Today's Blatantly Plagarized Parable

Found this at Roger's. It's so good I'm going to use it too.



One day a small businessman, a florist, goes to a barber for a haircut. After the cut he asked about his bill and the barber replies: "I'm sorry, I cannot accept money from you; I'm doing community service this week"
The florist is pleased and leaves the shop. Next morning when the barber goes to open there is a thank you card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.

Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he goes to pay his bill the barber again replies: "I'm sorry, I cannot accept money from you; I'm doing community service this week."
The cop is happy and leaves the shop. Next morning when the barber goes to open up there is a thank you card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.

Later, a member of the BC Teacher's Federation comes in for a haircut, and when he goes to pay his bill the barber again replies: "I'm sorry, I cannot accept money from you; I'm doing community service this week." The Teacher is very happy and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber goes to open up, there are a dozen Teachers lined up waiting for a free haircut.

And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between left and right.

Native leaders ask for More Money

Canadian Press is reporting today that Canadian Aboriginal leaders plan to ask the Prime Minister for 5 Billion more dollars next month, and THAT will end native poverty in Canada.

In Regina today, Saskatchewan Indian Nations Chief Alphonse Bird cited the contaminated water crisis in Ontario's Kashechewan reserve and said that is something that is happening on Saskatchewan's reserves too. Native leaders plan on presenting their demand for more money November 24th in Kelowna at the First Minister's conference on aboriginal affairs.

An admirable goal, but is that their only motivation? Or is there something else?
In the CP interview, Chief Alphonse Bird of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations admitted "We also want to maximize the opportunity that is there to bring as much home as possible."

Are you a taxpayer? Does this piss you off? The dept. of Indian affairs pissed away 9 Billion dollars a year. Cut the Civil Service out, and that's 9 Billion divided by 733,626 aboriginals for a total of $24,535.66 for a family of two or $36,803.49 for a family of three or $49,071.32 for a family of four, (thanks again, Tim).

$49,071.32 for a family of four. That's not upper class, but if the Dad also had a job... Anyone who thinks they need another 5 Billion dollars to help wipe out poverty must be either stupid, a civil servant employed by Indian Affairs, or perhaps a less than honest person who might have their fingers in the pie. eh?

A soldier's Camera

Roger Schultz put me onto this guy's website. He buys old cameras, and develops any film he finds inside. One of the many sets of fascinating photos on his website, is this set by an American soldier in wartime and post-wartime Italy.



The young MP holding the newspaper might be the unknown owner of the camera, he appears in several of the photos. Who was he? From the photos it appears he sailed on the U.S.R.S. Algonquin home from Italy and landing in New York.

Plinking - one of life's little joys best shared.

Took son #1 out the other day, to go plinking with my ol' high school buddy Rod out at a local range. It was too windy for any accurate shooting, but we had a blast anyway. The only improvement could have been the sudden appearance of an occupied gopher colony or two. Yours truly turned out to be champion balloon killer on the 25 yard pistol range.

In this shot, he's firing a 12 gauge slug. Click this link to see his reaction the first time he ever fired a shotgun.

Two of the pistols Rod brought out, a Berretta .22 and his 1911 Colt .45 acp.



Son #1 with the .45 Of all the guns we shot, he seemed to like this one best. I think it was the history of the 1911 Colt that did it.



Hey It's me! Firing Rod's 38-55 calibre Model 94 Winchester, manufactured in June of 1900. We also got to play with his Lee Enfield and M-21.


Son#1 with the Winchester.



This is so true. Rod had also received a gift of 50 hand-loaded .45 ACP rounds. We tried them at the end of the day, and the damn things were loaded with Black Powder! I think he cut it with dirt. The pistol fouled and jammed twice on the first and only magazine we tried.

Day to day life keeps me so busy that it's easy to forget the joys of my youth. I grew up on the farm, and hunting/fishing was something we took for granted. Other than my .22 Cooey or an online computer game, my boys haven't had the pleasure of shooting anything until now. I think that's sad.

