Saturday, December 25, 2010

Friday, December 24, 2010

Niagara Falls Santa

Santa was truckin' down Victoria Ave. in Niagara Falls, heading over to his sleigh for the long night shift ahead.

Wasn't the Holodomor a holocaust?

Peter Worthington wrote in Stalin's starvation of Ukraine omitted (Toronto Sun, Dec.22, 2010):
"With Christmas just two days away, this may seem an odd topic for the season of goodwill and joy. Then again, maybe not.

The question begs: How can you have a federally-financed museum of human rights that does not included the Ukrainian Holodomor, the starvation of some seven million Ukrainians in 1932-33 by Stalin?

The answer is you can't, not if it's going to truly be a museum that "increases understanding and awareness about human rights," as it promises.

At this moment, the celebrated Canadian Museum of Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg, the brainchild of the late Izzy Asper and energized by his daughter Gail, has only two permanent galleries: A Holocaust gallery and an Aboriginal Peoples gallery.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) is upset there's little mention of the Ukrainian famine, perhaps the only man-made famine in history, that Stalin implemented to bring Ukraine to heel and to eliminate a huge proportion of Ukrainians who resisted collectivization and communism.

It was genocide of the first order.

It succeeded.

It scarred the conscience of Ukrainians, and every civilized person who was aware of it.

At the time, the New York Times correspondent in the Soviet Union, Walter Duranty, believed Stalin's propaganda and was an apologist for the system. He never identified the famine for what it was, and was rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize, which many have urged be revoked in light of his deceit and abandonment of journalistic integrity.

There are some 1.2 million Ukrainian Canadians, most with distant connections to those who died in the Holodomor. By contrast there are some 325,000 Jews in Canada, many with links to the Nazi Holocaust. In actual numbers, Jews are the 15th largest "ethnic" group in Canada (assuming that term is applicable, which I'm not sure it is), while Ukrainians are the ninth largest ethnic group.

Ukrainians feel their Holodomor should be acknowledged in the CMHR, since the federal government contributed $100 million, to go along with the $115 million raised by private contributions, and $40 million by Manitoba and $20 million from the city of Winnipeg.

If the museum is to be national in character, it's essential the Ukrainian genocide be included, if only to alleviate criticism the initial intention of the museum was to commemorate the Jewish Holocaust.

While every ethnic or national group cannot get equal exposure, Ukrainians have a valid cause as a designated target of Soviet repression.

The internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War was a human rights violation, but it gets almost greater exposure in the National War Museum in Ottawa than the Japanese abuse of Canadians prisoners of war captured at Hong Kong.

Some see that as misguided political correctness.

The first of the "modern" holocausts, or massacres, was of Armenians between 1915-18, when Turks sought to eliminate them. Deported or massacred, the death toll is uncertain but estimates range between 600,000 and 1.5 million.

But Armenia isn't a high priority in Canada, though it gnaws at the conscience of an estimated 50,000 Canadians who are of Armenian origin.

Although the permanent galleries have already been announced, Angela Cassie, spokeswoman for the CMHR, has been quoted saying "the content of the museum is not set in stone," which is an indication common sense will prevail and the Ukrainian Holodomor will somehow be included."
*

It simply is astounding - here, in Canada, in 2010 - that the Holodomor genocide could still be overlooked and relegated to the status, not of a massive politically-orchestrated human rights horror - but of just some unfortunate old famine.

What must we do - still - to make common sense prevail?
*

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Singing the same failed health-care tune

Scott Stinson wrote in Harper's Liberal approach to health care, (National Post, Dec.17, 2010):

"The waning days of a Parliamentary session that is about to break for six weeks seems an odd time for an opposition party to adopt a new message. But there were the federal Liberals this week, once again giving conventional wisdom the finger.

A trio of MPs delivered speeches on the new subject on Tuesday, then on Wednesday leader Michael Ignatieff used it as his first line of attack on Stephen Harper in Question Period.

"Mr. Speaker, Canadians wait for hours in hospital emergency rooms and patients languish in the hallways. The Canadian health system needs help, but the government has ignored the issue for four or five years," he said. "How can [the Prime Minister] expect Canadians to trust his government to protect our public healthcare system?"

Health care? Really?

Mr. Harper responded, of course, that the Conservative government loves the healthcare system to bits (I'm paraphrasing here) and that it was the dastardly Liberals who cut transfers to provinces back in the dark days of the Chretien era.

