Mac.

But what music would we be listening to on our iPods? Would it be German marching songs or Russian ballads? Would we even have an iPod?

Yes, the beloved iPod was designed by a British citizen, Jonathan Ive, a son of Chingford, Essex. But would his design have changed the world of music if it hadn't been for Apple, an American company, based in Cupertino, California?

Freedom to dream

So much for iPods... what about ideas? How different would the world be without the Bill of Rights? What about Thomas Jefferson?

The Declaration of Independence was the quintessential treatise of self-determination. If America had never been founded it would have remained unwritten. And who can imagine life without the Dumb Waiter, another Jefferson innovation?

The list goes on and on (and I apologise for any omissions): Thomas Edison, who had 1,093 patents for inventions in his name; Henry Ford; the Wright brothers; Bill Gates; the Boeing corporation; Desperate Housewives; The Sopranos and, of course, SpongeBob SquarePants.

As a TV correspondent, I would be out of a job. The television was invented over decades by a German, a Brit and a Russian but their ideas all came together in the middle of Middle America.

The United States created an environment in which inventive minds had access to easy credit, a willing market and the freedom to dream and create without fear of prosecution or recrimination.
As the writer and poet John Ciardi put it: "The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself"!

Europe's offspring

If we regret the founding of the US we regret a thoroughly European creation. If George III hadn't been as mad as a hatter, if the Redcoats had been more in touch with the feelings of His Majesty's subjects in the colonies, the English colony of Jamestown might never have given way to Yorktown, where 174 years later the English crown was finally defeated in the War of Independence.

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America
Bill Clinton

To be against the founding of America is not to be original but to continue a long line of misguided bigots who always resented the birth of the US. In the late 18th Century, the eminent Dutch scientist Cornelius De Pauw wrote that everything from America was "either degenerate or monstrous". He was considered the foremost expert on the New World of his time and, like many critics of America, he never went there once.

Then there's the Oscar Wilde quip, plagiarised by former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau: "America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation". Anti-Americanism is as old as America and it continues to miss the point.

America did not come from nowhere. It was an offspring of Europe, the step-child of a corrupt, moribund post-feudal system. America encapsulated the principles of the Enlightenment - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - wrapped them in the pursuit of happiness, underpinned them with an inalienable right and turned an IDEA into a country.
It took the missteps of the French and the English revolutions and it made them work.

Yes, there were terrible mistakes - the gross hypocrisy of slavery, segregation and McCarthyism, to name a few. But America found and keeps finding the solutions to its mistakes. It is a giant, rolling social experiment in constant pursuit of self-correction. As Bill Clinton once said: "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."

In America the idea was ragged, rough and imperfect but it kept growing, it kept evolving and, if this isn't a vote of confidence, it kept attracting people, millions of them - Dutch pilgrims, Russian Jews, persecuted Egyptians, hungry Mexicans, uprooted Kurds, homeless Armenians, unloved and underpaid British film stars, now luxuriating in Hollywood. Ask them if they regret the founding of America!

Real promise

The US is a nation built not on ethnicity, not on religion, not even on history but on an idea.

Not only does this make America different, I would argue it also makes it ideally suited for the 21st Century. We live in a globalised world in which national boundaries are less and less relevant and the citizenship of ideas is more and more defining.

Al-Qaeda also strives for a world without borders, a trans-national entity based on ideas, which a majority of Muslims find as unpalatable as we do. So, ask yourself and be honest: where would you rather live - the Caliphate or California?

We Europeans created America and to regret this is to engage in a colossal act of self-denial verging on self-mutilation. We have a stake in its survival and its success and we ought to nurture it, not bring it to its knees or delight in its misfortunes. We can criticise its leaders without regretting its existence.

The reality of America may be vexing, frustrating, infuriating and puzzling but its promise is no less real and, given the right voice, should be no less inspiring.

Guantanamo Bay, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and yes, so many aspects of the war in Iraq, were big mistakes. But these are aspects of current foreign policy, not part of the nation's DNA. They are lamented as much inside the US as outside. And that too speaks for America!

