shaking my head...

what he said.

i didn't blog about this, because it has been pretty crazy around the wc's household. but i was suckered in, too. hook, line, and sinker.

i'm not saying that i would have done better, but those who doggedly pursued this (pallister et al.) should know how.

very amateur, guys.

is canadian blood services run by bureacratic moonbats?

i like to think of myself and most conservatives as having common sense. you know, the kind that's startling uncommon these days. here's an example.

when i turned 17, i became eligible to give blood. my mother had always given blood, and i saw it as not an option--just something i had to do. (had i been raised by a socialized daycare, would i have given blood? what do you think? but i digress.)

i gave blood more or less regularly, time and schedule permitting, until i moved to halifax in 2001.

then it happened.

i gave blood like normal, going to the clinic, sitting/laying in that dentist-chair-like chair, feeling the poke in the arm (i was always a righty, literally and figuratively...go figure), walking over to the counter to get my peach drink and cookies, and going home.

all was well.

until i got that letter in the mail.

"dear sir: (i'm paraphrasing here) when you gave blood last time, we did tests on it, as we always do. these tests came back positive for hepatitis (b or c, i can't remember). we did more accurate, more sensitive tests, and those determined that you do not, in fact, have hepatitis of any sort, nor do you have any other disease that would normally disallow you from donating blood. but since you tested positive, even though we later proved that test result to be erroneous, you may never give blood again."

i was seething.

put another way, you're saying that you proved that my blood is clean; therefore, i may never donate blood again.

apparently they are working on reversing this asshat decision, but i'm not holding my breath.

it's not like i'm trying to sink them. i think they do a valuable service--in fact, i think i'll go volunteer for them--i have a job (yes, lefties, i have a job!) that allows me days off and sometimes i have time to kill on said days off. but i'm trying to gently (???) apply pressure on them so that i, and thousands of other canadians, can give blood again.

clean blood. refused. what a country.

we (and north korea) lead the world!

with deference to joel johannesen and a knowing, laughing, mocking nod to paul martin, i have to show you this.

i came upon (with a tip from nealenews) the home page for north korea (democratic republic of north korea, no less) and read the faq.

this silliness could almost completely come right out of the liberal party of canada's hatred of the united states (tm) propaganda. some select quotes:

"11. I want to know why North Korea has nuclear weapons. Why?

The DPRK has a nuclear deterrence as a life-insurance to protect the motherland. The US, who put the country inside the "Axis of Evil", and is threatening with a nuclear holocaust pre-emptive strike has created this situation and made this neccessary."

and then there's this goodie:

"17. I hear that North Koreans are very poor. Is this true?

By international standards, DPRK citizens enjoy a very high standard of living. In Socialist Korea, the state guarantees all citizens the right to quality healthcare, education, stipends for the disabled, retirement pensions and access to recreational facilities, as well as a wide array of other state-supported services. Indeed, DPRK citizens are guaranteed many provisions that are uncommon in many developed capitalist societies, which are home to real poverty. Unlike in many countries of the capitalist world, the DPRK is a state free of homelessness, unemployment, prostitution and starvation." (emphasis mine)

no anti-americanism here. but if you read closely, gee, i wonder whom they're talking about. or really, propagandizing about.

man, oh man, this is good. can you imagine pmpm blustering if he were to see this? he'd wind himself up into an absolute frenzy of leading. to wit: "no, we lead the world in freedom from homelessness, unemployment, prostitution, starvation, and all those other things those american capitalist bastards i hate have in droves there. but if we were to have prostitution, we'd legalize it because it's so, y'know, canadian."

ni-hi-hice!

you know how they say men in uniform are hot?

how about these women in uniform?

rowr! :)

h/t blog quebecois.

if i had been drinking coffee...

this article would have made me spit it out through my nose.

a couple of choice quotes:

"Conservatives tend to use other terms, starting with unprincipled, followed by reptilian analogies, and ending with angry spluttering noises. Beneath a Tory's denunciations, though, there's unmistakable professional admiration."

in other words, we're spitting, sputtering (well, i suppose we are, when we read tripe like this and are drinking coffee, but i digress...) wannabe-connivers. yes, john geddes, you nailed us. we want to be just like those overtaxing, pocket-lining liars currently in office and we admire them.

"Paul Martin's ... sabre-rattling ... looks ... more like a classic Liberal bid to strike a chord with voters who like a touch of anti-Americanism with their Canadian nationalism"

now i can get on board with that. plenty of canadians (and i'm sad to say it, most of them east of the lakehead) don't identify themselves as canadians. they identify themselves as not-american. and to me this is just sad. i have plenty of american friends. they're just the same as you and me. except they actually get to keep their money instead of ostensibly feeding it into liberal coffers.

"The old maxim that the party runs from the left and governs from the right is at the core of Clarkson's argument."

this is where i would have spit out coffee. paul martin governs from the right? is this guy on crack? of course he is--he's in toronto, and they're now giving out free crack kits and able to find them pretty much anywhere. unlimited abortions are a right of centre policy? same-sex marriage? communist health care? tax and spend to buy off the ndp? patronage appointments to the senate, supreme court, and governor general's office? socialized daycare? gun control? from the right? is this guy serious?

and i can't let this one go without comment:

"The Liberal bid to portray Harper's Conservatives as dangerous extremists only started to work, he argues, after the press bought into it."

after the press bought into it? it was the press who portrayed harper and the conservatives as scary extremists. it just took longer than usual for anyone to hear the constant chirping from the cbc.

i suppose an article like this is good for one thing: to keep me laughing.

h/t to neale news.

stolen thunder

i was so busy this weekend, i couldn't post. not that i've been posting a lot recently, but that's all beside the point.

today m. k. braaten stole my thunder--thought the same thing as i did, that is, that it's extremely curious how pm dithers was so quick (relatively speaking) to get going on aid to the devastating earthquake in pakistan. it's just so stark, especially when considering how long it took him to do anything about the hurricane katrina disaster.

and he wonders why president bush doesn't answer his phone calls.

air travel costs

i got pointed toward a blog today that's very interesting, in a couple of ways.

here's the story of the guy. in a nutshell, he's flying around north america on an unlimited travel pass, his goal to accumulate enough travel reward miles for the equivalent of 10 return business-class trips between vancouver and australia.

his blog is here.

the main point: he pays $7000 and in return he gets unlimited air canada travel across north america for two months.

check here to see how much our liberal lords and masters pay per flight. more than this guy paid for a month's worth of unlimited travel.

so my question is this: if members of parliament are going to travel more than once in a given month within north america (which many do), instead of a travel allowance, (if this offer is repeated), why not make them take on this plan? and if they want to slink off to miami for the weekend, hey, it's a perk of the job.

in the house today

i was just watching question period and a couple of things prompted me to write.

first, annie get your guns pulled a no-no in the house, calling the conservatives' assertion that the gun registry has cost $2 billion a lie.

the speaker admonished her right away and told her he was sure she would want to withdraw the comment.

when annie withdrew the comment, the look on her face was a smirk. almost a smile, one might say. the kind of smirk that says "you forced me to apologize but i don't really mean it", a smirk that, to me, displays the utter contempt the liberals have for canadians and propriety and what is right.

then, something else occurred to me. bill graham was being hammered on contracts for military aircraft. for a few months now, i've been looking at him, wondering who it was he reminded me of. and then it occurred to me.

here's bill and who he reminds me of.



n'est-ce pas?

the surplus rebate offered

people are going to try drawing comparisons between ralph klein's energy rebate and paul martin's "if you elect me you'll get a" surplus rebate.

there is a big difference. ralph isn't seeking re-election. paul is.

do the math.