Carl Sagan's record

Congress passes bill to prevent lawsuits against...

...Against Gun Manufacturers! Ha ha.


To quote the MadOgre,

"By a vote of 283 to 144 Congress passed a bill to protect gun makers from third party misuse of their products. This is good news for shooters, and of course bad news for the anti-gun lobby. This is only common sense... what I want to know is how these 144 jerkwads justify the support of suing legal business that are in full compliance with the law, for something a criminal does with there product. This would be like someone suing Ford because a drunk ran someone over... it makes no sense and should be barred... which is what this bill does. The only reason that this is even an issue, even in today's Sue-Happy Society is that this was a means to shut down the gun makers. This wasn't about any “Saturday Night Specials” makers – this was all makers... one by one all would have fallen."

Unfortunately, that drunk driver example of a stupid lawsuit is exactly what gutted the general aviation industry in the 1970s and 80s. Because of the "sue the manufacturers because i"m too stupid to safely fly an airplane" asshats, owning a private, factory built Cessna or piper is ruinously expensive. Certificates of airworthiness, 100 hour overhauls, ridiculous insurance rates, and abso-fu**ing-lutely insane new aircraft purchase prices (in order to make sure the manufacturer has money for lawyers and chuckleheaded plaintifs).

If those brilliant examples of democracy in action had any balls they'd pass a "Personal responsibility" bill that would make it harder or impossible for people to blame (and sue) others for their own dumbass actions. Then maybe our "me too" politicos in Canada might actually get up the nerve to do the same thing.

Here's another fuzzy bunny brained example: this week a woman in that worker's paradise, Saskatchewan, (now there's a province full of soft headed socialists) who had supposedly kicked her Meth-Amphetamine habit, sued her drug dealer for getting her hooked on Meth again. Setting aside all the law-enforcement issues (and man, there's a bunch ) maybe her family should have kept her in rehab longer?

I like to see a scummy drug dealer get in trouble, but I don't think he's going to give a shit about being sued.

Bring back public caning.

Weakness discovered in transparent aluminum

User friendly by J.D. "Illiad" Frazer is one of my favorite webcomics.

U.S. Airforce testing Transparent Aluminum!

On October 17th, the U.S. Airforce PAO announced they were testing a new aluminum and ceramic based armor at the Aberdeen, MD testing grounds. One officer quoted said it was "light years ahead of armored glass," (no joke).

"The Air Force Research Laboratory's materials and manufacturing directorate is testing aluminum oxynitride -- ALONtm -- as a replacement for the traditional multi-layered glass transparencies now used in existing ground and air armored vehicles. "

Here's another link that may be connected.

MP3 Breast Implants

This qualifies as the stupidest news story of the week. The picture above is a joke, but the story is real.

Ananova is carrying a story about new breast implants with their own implants: a MP3 player for the left side, and flash storage for a music collection in the right side.

Is someone actually being paid money to think of this shit?

stick it to him

This was fun. I hope he likes Juicy Fruit. Seeing as we homeschool, I'm going to get my kids to mail one to the PM too as a socialist studies exercise.
"What the heck is he doing?" you ask. See the previous post or hit the link below.

Commemorative Liberal Coin

Talk about calling a spade a spade; J.J. McCullough at Fillibuster had a great idea. Wouldn't it be great if the former CEO of the Canadian Mint, the disgraced David Dingwall, and his fellow Liberal Party cronies in corruption were the subject of a series of commemorative coins?
Dingwalls exhorbitant expense accounts are offensive, (salary: $250,000 expense allowance: $750,000 ) this asshole even billed the taxpayer for chewing gum. Upon public discovery of his peculation he quit his job, and the Prime Minister promised him a HALF MILLION DOLLAR severance package.