To quote the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington: "America is not a lie; it is a disappointment." But what is worse than being disappointed? It is not even to know what you're missing

When Politics Affects your Abilities to Produce at Work

2007-04-20T09:17:00.000-05:00

Leo Lewis wrote a review for Spider-Man 3 in which he laments the inclusion of the American flag in a patriotic fashion. He mentions is at the end of his review as a post script cheap shot. He also criticizes the character of Peter Parker as not truly being dark enough. This is where he misses mark on the the material so much I wonder how close attention he paid the the previous two movies. to check the review yourself.

I understand everyone getting angry with the cheap shot Lewis took, as it was just that. I have a different issue to bring to light is Lewis' lack of understanding of the character of Peter Parker after 3 movies and over 7 hours of info about him. How does one critique a movie where one does not understand the characters. Peter's dark side is apparently not malevolent enough for Mr. Lewis. Mr. Lewis chooses to view Peter's changes, upon discovery of the black suit, as normal behaviour for a loud mouthed drunk. Fair enough. Peter was raised with a belief system in which he feels a responsibility to help others because he can. This is the archetype Americans have molded themselves into in previous generations and to a lesser degree in this one. Peter is intelligent, kind, caring and in short possesses more positive character traits than most protagonists in modern cinema. Peter gets carried away in self serving ego and behaves contrary to his personal character. Apparently that is not "dark" enough for Mr. Lewis. Understanding Peter Parker is probably easier for those of us who have grown up reading about his exploits and tragedies. Maybe despite being the best studio adaption of any comic material Sam Raimi left something out that Mr. Lewis needed in order to understand Peter. The point I am getting to is that Peter's behaviour although not alarming enough to Leo Lewis, is extremely alarming to his family and those around him. The eternal straight arrow under so much pressure to maintain his values despite near poverty, and elderly aunt and a girlfriend finally gets a break. This is akin to when we get intoxicated, we loose control of our inhibitions. Peter is very inhibited, he is highly intelligent and due to his abilities very aware of his need to exhibit responsible use of his powers. This alien suit comes along and all of a sudden straight arrow Parker is not even given a choice but looses as his internal controls to this exterior influence. That said loosing control for Peter, given his values, is to act recklessly whereas those of us not brought up with the same set of values may have gone far deeper over the edge of the abyss. Leo Lewis was transferring his own mind state and personal path in life onto Spider-Man. That is not the way to review a fantasy movie.

The next big thing, the Fall of Parker

2007-04-10T07:21:00.000-05:00

It doesn't take a genious to know what this post is about, it's about my mild obsession with Spider-Man. the new movie quickly approaches and I can't bloody well wait for it. In the interest of giving you a chance to check out the latest trailer in all of its glory, check this out. I promise you won't be sorry.

The disHonourable Mayor David Miller

2007-03-30T11:53:00.000-05:00

Raising taxes may very well be necessary, but due to the value of of the homes here many people on fixed incomes earning little it will undoubtedly serve to further sprawl by escaping that which they cannot afford. I truly feel for people who have lived in Toronto for their whole lives, have loved and lost in this city, that can no longer afford to own a home here and die in peace among the streets that they and their families grew up on. Property values and taxes go up but unfortunately the incomes for many of these most deeply affected do not. This is the price of progress, so worried about providing everything to as many as possible that we end up serving few effectively. City council lead by Mayor Miller have wrought this on all of us. The citizens of Toronto voted overwhelmingly for the man and as such are just as guilty. He can barely admit that city funds are tax payer dollars. The real solution to this seemingly insurmountable problem is to cut back. Clearly city "funds" cannot support their increase in salary and if they wish to win over our trust again they should start by recinding that, reducing the cost of the citty councillors in a show of good faith that they truly have our collective best interests. The can follow that up by arranging contractor bids on services wherever possible to trim some fat. In a show of good faith I'm sure the province may be able to help out, but not with our city council showing no fiscal responsibility to the people of the city they were elected to represent.