Mr. Ignatieff was undaunted. The federal-provincial accords signed in 2004 (under the Liberals) that increase transfers to provinces by 6% a year in order to fund health care run out in 2014, he noted. The government has not committed a penny of new money beyond that, he said. "How can Canadians trust the government to defend public health?" he said.

This is a puzzling strategy. Mr. Ignatieff's own question acknowledges that the government is locked into four more years of increasing health funding. Is there really much to be gained by banging on about what the Tories plan to do about 2015? At our present rate, we could easily have two elections between now and then. Three, even.

But aside from trying to give urgency to a problem that's barely on the horizon, what's odd about the sudden Liberal focus on health care is that it's a subject on which the government's approach has been decidedly Liberal.

"The Prime Minister is heard to muse about how he would like to get rid of the Canada Health Act," Mr. Ignatieff said on Wednesday. But Mr. Harper has made no such musings since he became leader of the federal Conservatives. Here's what he told my colleague John Ivison during the last election: "I support innovation within the confines of the Canada Health Act -- that's the position of all provincial governments. We particularly support innovation in the delivery of service but in the end we believe there must be a public insurance system."

This does not sound like a call for revolution.

Whether it was MP Maxime Bernier's call for the end of the Canada Health Transfer, former Alberta premier Ralph Klein's suggestion that the government must back away from a "strict interpretation" of the Canada Health Act, or any number of studies from places as diverse as the Fraser Institute and the OECD that say Canada needs to change the present single-payer public system, the Harper government has refused to take the bait. Most significantly, when Quebec announced plans in the spring to introduce a $25 user-fee, the federal health ministry refused to take a position, saying it needed to study the proposal. That study became moot when Quebec backed down in September.

All the evidence suggests the Tories want no part of serious discussions about health-care reform, presumably because it remains one of those things that polite Canadians just do not talk about.

I was in an editorial board meeting last year with the then-president of the Canadian Medical Association, who discussed at length the need for Canada to consider the example of Europe, where private delivery of public care is widely accepted. Robert Ouellet was kicking off a campaign to bang the drum about the importance of change. It went nowhere, even with a Conservative government in Ottawa.

If Stephen Harper was interested changing the public health system, why would he have passed up a number of opportunities to at least begin to walk down that road?

The historian Michael Bliss wrote last month a pretty biting criticism of Canada's infatuation with the present system.

"Despite the system's popularity and iconic status; despite the belief by many Canadian health experts that the Canada Health Act system ... is the best way to deliver modern health care; and despite years of nationalist proclamation that Canadian health insurance ought to be a model to the world (and especially to the United States), no [other] country has adopted the Canadian model," he wrote.

But you'll only hear arguments like this from historians and think-tank researchers these days. Not from politicians, for whom health-care reform remains the issue that dare not speak its name."

*

It's FLICKING HILARIOUS how Liberal Iggy doesn't ask how any Ontarian can trust Liberal Premier Liar Dalton McGuinty's failing health-care monopolism!
McGuinty's Liberal liars have complete control of health-care in Ontario - including, of course, in Iggy's own Toronto riding.
Don't patients in Iggy's own riding 'languish for hours in hospital hallways, waiting for health-care' in McGuinty's Liberal-controlled Ontario health monopoly?!!!!
Has Ignatieff bothered to publicly question and demand better health-care delivery from McGuinty and Deb Matthews, who are the Liberals actually in charge of propagating that very same health monopoly which Ignatieff is complaining about?!?
Is Iggy telling us that McGuinty - along with all the other Canadian provincial premiers - would now like to cede control of their provincial health-monopoly systems to the feds??
Does anyone remember Iggy ever whining about Paul Martin's deficit-fighting Liberal health care cuts?!! ...oh yeah - Iggy wasn't in Canada at the time...
[Why is health care now suddenly so (supposedly) important to Iggy? Wasn't Iggy's big cause the ever-so-popular EI reform?! What about 'the environment'? Doesn't Iggy care about 'global-warming' anymore?!! Or will he wait till spring to spout on about that?! Under Stephane Bumbledore Dion, the Liberals' priority was not health-care, but the pushing of shifty kyodiot GreenFear!]
Iggy - once again - is floundering on health-care, having nothing original to say but the same tired, predictable old Liberal health-care fearmongering and innuendo.
As Stinson points out so obviously, Iggy's stance on the over-hyped sanctity of the failing CHA [sadly, despite Michael Bliss' accurate observations] is the same as the Conservatives!
And that is unfortunate for all Canadians.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Another patient forced to travel to Buffalo for "universal" health-care unavailable in Ontario

Tom Blackwell wrote in "Ontario told to pay for U.S. surgery" (National Post, Dec.15, 2010):

"Suffering headaches, vomiting and imbalance, Suresh Kapur was diagnosed with bleeding on the brain when he showed up at a Toronto-area hospital, then given an “urgent” follow-up appointment with a neurosurgeon — three days later.