Every minimum wage worker knows you don't get severence if you quit your job. This asshole is getting two years salary from the Prime Minister in hush money. This is now a precedent that will allow all sorts of undeserving former government employees to go back to their past employers and demand money for severence.

Tim Baker pointed me towards something we all can do to point out this stupidity, and point out to the Prime Minister we know he's paying hush money.



Click this link. It's corny, but I'm doing it. Mail him some gum. It's postage free.

David Dingwall Severance Fund
C/O Paul Martin, Prime Minister
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6

Jerry Pournelle!

"Bush, I suspect, is looking for a known quantity, someone who can be trusted not to "grow" once on the bench. The temptation to "grow in stature" (ie become a flaming liberal) is high: after all, an AJOTSC is at the top of the judicial tree; there's nowhere to go..." Monday, October 10th, 2005

I just discovered One half of one of my favorite writing teams has been blogging since 1998! My first exposure to Jerry Pournelle's work was in the 1970s with "The Mote in God's Eye" and "Inferno" which he co-wrote with Larry Niven. His military SF (Falkenbergs Legion, Go Tell the Spartans, The Prince) predates and compares very favourably with other writers I enjoy, like David Drake and more recently, John Ringo). Jerry Pournelle's blog, The View from Chaos Manor, has been published for years in BYTE and reminds me at first blush of Robert Heinlein's "Rumbles from the grave."

Gawd! Enough about rights already!

I have my own business, investments, a family, and I'm a productive member of society. I am proud of my family's history, part of which came to Canada in the 1600's and set about right away helping to build a new nation on the banks of the St. Lawrence. The other part walked here over the Asian land bridge and has been in this land most likely since before the last ice age. Bearing in mind my aboriginal heritage, it's telling that I felt it necessary to start this post with the affirmation that I am a productive member of society.

I haven't commented previously in this blog about aboriginal issues; not about injustice, nor the widespread drug and alcohol abuse, rampant fetal alcohol syndrome, the family violence problems, nor the unemployment problems on the reserves and metis settlements. Aside from a few incidents in the past, I haven't seen much of these problems first hand. I don't live in an aboriginal community. My Parents do. And when we visit them, some of the stories we hear make it seem as if those problems I listed don't seem to be going away.

This is despite the Feds pouring over 9 Billion dollars into the Dept. of Indian affairs last year. (Thanks Tim, I wasn't sure where to look that one up) That's almost as much as the Defense budget ($13 Billion). 9 Billion dollars ought to buy a lot, But the people who seemed to benefit the most appear to be civil servants!

As a taxpayer I'm getting pretty damn sick of the way certain 1st Nations special interest groups are demanding the Federal government give them more money. More so those who promulgate to all who can hear them that their claim on the public purse is damn near a law of nature and should not be questioned. On August 4th Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine told CBC's 'as it happens' that only 40 BILLION DOLLARS would be needed to 'give them closure.' This was in connection with their their August launch of 4 class action lawsuits against the Federal government for the residential schools thing and other historical 'wrongs'. Canada's mid stream media virtually ignored the story, and those outlets that carried it only mentioned one of the class actions, and part of the money demands. Last week, the Corus Radio Network's talkshow host Dave Rutherford hosted Jason Goodstricker, a Regional Chief for the "Assembly of First Nations." Rutherford, one of those rare conservative-minded media guys, was asking for some guesses about how much money did Goodstricker or the AFN thought it would take to solve the first nations worse problems.

Now I usually change the station when one of these Professional-Indians ( job title: Indian ) starts telling us how the 'white man' (they actually mean all taxpayers, not just caucasians ) owes them so much money, (Public-service unions affect me the same way). They don't have solutions to offer outside of (little boy voice, english accent) "Please sir, may I have some more?"