Planning a trip

2007-03-29T10:20:00.000-05:00

Since I was a young kid with 3 younger sublings I always wanted to visit my family's home of St Vincent and the Grenadines in the lesser Antilles of the West Indies. Sadly the size of our family and my parents earning power made this a daunting task. When I was old enough to work, my attention was more focused on the opposite sex to be able to save for anything and so to this day I have never been. This is my year, I finally earn enought to support the trip and now as I try to plan I see obstacles in way. Obstacles I should have tackled already, but obstacles nonetheless. I apprently lost my birth certificate, and need to apply for a new one, also I need a passport. These are both complicated because of this damn guarantor stuff, and I admittedly ignorant of a lot of this legal wrangling. Mr father spoke with the Pastor of the church I attended when I lived in Barrie and he will help in this regard. Now I have to apply for both and book my flight. Keep your fingers crossed for me, cause like I said before this is my year.

Racial Truth

2007-03-09T09:55:00.000-05:00

This article was sent to me by my mother. Give it a read and let me know what you think.

For those of you who heard it, this is the article Dee Lee was reading this morning on a New York radio station. For those of you who didn't hear it, this is very deep. This is a heavy piece and a Caucasian wrote it.

(Dee Lee, CFP**Harvard Financial Educators)

THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES. We can continue to reap profits from the Blacks without the effort of physical slavery. Look at the current methods of containment that they use on themselves: IGNORANCE, GREED, and SELFISHNESS.

Their IGNORANCE is the primary weapon of containment. A great man once said,"The best way to hide something from Black people is to put it in a book." We now live in the Information Age. They have gained the opportunity to read any book on any subject through the efforts of their fight for freedom, yet they refuse to read. There are numerous books readily available at Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com<http://amazon.com/>,not to mention their own Black Bookstores that provide solid blueprints to reach economic equality (which should have been their fight all along),but few read consistently, if at all.

GREED is another powerful weapon of containment. Blacks, since the abolition of slavery, have had large amounts of money at their disposal. Last year they spent 10 billion dollars during Christmas, out of their 450 billion dollars in total yearly income (2.22%). Any of us can use them as our target market, for any business venture we care to dream up, no matter how outlandish, they will buy into it. Being primarily a consumer people, they function totally by greed. They continually want more, with little thought for saving or investing. They would rather buy some new sneaker than invest in starting a business. Some even neglect their children to have the latest Tommy or FUBU, And they still think that having a Mercedes, and a big house gives them "Status" or that they have achieved their Dream. They are fools! The vast majority of their people are still in poverty because their greed holds them back from collectively making better communities. With the help of BET, and the rest of their black media that often broadcasts destructive images into their own homes, we will continue to see huge profits like those of Tommy and Nike. (Tommy Hilfiger has even jeered them, saying he doesn't want their money, and look at how the fools spend more with him than ever before! ) . They'll continue to showoff to each other while we build solid communities with the profits from our businesses that we market to them.

SELFISHNESS, ingrained in their minds through slavery, is one of the major ways we can continue to contain them. One of their own, Dubois said that there was an innate division in their culture. A "Talented Tenth" he called it. He was correct in his deduction that there are segments of their culture that has achieved some "form" of success. However, that segment missed the fullness of his work. They didn't read that the "Talented Tenth" was then responsible to aid The Non-Talented Ninety Percent in achieving a better life. Instead, that segment has created another class, a Buppie class that looks down on their people or aids them in a condescending manner. They will never achieve what we have. Their selfishness does not allow them to be able to work together on any project or endeavor of substance. When they do get together, their selfishness lets their egos get in the way of their goal Their so-called help organizations seem to only want to promote their name without making any real change in their community.
They are content to sit in conferences and conventions in our hotels, and talk about what they will do, while they award plaques to the bestspeakers, not to the best doers. Is there no end to their selfishness?

They steadfastly refuse to see that TOGETHER EACH ACHIEVES MORE (TEAM)
They do not understand that they are no better than each other because of what they own, as a matter of fact, most of those Buppies are but one or two pay checks away from poverty. All of which is under the control of our pens in our offices and our rooms. Yes, we will continue to contain them as long as they refuse to read, continue to buy anything they want, and keep thinking they are "helping" their communities by paying dues to organizations which do little other than hold lavish conventions in our hotels.

