Comments on The Burd Report: Friday Fluff

Those in the middle class unlucky enough to lose t...

2009-03-09T11:58:00.000-04:00

Those in the middle class unlucky enough to lose their jobs will find out there is something in poverty reduction for them. The Liberals are poised to allow people to hang on to some assets and still qualify for welfare. Right now the asset level is the same as they would pay a family or single person for l month (the amount is different according to family composition). A single can keep slightly less than $600, hardly much of a nest egg for retirement. Hockey card collections count too!
DJO

Thanks, Ben, for the comment about Colborne Counci...

2009-03-08T15:34:00.000-04:00

Thanks, Ben, for the comment about Colborne Council giving the transit van a flat tire.

And thanks, DJO, for your insight and hard work on this issue.

The middle class response to poverty reduction is always the same: What's in it for us?

There is not one iota of evidence indicating that ...

2009-03-06T17:40:00.000-05:00

There is not one iota of evidence indicating that I claimed that the socialist left "is responsible for everything that is bad in the world." I was quite specific with my remarks in that regard. Your assertion that I did make such a claim is spurious at best. In the abscence of any other facts, my contention stands as is.

I don't think you're dumb about the identity issue -- I suspect more that you just couldn't care less about the technical fidgitry; the equivalent of me not bothering to make an effort interpreting unobtrusive initials tucked in the lower left corner.

Not going to be dragged into this argument; no tha...

2009-03-06T13:25:00.000-05:00

Not going to be dragged into this argument; no thanks. My point was simply that religion belongs at home and in church/mosque/synagogue, not in public life.

It is interesting to know though that the "socialist left" is responsible for everything that is bad in the world. I didn't know that until Wally told us. I could not figure out where that gentleman was coming from but now I understand.
DJO
(that would stand for Deborah Jean O'Connor by the way, I'm too dumb to figure out the technicalities of identifying myself properly on the blog, being just a lowly typist with uppity ideas).

Nothing to be sorry about. Sid and Salutin are let...

2009-03-06T12:58:00.000-05:00

Nothing to be sorry about. Sid and Salutin are lethally stupid in this regard.

5,400,000 deaths in Congo compared to a few thousand in Palestine. The socialist left couldn't care less.

Sudan murders 300,000 in Sudan compared to a few thousand in Palestine. The socialist left couldn't care less.

Mugabe was installed into power by the socialist left and while Zimbabwe sinks into more cholera deaths and counting than Palestinians, the socialist left couldn't care less.

I guess Sid & Salutin and most of the left have their priorities correct -- they speak 1/1,000th the truth.

The issue is not religion. The issue is not anti-Semitism. The issue is that the left ignores the most henious crimes against humanity on the planet, preferring instead to spend all its political capital on a 3rd or 4th rate issue.

I'm talking about political stupidity with lethal consequences. That's the truth that Sid and Salutin talk. They, like many of their followers, are deaf to everything else.

I do notice, anonymous, that you presented not a single arguement to explain why you prostate at the holy words of inSIDcere and SALUTINesque. Nothing.

On Cramahae Council de-funding the transit van:
2009-03-06T12:56:00.000-05:00
On Cramahae Council de-funding the transit van:

Another public transportation push - our 3rd try - bites the dust. So much for poverty reduction.

Now we'll see if the much praised poverty reduction committee can strong arm County Council (officially a big player in that initiative)to ante up with funds to keep the service going. Maybe the Health Unit could chip in too, they're big boosters of the transportation group. Or do the big players only talk about all this?
DJO

Disappointed that the defeat of John Tory didn't g...

2009-03-06T12:39:00.000-05:00

Disappointed that the defeat of John Tory didn't get its own category here since dissecting the results would be very interesting.

Are they going to have to drag him away kicking and screaming? Even after this latest defeat Tory said he was still thinking about his future! What's left to think about, better to get packing NOW.

This is a classic case of noblesse oblige. He and whoever his supporters were clearly believed just having the right credentials would do the trick, and the plebes would fall into line once faced with the man's slick suits and smarmy good manners. For once, they were wrong.