The retired professional engineer decided to seek out a second opinion in Buffalo, N.Y., that same day, only to have doctors there rush him into the OR, believing “there were absolutely no grounds” for waiting longer. Now the patient has won a year-long battle to get Ontario’s medicare system to cover his U.S. costs, reviving questions about Canada’s stretched brain surgery resources and reliance on the United States to fill the gaps.

Though the situation has improved markedly in Ontario since the government poured new money into the field, the province still sends an average of close to two people a week to the U.S. for emergency brain operations, a situation specialists call unacceptable. Other provinces also transfer patients out of the country for some neurological treatment.

Mr. Kapur’s surgery in the U.S. was not approved in advance by the Ontario health-insurance program — known as OHIP — and it refused to pay his bills, saying it was not convinced his condition was an emergency. The province’s Health Services Appeal and Review Board ruled in his favour this month, however, ordering OHIP to pay for the operation.

Mr. Kapur, 70, said he believes his life was saved by the fact he has medical connections in the family — including a son-in-law who is a doctor in Buffalo — and worries about others in the same situation.

“The system is in serious trouble,” he said. “I was recently back in Buffalo and all the doctors who had seen me, all talked about this case and they all said, ‘How can this happen?’ ”

In fact, many patients are dispatched directly by Ontario hospitals to the United States. In the six months that ended Sept. 30, Ontario sent 41 pre-approved patients for emergency neurosurgery in the States, mostly Buffalo, at a cost of about $4.1-million, or $100,000 per case. That compares to 202 transfers in 2009-10 and 120 the year before, said Dave Jensen, a spokesman for the Ontario Health Ministry.

The government has provided an extra $400,000 to each of the province’s 10 neurological centres to help them handle more patients, he said. A deal to provide even more funding has just been signed with hospitals that should bring about further improvements, said Dr. R. Loch Macdonald, head of neurosurgery at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital. But he acknowledged the situation as it stands is not right.

“There’s definitely a problem,” Dr. Macdonald said. “The hospitals in Buffalo have intensive care set up to look after Canadian patients, and they’re paid handsomely to look after them.… We can provide better care, cheaper, in our hospitals in Ontario if we had the resources.”
The major roadblock is not a lack of surgeons, he said, but the other services the doctors need to provide the operations and hospital care afterward, he said.

It is common to refer a seriously ill patient to a neurosurgeon, only to be told the specialist would love to treat the person, but has no access to hospital beds for them, said Dr. Ed Klimek, president of the Association of Ontario Neurologists.

“This shouldn’t be happening,” he said. “A life-threatening situation, presenting in this province seven times a month, getting sent out of country for treatment.… Is that acceptable?”

Mr. Kapur said he had been having severe headaches last fall, then woke up in the night, vomiting and feeling confused, weak and faint.

A CT scan done after he visited a Mississauga, Ont., emergency department on Sept. 14, 2009, revealed he had a large subdural hematoma — a pool of blood between the brain and skull — with evidence of both chronic and recent, acute bleeding. Such conditions can be left to clear themselves up over time, or require immediate attention to prevent serious brain damage or death.

Mr. Kapur was referred to a neurosurgeon in Mississauga who agreed to see him on an “urgent” basis, offering up an outpatient appointment three days later on Sept. 17.

A son-in-law who happened to be a neurobiologist looked at his CT scan and “panicked,” suggesting he seek out a second opinion on whether he could wait three days for an expert examination. Another son-in-law who works as a doctor in Buffalo arranged for an appointment at a hospital there.

Based on his CT and other test results, the neurosurgeon who saw him said, “ ‘I thought I was going to see someone who was dead, or about to die,’ ” Mr. Kapur said. Within hours, the hospital performed an operation to drain the blood from his brain.

Statistics on out-of-country neurosurgery are harder to come by from other provinces. In Saskatchewan, seven neurological cases were sent to the United States last year. Alberta said it cold not provide statistics because of “privacy” reasons, while figures were not available from British Columbia. A spokesman for the Nova Scotia Health Department said that province treats all of its neurosurgery patients at home. "

*
Let's hear Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley - a McGuinty health care monopolist - once again laugh at and dismissively denounce the American health system: the same system which Bradley and his Canadian-flag-waving single-payer health-care monopolists keep on sending [in fact, FORCING] patients to, for falsely-promised health services which are strangely unavailable in Bradley's own state-run Liberal monopolist "health nirvana" of Ontario.