By the way, don't worry about any of them reading this letter, remember, 'THEY DON'T READ!!!!

The Irrelevance of the Liberal party

2007-03-05T13:57:00.000-05:00

Not known to be one to kick a person when they are down, I have to get this off of my chest. The Liberal party of Canada espouses to be the middle road between right and left wing ideology in politics, and on paper just like communism it seems attractive. New immigrants are told time and again through tired and dated stereotypes that the Liberal party is the one that truly cares about them. My father came here in 1972 and fell in with this line of thought during the time of the last great Liberal leader Trudeau, and given the time I cannot fault him for this. Winston Churchill said himself that a person in their 20's should have a very liberal worldview and that he questioned the heart of anyone who thought differently. He followed that up by saying that he questions the mind of anyone in their 40's who did not share a conservative worldview. The sad truth is the Liberal party no longer represents the 20 something ideal of left wing thought, if it ever did. They appear to, they espouse platitudes to give that impression but if you speak with any random 20 something on Yonge St they will agree with my statement. Their policies and actions speak to their lack of accomplishment in what may be their greatest dominance in federal politics in my 20 some odd years on this planet. They pretend to be right on issues and left on others to garner support all the while doing what they will regardless of our opinion. Politics obviously involves compromise and concessions to achieve one's goals but I doubt the Liberals bold face lies, or at least gross misrepresentation of any information to spin it in their favour is a symbol of the positives of this approach.
Canada has always been a moderate country which seems to obsess about its moderation (unless of course you live outside of the big 3 cities) but in supporting the moderate Liberals we do ourselves a disfavour. I lean right proudly, and I never fault someone who leans left because of their worldview regardless of our differences. That said the Liberal party strangles the proper discussions in politics between left and right. The NDP represents the left wing side of discussion very well, while the Conservatives have been inconsistent in representing the right side of that dialogue, or at least they have. Stephen Harper is no hard right extremist but he is steadfast in his support and implementation of right leaning policies. Now if the Conservatives loose the election, when there is one, this could change, but for now Harper's version of the Conservative party fits the traditional bill far better than previous incarnations. To have meaningful political discussion the middle man must be eliminated. Let left speak for left and right for right, and let our compromises and concessions be dealt with in an open and honest manner in the House of Commons. The middle man promises us the best of both worlds and continues to fail on delivering anything. If we keep on paying him, which is exactly what voting for them does, we perpetuate our problems. Vote how you will and vote with your conscious just remember who actually represents your point of view. Don't pay for an unfinished product.

Stephane Dion's Top 10 Reasons

2007-03-01T11:15:00.000-05:00

Lorrie Goldstein, one of the best editors and columnists the Sun has, had an article on Stephane Dion's top 10 excuses for why he won't implement Kyoto if he is ever elected. This man has a razor sharp wit and talent for this kind of writing. What follows is my post of his aformentioned Top 10 Excuses:

Number 10: "Kyoto ate my protocols."

Number 9: "This is unfair. This is unfair. You don't know what you speak about. Do you think it's easy to make priorities?"

Number 8: "I firmly believe that as a good citizen, I have a moral obligation to implement the Kyoto accord on global warming. Meaning, of course, as a good citizen of France."

Number 7: "Yes, implementing the Kyoto accord is important, but right now our priority has to be reducing medical wait times."

Number 6: One year later: "Yes, implementing the Kyoto accord is important, but right now our priority has to be getting our soldiers out of Afghanistan."

Number 5: Two years later: "Yes, implementing the Kyoto accord is important, but right now our priority has to be reducing medical wait times."

Number 4: Three years later: "Yes, implementing the ... aw, to hell with it."

Number 3: "Define 'implement'."

Number 2: "I lost the Liberal plan to implement the Kyoto accord while I was looking for the Liberal plan to scrap the GST."

And Prime Minister Stephane Dion's number one excuse for not being able to implement the Kyoto accord?

"Ladies and gentlemen, Environment Minister Belinda Stronach."

