Grandinite

Ed Stelmach believes the surging loonie will hurt the government’s war on Alberta’s provincial deficit.
Edmonton Journal: Surging loonie hurts Alberta deficit fight: As Canadian dollar climbs in value, provincial revenues drop, premier says
The rising loonie is bad news for Alberta’s efforts to reduce a projected $4.7-billion deficit, Premier Ed Stelmach said Wednesday.
Every one-cent annualized [...]

The latest nuggets sifted from the internet detritus:
Steyn, in the Washington Times :
What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are [...]

I was just checking the latest howler from the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, written by Ken Boessenkool, also known as Stephen Harper’s pointman for GSK and Taser International. The “paper” is a prime example of policy thinktanks committing serious errors of omission in a quasi-academic paper meant to sway public [...]

A moving picture is worth at least a million words, so I am blogging with videos here.

The day before his appendix burst, Glenn Beck had this to say:

Glenn Beck Hospitalized With Appendicitis, Has Surgery

These videos contain facts on H1N1, from a former doctor turned nun. Sister Teresa Forcades lays out the facts on swine flu, gleaned from mainstream news articles, academic journals and official government documents. It’s in Spanish, but with English subtitles. I applaud her sincerity in trying to provide an objective evaluation of this much-hyped subject. [...]

It’s pretty clear the Media Punditocracy doesn’t like people who question the efficacy and safety of vaccines:
Katzenjammer: What we need is a vaccine against pseudo-science
Colby Cosh: Swine flu and the new “weird-ists”
Christie Blatchford Flu-shot skeptics weave a Web of lies
It’s like some sort of Public Health McCarthyism is emerging. One can’t have questions and [...]

Vaccine makers are exempt from liability.
Vitamin D Might Protect Against H1N1 Flu
Well, Well, Well: H1N1 Vaccine: Trust and risk

I’m one of those people who believes animals can sense things we humans cannot. Animals can seemingly detect tremors and tsunamis, and I’m starting to think they are sensing a potential earthquake in Alberta politics.

McDougall Centre, GOA
Last week, specifically September 22nd, I was walking to work in downtown Calgary, right past McDougall Centre, [...]

Something doesn’t sit right with me in these two news stories about swineflu vaccines for Albertans and Canadians. It’s pesky little words like “entire population” and “all Albertans” that get my attention:
Windsor Star: Vaccinate Canadians under 40 and natives first: experts
Five-to-40-year-olds and Canada’s aboriginal communities should be the first to get vaccinated against human swine [...]

Check out these headlines. You’d almost think the US was preparing for a terrorist attack originating in Canada. It seems inevitable.
New border rules create ‘invisible Berlin Wall’: mayor
Mohawk Warriors vow to storm border post
U.S.-Canada border closed by Akwesasne protest of guns at crossing

Here’s the latest from PBS Frontline: Ten Trillion and Counting.

I’ve been offline for a few days due to an unfortunate turn of events involving a VISA renewal and a poorly timed billing query by my hosting provider to said VISA account. It sucks to get billed by a company when you’re in VISA limbo. I thought this blog was as good as dead, thinking [...]

The most obvious beneficiary of a coalition government in Ottawa are those who subscribe to the ideas of western separatism. Thus, western separatists ought to support a coalition government and let it do its damage to this country. Let the country fail, and let’s get on with it. Most likely, though, a western separatist bloc [...]

Wait a minute – isn’t the government my friend? Don’t they look out for my own best interests when I lovingly pay my taxes to the corporation known as Canada?
Why is everyone so pissed off about $1.95?
Is Harper’s finance plan an effort to destroy the Liberals financially, or is it a sound belt-tightening policy? If [...]

The Globe & Mail’s latest boost to the collective economic idiocy quotient comes to us, courtesy of Carolyn Ireland’s latest piece entitled: Real estate gets the Obama boost. Several commenters have already pointed out that the article has no clothes, and I figured I’d do the same.
While the United States basks in the warm [...]

Last night I watched Jared Diamond’s Ted Talk on why societies collapse.
If you watch it, you’ll learn about his five main criteria for social collapse, but the most interesting criteria has to do with temporal preference, or the tendency for elites to maximize their own short-term gains at the expense of the long-term interests [...]

Hey, I fired up a picture blog of Obama supporters crying.

obamapeoplecrying.tumblr.com

A guy goes down to a polling station in Philly and finds some dudes holding nightsticks out front. Of course, Fox News is all over this story. Is whitey just afraid of the black man, or is it racism in media coverage of this particular instance? Either way, I don’t want to see cops or [...]

Let’s say you’re Dick Cheney, and you know you have the opposite of Midas’ touch in that everything you come in contact with is tainted by a dirty tinge of oil and creepiness. You’re Dick Cheney, member of the military-industrial complex rentier class that’s been profitting off war spending. You don’t need no “Mavericks” clawing [...]