Once again, Buffalo's hospitals have helped treat and save another Canadian patient, but you won't hear Liberal hypocrite Jim Bradley thanking Buffalo's hospitals for their service. Jim Bradley refuses to provide details of how many Ontarians are being forced to leave Canada to obtain out-of-country health-care, care which was not available to them when they needed it at home, in single-payer Ontario.

Why don't McGuinty or Bradley or Matthews explain to Dr. MacDonald exactly why more resources aren't available to provide 'better care in Ontario'?!
Is it because Ontario Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty's idiotic health-care monopolism deprives the health-care system of resources? Is the state-run OHIP monopoly (controlled by McGuinty's Liberals) purposefully short-changing patients? Would de-monopolizing the state-run health-care apparatus allow for the system to have the proper resources necessary to meet patient needs?

Why isn't anyone looking into the patient-health consequences of McGuinty's Liberal health-care monopolism?

[Bear with me here: it's interesting how Ontario's medical officer of health, Arlene King, claims that the proliferation of George Smitherman's government-subsidized wind turbines throughout Ontario cause no ill health effects upon those living nearby, yet King did not interview any of the affected people nor conduct any independent studies. McGuinty's Liberal health minister Deb Matthews, predictably, is satisfied with this position. Yet the medical officer of health for Grey Bruce, Dr. Hazel Lynn, has nevertheless been asked by her Board to look into carrying out a study locally of the effects of living too close to wind turbines.]

Why then, similarly, aren't any of Ontario's local medical officers of health studying the effects upon their own local health-care systems of Dalton McGuinty's Liberal health-care monopolism?!

These local medical health officers throughout Ontario well know that patients are being told to wait for necessary care {...this is not even 'elective' care we're talking about, where time is not of the essence; this is necessary and immediate care.}
These medical officers know that Ontario patients are being forced to leave the country because necessary health care is not available - so why are Ontario's medical officers of health ignoring this?!



- Why is no medical officer of health, anywhere in Ontario, bothering to ask about THAT?!

That is a health care issue: it is the of fallout of false promises based on failed Liberal ideology, based on faulty monopolist/statist political policies.

- Why are Ontario's medical officers afraid to examine the dangerous toxicity to Ontarians of McGuinty's poisonous Liberal health care duplicity?

- How is it that Ontario's proximity to, and reliance upon, available American health-facilities, has now BECOME A COVERT PART of Liberal health-care policy in Ontario?!

- McGuinty's Liberal hypocrites are forced to send patients from Ontario's failing monopolist so-called 'Utopia' to medical facilities in the States - to facilities which would be ILLEGAL if they were located on the Canadian-side of the Niagara River, in Ontario's perverted ideologically-illogical single-payer health-monopoly!! 


Even premier McGuinty himself  has already admitted  that his Liberal health-care monopoly "can't deliver the best possible care within every Ontario community" - yet, McGuinty then negligently continues to propagate his failing statist single-payer health-care monopoly, as if it does (or even could) 'deliver the best possible care within every Ontario community'!!

That jarring incongruity is the very essence of McGuinty's Liberal health-care duplicity: McGuinty's admission shows that he knows full well that his single-payer health-care monopolism is a failing, fraudulent political charade; yet, his Liberals nevertheless continue to peddle their monopolist health-care pretensions with more illusory, ever-receding promises.

Why won't St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley support a coroner's inquiry into the death of Helen Harris, who was transported from St.Catharines to Buffalo N.Y. for health-care which was mysteriously, unexplainedly unavailable in Liberal Jim Bradley's own Liberal health monopoly in St.Catharines, Ontario??

Why isn't anyone in Ontario looking into the circumstances surrounding Helen Harris' death; into how it came to be that her health-care treatment - such as it was - had to be delivered not in Canada, but in Buffalo, New York?!!
Where was McGuinty's grandiose (criminally fraudulent) Liberal health-care monopoly when this Ontario patient actually needed it?

By taking the initiative to leave Ontario and head for Buffalo N.Y., Suresh Kapur was lucky enough to have survived Dalton McGuinty's and Jim Bradley's Liberal health-care house of horrors - it is obvious in Blackwell's report that Ontario's Liberal health-care monopoly utterly failed this patient; other Ontario patients - such as Helen Harris - were not as lucky. Are any Liberals accountable for this? Or are we just supposed to sweep these incidents under the rug, while bowing to the medicare-myths of Tommy Douglas?