Seems to me what's left of the formerly great Progressive Conservative Party in Ontario is the elderly reformer types who want to turn the clock back to the 50's and somehow force Ontario into the dim past where immigrants and women knew their place.

Who, among the bunch of mostly hard right tory MPPs will get the leader's job now? It may be that many of us would prefer Tory after all.
DJO

The only answer is to restrict religion to being n...

2009-03-06T12:28:00.000-05:00

The only answer is to restrict religion to being nothing but a personal private matter and leave it the hell out of public/civic/social/government life altogether.
Religion is likely the biggest killer of human life we've got, along with territorial disputes.

Not that I expect my solution to ever happen! Those zealous religious passions won't be quelled.

But sorry Wally, I greatly respect both Sid Ryan and Rick Salutin, and they speak truth to me!
DJO

I have little problem with people dumping on Israe...

2009-03-06T09:13:00.000-05:00

I have little problem with people dumping on Israel being anti-Semitic, but I do have a problem with Israeli-bashers being extraordinarily hypocritical about it.

The issue is apartheid. There is a massive, deeply embedded and violent gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Muslim-governed nations. There is a violent exclusionary fence being constructed between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. There is the apartheid of Mecca where only the superior Muslims can enter that city. Christians and Jews and any other non-Muslim is excluded from from all forms of government. Christians cannot build a single place of worship, expose a small cross on a necklace to public view. Converts from Islam are killed, officially. Talk about apartheid!!!

There are Palestinian university students in Israel. There are Palestinians in the Knesset. There are Palestinians throughout the Israeli government, including their Supreme Court. How many Jews, or even Christians, for that matter, have the same treatment in the Middle East Muslim counties? Non-Muslims are dhimmis, a people that are set aside (set apart aka apartheid) for official and social second class citizenship at best.

Gays are murdered officially or unofficially in Palestinian turf, and in many of their allied Muslim countries. Palestinian gays have fled to Israel for their lives.

In 1967 a gang of Arab/Muslim counties assembled their military might with the sole and exclusive purpose of wiping Israel off the map. The numbers massively favoured them against the Israelis. Fortunately the only democracy in the region had the intelligence to use their first class weapons adroitly and beat back the aggressors. As a result of that existential aggression, the Israelis had every right to occupy and control the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Golan Heights.

The West Bank and Gaza were not Palestine; they were Jordan and Egypt. Jordan and Egypt were pleased to wash their hands of the troublesome Palestinian people and abandoned them. Egypt & Jordon made peace with Israel and Israel has never attacked either ever since.

Israel Apartheid week is a hypocrite fest. CUPE's Sid Ryan wants Israeli universities to feel the hurt, even though they have Palestinian students. The Palestinian University deliberately excludes Jews from their University. Hmmm. And the Palestinian University has been utilized by Hamas as a launching pad & storage for munitions and militants. Hmmm.

The Muslim Ummah is populated by over a billion adherents. The Middle East is populated by hundreds and hundreds of millions of Arabs, and 6-7 million Jews. The Middle East covers a vast area compared to the sliver of land for Jews. The United Nations Human Rights (fraud) Commission & General Assembly over the years has passed a multitude of resolutions condemning Israel and over the years narry a one against any any nation of the Ummah.

And then there is the utter stupidity of people using the word "genocide" in terms of what Israel do to the Palestinians. In the conflict with Israel, people yap yap yap about the disproportionate body count. Oh yes, that matters. The Israelis have killed thousands and thousands of Palestinians. Tsk tsk. Take a look at the death toll of Congo over the years and it numbers several millions. Where is the MSM concern? Where is the concern of any socialist activist about this massive disproportionate body count. Does the Congo get a week of attention anywhere? Does the Sudan get a week of attention for its continuing slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Darfur?

Spare me the piling-on whine-fest against the apartheid genocidal baby-murdering Israelis. I don't call them anti-Semites. I call Sid Ryan, Salutin, and their sympathizers hypocritical ethical fraudulant and lethally stupid. The apartheid is in the small malformed brains of Israeli-bashers and their ilk.