A century of indifference capped by 30 years of frantic liberal guilt money has created a multi-generational welfare dependancy that has ruined a people. The best thing for the First Nations people (not the organization) would be if Canada actually lived up to Trudeau's damned charter of rights (and abuses)that states all Canadians are equal. If it was up to me, I'd wean them from their special status, and tell 'em they got the same franchise everyone else has. I'm not arguing for assimilation, I'm arguing against perpetuating welfare dependancy. Besides, we've too many soft-headed fuzzy bunnies running the country to allow this victim group to assimilate into society. I mean, then what would all those poor displaced civil servants do?

At one time the first nations people were hunter-gatherers, but they've now had at least four or more generations to catch up with western civilization. Have they? What kind of pathetic losers still need special status to cope after all this time? I'll tell you. A people that have been taught by the welfare state to be pathetic.

I wish I was the King.

Lets Help Justice Gomery, Shall we?

I was perusing TABaker's blog, (some damn fine ideas there too) and found he'd posted a link on his Edmonton Blog page that every one of us should follow up. One of my biggest resentments of the Canadian system is the absolute indifference the Governing Liberals and their Federal Government have towards non-liberals outside of the Toronto-Ottawa-Quebec triangle. Tim has a link for us to tell Justice John Gomery what recommendations he should be making in the wake of the multi-million dollar Liberal Party embezzlement program known as the 'Sponsorship Scandal'.
Here it is:

As we all know, former Prime Minister Jean Chretien gave Justice Gomery a mandate to find out what happened, but NOT to point fingers and lay blame for the fraud, embezzelment, and outright theft of tax dollars. (Things that make you go: hmmmm...) How do you report what happened without saying who dun nit?
Yesterday the Liberal Party's current crimelord, Mr. Paul ("I'll fix the democratic deficit") Martin, has just rigged the political calendar so that any potential election won't be fought in the immediate aftermath of Gomery's emasculated report.
We have to flood Gomery with demands that his recommendations will give us retributio- er, I mean, Justice!

Both the timing and circumstances of Justice Gomery's reports appear to have been manipulated to minimize political damage to the governing Liberal Party in the wake of yet another corruption scandal. Justice Gomery's recommendations should include vigorous Criminal Prosecution of the individuals and organizations involved, and HARSH penalties like full reparations and tons of JAIL TIME for the same. This is not to include the current typical Liberal Government penalty of firing a scapegoat and then appointing them to an Ambassadorship or seat in the Senate.

Well, I've taken advantage of this offer for lil' ol' everyday Canadians to provide some input into Justice John Gomery 's report. So should you.





correction: Tim has told me that blogroll Edmonton isn't his, it was organized by Dino over at BPoC.

No comment needed

Bill of Rights - Common Sense

My buddy Bill "Catfish" Byrom sent me this, attributing it to State Representative Mitchell Aye from GA. I can't find Aye listed on the current congressional website, but it's still worth reading:

"We the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid more riots, keep our
nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-great-grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt ridden, delusional, and other liberal bed-wetters. We hold these truths to be self evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim they require a Bill of NON-Rights."


ARTICLE I: You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV, or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.


ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone -- not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc.; but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.

ARTICLE III: You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful, do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.

ARTICLE IV: You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes. (This one is my pet peeve...get an education and go to work....don't expect everyone else to take care of you!)

ARTICLE V: You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in public health
care.

ARTICLE VI: You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.

ARTICLE VII: You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat, or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don't be
surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won't have the right to a big screen color TV or a life of leisure.

ARTICLE VIII: You do not have the right to a job. All of us sure want you to have a job, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to
take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful. (AMEN!)

ARTICLE IX: You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to PURSUE happiness, which by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an over abundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.

ARTICLE X: This is an English speaking country. We don't care where you are from, English is our language. Learn it or go back to wherever you came
from! (lastly....)

ARTICLE XI: You do not have the right to change our country's history or heritage. This country was founded on the belief in one true God. And yet, you
are given the freedom to believe in any religion, any faith, or no faith at all; with no fear of persecution. The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST is part of our
heritage and history, and if you are uncomfortable with it, TOUGH!!!!