Why have McGuinty's Liberals, Niagara's Regional health officer, and Ontario's chief coroner, ignored examining the circumstances surrounding Helen Harris' death in 2009? If it wasn't for his courage to escape McGuinty's Liberal-run Ontario health-care prison, we could have just as easily been reading about Suresh Kapur's death in 2009 - - - and nobody would care...

Certainly, no-one in the Liberal Jim Bradley butt-wiping Niagara press cared to ask their hero Jimmy about how Jimmy's monopoly failed Ms. Harris.

...[Still waiting for Naomi Lakritz to attack Kapur for leaving Canada to get health-care, the way she attacked Shona Holmes for doing the same thing!]...

Why can't Ontarians know the extent to which monopolistic, ideological Liberal health-care policies played in Helen Harris' death?
*

Festive Greenshevism

Julie Greco wrote in "Lighting up a green Christmas" (St.Catharines Standard, Dec.2010):

"If the Griswolds of Vacation fame went green, their house might resemble the Bloms' during the holidays.

"Christmas is when we go crazy," says Andrew Blom, who has spent countless hours over the past month transforming his front lawn at 41 Senator Dr. into a dazzling holiday wonderland.

About 10,000 lights take the shape of Christmas trees, wrapped presents, reindeer and snowmen, all programmed to blink to the beats of seasonal songs.

The beacon of light generated from the Bloms' postage stamp-sized lawn at the corner of Macturnbull Dr., makes it one of the neighbourhood's main attractions during the holidays.

"Last night, we had people dancing on the sidewalk in front of our house," said Andrew's wife Jamie.

At first glance, it might appear the family's spectacular light show is a drain on energy resources -- not to mention their hydro bill. But that's not the case.

Energy efficiency has been their focus for the past five years, thanks to their son Zack, now 14.

When Zack was in Grade 5 at Power Glen School, he became interested in environmental issues. One day, he came home from school and told his parents how they had discussed energy and waste in class.

"My teacher said when my parents were born, people didn't really know what they were doing to the environment," he said.

His parents remember it a different way.

" 'Energy pigs' was the word he used," Andrew remembered with a chuckle.

"He told us we were personally responsible for the demise of the Earth and that we had to fix it."
That was a dramatic turning point for the Bloms.

As owners of an energy business, they had always researched new, cutting-edge products and alternative energy sources such as solar and geothermal, but until then they hadn't practised what they preached at home.

"I was the type of person who never wanted to recycle. But since Zack came home that day, we're huge into it now," Jamie said.

Now the family has solar panels on their roof and their water is heated through solar power.

The Bloms' shift to environmental awareness happened to coincide with their decision to get charged up about the holidays by going all-out with their light display.

"You wouldn't believe it but before, he was like the Grinch. He didn't want to do anything," said Jamie.

"I said, 'Is this what you want Zack to remember?' That's when he turned into this."

But Andrew didn't want to sacrifice his environmental consciousness for his newfound festive spirit. By opting for LED lights, his whole Christmas light display is powered by the same amount of energy it takes to run five 100-watt light bulbs.

"People always assume that our hydro bills must be out of control, but it's less than it was before," said Jamie.

"The only energy it really consumes is all the hours and hours he spends putting up the lights and programming the music -- human energy."

But the effort is worth seeing the faces of local children light up during the holidays, said Andrew.
Zack agreed.

"At first, I thought it was obnoxious. But after all the people who come to see it, I feel like we're helping them enjoy Christmas a little more."

The clock is ticking for St. Catharines residents interested in participating in the city's sustainability study, to draft a sustainability strategy in 2011. The deadline for filling out the online survey is Tuesday. To take the survey or for more information about the study, visit www.stcatharines.ca"