Upcoming video game goodness

2007-02-15T08:53:00.000-05:00

Video you have to see

Transformers

2007-02-14T11:28:00.000-05:00

Ok two shots of the Prime guy in the same week, somethings gtta be up with this guy. Well I just thought I would share that reports have come in advising that the new Transformers movie gaem on next gen consoles will have the classic G1 Transformers as well as the movie versions (which few like). All I can say is that I can not wait !

Let the drool flow fanboys this could be it !

Time for some good old Liberal honesty

2007-02-13T13:19:00.001-05:00

Hon Marlene Jennings, Liberal from Notre Dame de Grace Lachine in Quebec accuses the Conservative government of this,
"Mr. Speaker, this government is allowing an increasing number of judges' positions to remain empty. Worse yet, while the Conservatives are going over their list of defeated candidates with a fine toothed comb, they are turning their noses up at qualified candidates. Apparently, it will be a Conservative or no one.

Will the minister put an end to favouritism and appoint qualified, independent members, who are respected by the Canadian legal community?"

Translation: you are appointing too many conservative judges and we don't like it. Hypocritical Tories are acting like us !!

So any ideas what the hon Peter Van Loan had to say about this ? .....
Hon. Peter Van Loan, conservative of distinction rhymed this off "Mr. Speaker, as we have pointed out repeatedly, we are appointing the most qualified judges.

It is interesting that the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine would speak about the quality of the appointments being made by our government when her government, in which she was a minister, appointed somebody named Luciano Del Negro to the Immigration and Refugee Board. I believe he is the husband of the member of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine."

So you all know that I don't like most Liberals anyway but the only thing that upsets me more than Tory hypocrisy is personal dishonesty and this kind of bullshit. Seriously this woman's husband gets a judicial appointment during the Liberals previous reign over Canada (deservedly or not) and she can stand up and complain that the Conservatives are doing the same damn thing she just benefited from. Given enough time in power and the Tories will be barely distinguishable from Liberals but 13 years has not yet passed and at this point they are most definitely the lesser of all evils available. Liberals, how many more poor ideas and years of mismanagement must we suffer until you all realize the need for internal change, and I don't just mean leaders.

2007-02-09T14:15:00.000-05:00

Now then why do I have such a colourful picture on that has little or nothing to do with what I am saying ? ....simply to get your attention. Colours do that better than words. Words keep your attention, but colours attract your eyes. Enough rambling !

My little sister is getting married. She is young, only 20, and despite wanting to tell her to play it safe and not take such a risk as to get married so young, I just can't. Everyone deserves their shot at happiness. Some of us get many shots and some get few or none. If this is her shot then who am I to shoot that down. To be honest I have had conversations with her about this so its not like she is blind to the odds against her. She has made her mind up and wants to pursue this. In that vein of against all odds and rooting for the underdog, I support her and wish her untold happiness in the sanctity of her marriage.

LeGioN

A Tribute to a Legend

2007-02-05T09:18:00.000-05:00

I know we all share a similar vibe when it comes to music so it's only right that we honor the godfather of reggae on the day of his birth. Take a minute to get to know the man behind the music.

Bob Marley born Robert Nesta Marley, (February 6, 1945 - May 11, 1981) was the most widely known performer of reggae outside Jamaica. His father Norval Marley was a white Jamaican born to British parents and his mother Cedella Booker was an eighteen year old Jamaican when they were married. His father died at age 60 when Bob was only 10.

Regarding his mixed race Bob once said "I don't have prejudice against myself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white."

Bob Marley was a member of the Rastafari movement, whose culture was a key element in the development of reggae. His adoption of the characteristic Rastafari dreadlocks and famous use of cannabis as a sacred sacrament in the late sixties were an integral part of his persona. He is said to have entered every performance proclaiming the divinity of Jah Rastafari. A few months before his death, Marley was baptised into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and took the name Berhane Selassie (meaning the Light of the Holy Trinity in Amharic).

Bob Marley had 13 children: three with his wife Rita (born Rita Anderson), two adopted from Rita's previous relationships, and the remaining eight with separate women.

In July 1977, Marley was found to have malignant melanoma (a form of cancer) in a football wound on his right hallux (big toe). He refused amputation, citing worries that the operation would affect his dancing, as well as the Rastafari belief that the body must be "whole". True to this belief he went against all surgical possibilities and sought out other means that would not break his religious beliefs. He also refused to register a will, based on the Rastafari belief that writing one acknowledged death as inevitable and disregarded the everlasting character of life.

While flying home from Germany to Jamaica for his final days, Marley became ill, and landed in Miami for immediate medical attention. He died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami, Florida on the morning of May 11, 1981 at the age of 36. His final words to his son Ziggy were "Money can't buy life."

He was buried in a crypt near his birthplace with his Gibson Les Paul, a soccer ball, a marijuana bud, a ring that he wore everyday that was given to him by the Prince Asfa Wossen of Ethiopia (eldest son of H.I.M), and a Bible.

How to celebrate Bob's birthday:

1.) Do some reading about the man revered by Bob Marley and all other Rastafarians: Haile Selassie, former Emperor of Ethiopia. (http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/text/selassie.html)

2.) Play Bob's debut release track, "Judge Not," as a tribute to the beginning of his prosperous and uplifting career.

3.) Smoke a blunt in celebration of the herb that inspired Bob throughout his life.

4.) Pop open a Red Stripe, Jamaica's favorite beer, in tribute to Marley's homeland.

A word of caution:

Be mindful of negative feelings while you celebrate Marley's birthday. He, like all true Rastafarians, preached a peaceful world order with brotherhood and sisterhood between all people. Try to live in prosperity.

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds..."

Jason birthday

2007-02-02T10:48:00.000-05:00

What is the deal ? What do you want to do ? We must do a family fete up -- give me some ideas

A little about me.

2007-01-30T09:49:00.000-05:00

Best Friend? I would have to say that title is reserved for my brothers and other close relatives.
Cake or Pie? Boy do I ever love me some pie.
Drink Of Choice? I have to agree with Water as first choice but Heiniken takes a close second.
Essential Item You Use Everyday? Toothbrush. Do the world a favour make this your first choice.
Favourite Colour? Blue or Navy Blue to be exact.
Gummy Bears Or Worms? Neither but if I absolutely had to choose I would have to go with the bears and no...they are not the same.
Hometown? Kingstown, St.Vincent and the Grenadines.
Where exactly? In the hospital part of town.
Indulgence? Shopping. It's not exactly cheap but what is these days.
January Or February? February. Valentines day....I actually enjoy sending the roses to the un-sus/ex-pecting.
Kids & Their Names? No kids..yet. I like the name Darius though.
Life Is Incomplete Without? People to share it with. (pretty much the same thing Nic said)
Number Of Siblings? 4 all together.
Oranges Or Apples? Definitely Oranges. Apples make me full halfway through.
Phobias/Fears? My dad dying. Otherwise not much.
Quote, Favorite? "Do unto to others as you like done onto you"
Reason to Smile? Cause your a part of the Vincycrew.
Vegetable you don’t like? None.
Worst Habit? Reading into things a little to much.
X-rays You’ve Had? Back.
Your Favourite Food? Chicken.
Zodiac Sign? Gemini.

Stolen and lighthearted

2007-01-19T16:15:00.000-05:00

Those that know me know I don't steel, but I did appropriate this topic to spread some seemingly inoccuous facts about myself, feel free to comment.

Best Friend? This spot is usually reserved for my closest female friend as men seem to be lacking in many worthy characteristics. Right now that would be Jessica but I'm not as open with her as I have been with best friends in the past.
Cake or Pie? Cake everytime.
Drink Of Choice? Water if non alcoholic but with booze Rum is my choice !
Essential Item You Use Everyday? razer, once you start shaving your unmentionables a day without a fresh shave in uncomfortable indeed
Favourite Colour? green for obvious reasons, its the colour of plants and half of nature, its the colour of hope
Gummy Bears Or Worms? What the hell does this matter ? Aren't they the same ?
Hometown? Toronto. The city I was born in and probably the city I will die in
Where exactly? midtown baby, Davisville village to be exact
Indulgence? sex and usually with some girl I regret later, and I thought the late 20's would be awesome
January Or February? Neither. I hate the cold.
Kids & Their Names? None unless someone has been holding out on Nicolai
Life Is Incomplete Without? women and family
Number Of Siblings? 3 or 4 depending on whom you ask 2 brothers and a sister with the same parents and one elder sister from my dad's younger days .
Oranges Or Apples? Apples nuff said.
Phobias/Fears? the future, cause it always gets worse never better
Quote, Favorite? "Capitalism is the unequal sharing of happiness. Socialism is the equal sharing of misery" Winston Churchill (possibly the greatest man of the 20th century)
Reason to Smile? familia and friends.
Vegetable you don’t like? asparagus
Worst Habit? ignoring people when I focus on anything
X-rays You’ve Had? teeth
Your Favourite Food? Roti
Zodiac Sign? Leo, is it any wonder I love attention

The apology...

2007-01-18T17:22:00.000-05:00

I must apologize for taking so long to post or comment. The only excuse I can come up with is my cheap and unhealthy addiction to the World........of Warcraft. I suppose I should make more of an effort to stay intuned with the comings and goings of my fellow vincycrew bloggers. That ofcourse would not be in any which way, shape or form a resolution (as I would dread being thrown in with the masses). Instead I will just try to be a better host and become more involved.

funny, yes

2007-01-08T14:04:00.002-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc as I am a complete moron when it comes to posting things and I merely share in this blog, I had to post this link. It's spiders on drugs, 'nuff said !

It's here -- 2007

2007-01-02T09:46:00.000-05:00

So as I sit at my computer at work I realize that this is the New Year right here -- and as opposed to making some frivolous self congratulatory resolution I will endeavour to better myself through my will and determination. I don't need a year to end in order to realize my own shortcommings and to work on bettering them. That is for the weak minded, apathetic masses not me. So I challenge you as well to truly establish a change within yourself for the better whatever that may be. I will let you know about my personal progress as time passes.

2006-12-22T11:03:00.000-05:00

This is me, Nicolas Ian Cruickshank. Struggling voice over actor, and current analyst with a major Canadian telecommunications company. I wish to take this time to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and the happiest of New Year's. In the next year I will update you all on my voice over progress, and discuss current issues I feel important. Also I may spout from time to time about the happenings of my life and the things a 20 something goes on living in Toronto Canada's largest city.

Hmmmmmmm......

2006-12-20T11:56:00.000-05:00

Well it seems my brother has once again achieved some thing.....now i recall watching alot of movies in my span on this planet and suffice to say...i've noticed that all these cartoons being released aren't for kids.....they're really for us parents, they entice the kids with the talking animals and all the pweeety colors, but the content.....for example in ICE AGE 2: THE MELTDOWN: Manny was talking to an Ant Eater and they were talking about the extinction of Mammoths Manny Says: "And Your Breath Smells Like ASP." The Ant Eater Replies: (first he smells his breath and he says) "Be That As It May"...Children will never get that joke......Something for You To Think About......Peace Out.......1

Ishmael

2006-12-20T08:31:00.000-05:00

Just finished reading an old book by the title of Ishmael by an author named Daniel Quinn. It was a most refreshing read, dealing with environmental and ecosystem collapse. It was a tad short, and seeing how it was written in the 70's none of its concepts are new to me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I have my own thoughts of this book I would like to share, anyone who has readi it let me know yours.

Rules of the Game

2006-12-08T09:51:00.000-05:00

and so it begins...

This is the first post of the Vincy Crew message board. You are all invited to be authors of this board.

If your reading this then you've probably received my invite. This has gained you access to the page and will allow you to post entries - you can also go in and change the background format, title, etc. Pictures (the fun stuff!) can be posted using the Add Image icon in the create post toolbar.

I haven't setup passwords for everyone, because I'm not yet sure who will be posting. For the time being I would appreciate if you continued to post with a specific colour to be able to tell everyone apart.

So get posting guys..

P.S I`m blue