*
Why doesn't the Standard reporter identify the Power Glen "teacher" who was - and perhaps still is - propagandizing his/her own green bolshevism to impressionable fifth graders?
Is this kind of GreenFear now officially part of Ontario's Liberal-approved greenshevik curriculum? That and watching endless reruns of Al Gore's Inconvenient Climate Deceptions? Don't ask Liberal MPP Jim Bradley for an answer - this is exactly the kind of greenshit doomsday-fearmongering which Bradley and his Liberals encourage: see Bradley's "greener ways to live" propaganda. Were the kiddies also given recommendations by their ClimateFear teacher on who their parents should vote for, as well?
Yep - apparently Blom is personally held responsible for helping save the Planet, because his parents were "energy pigs". And Obama was personally going to halt the 'rise of the oceans'! Praise be upon them.
But isn't the use of thousands of lights - even if they are LED's - still offensive to some dour Suzukiite, somewhere? Degrees of perception, eh... or is it degrees of deception?
Aren't suicide and sterilization the best methods for achieving the greenshevik goal of population control in order to save the Earth from exploding/flooding/melting/burning?
Someone - just go and ask Jim Bradley to explain what the FLICK was being "taught" in his city's schools then, around 2005! Which approved curriculum was the PowerGlenGreenshevik using - the belief in Kyoto and the Mann-made hockey stick graph?!
Scaring the shit out of children in Liberal Ontario might be fine for McGuinty's Liberals, but they are probably itching to do even more, like showing the latest United Nations 'educational video' where teachers BLOW UP STUDENTS who don't obey the Greenshevik Commandments.
Yeah, that's right - maybe McGuinty isn't going far enough in scaring the kids to repent for their collective 'enviro-crimes' - maybe it's time McGuinty's Liberals now show the kids how it feels to die for their parent's carbon sins.
"Seriously??" you ask?
Well, read for yourself Peter Foster's column "U.K.'s Climate Killers" (National Post, Oct.7, 2010):

"The uproar over the “eco snuff” video put out by British climate alarmist organization 10:10 is more than a minor embarrassment for the warmist cause. Ten ten is not just any old bunch of hysterical radicals. It is virtually a propaganda arm of the U.K. government. Moreover, thousands of corporations, local councils and schools have signed on to the group’s Orwellian “pledge” to reduce carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010.

The “satirical” video — which 10:10 posted last week but had to withdraw in the face of an angry backlash — consists of four segments in which, respectively, school kids, corporate employees, former French soccer ace David Ginola, and X Files star Gillian Anderson are told that there is “no pressure” to get onside with the carbon reduction program. Then, those who refuse to sign up (including Messrs. Ginola and Anderson) are blown up, with a great deal of splattered blood. Side-splitting! Literally.

When I first saw it, I thought it had to be a spoof of the insanities of environmental extremism. Who would believe that any green organization would cast themselves as potentially murderous eco fascists? What message could one take from the movie but “Those who fail to agree with us will die,” even if we’ll just kill them tongue in exploding cheek. But the video, which was written by Richard Curtis, who penned Four Weddings and a Funeral, was comedically dead serious.

Ten ten was set up by Franny Armstrong, who found instant St. Joan of Noah’s Ark status last year after making an hysterical movie called The Age of Stupid. The film featured a lone archivist looking back from a dystopian future and wondering how humanity could have gone so terribly, terribly wrong.

Virtually the entire UN turned up for the film’s New York premiere. And since Ms. Armstrong’s message was not a million miles from the suicidal climate-change stance of the British Labour Party, the movie’s London debut was attended by a gaggle of politicians, including then environment minister and now opposition Labour party leader Ed Miliband. “Red Ed” was ambushed by the film’s star, Pete Postlethwaite, who threatened to march up to the gates of Buckingham Palace and give back his Order of the British Empire if new coal-fired plants weren’t stopped.

Abasing himself further in order (obviously successfully) to further his political career, Mr. Miliband then agreed to “debate” Ms. Armstrong. The only problem was that they were both on the same side. Not to worry. Ms. Armstrong used the occasion to launch the 10:10 campaign.

Since “10% by 2010” is the kind of target beloved of those who delight in moving in (and leading) intellectual flocks, the entire British Cabinet had soon signed on, along with a raft of corporations, soccer clubs (such as Tottheham Hotspur, whose players appear in the movie) and miscellaneous trendies and publicity hounds. Since coming to power, Tory leader David Cameron’s new coalition government has also signed on. Presumably now he wishes it hadn’t.

The 10:10 organization issued an apology for the video. Sort of. “With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh.”

Make ’em chuckle all the way to the child psychologist.

Ms. Armstrong was more combative. She told The Guardian (a powerful 10:10 supporter) “Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody’s existence on this planet? Clearly we don’t really think they should be blown up, that’s just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?”

A little amputating.

Ms. Armstrong went on to provide her idea of perspective. “We ‘killed’ five people to make No Pressure — a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change.”

Here was a wonderful example of Ms. Armstrong’s facility with numbers. I counted at least seven people who were offed in the movie. As for those 300,000, that’s a whopper manufactured by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan’s private NGO, the Global Humanitarian Forum. In fact, there is no way of linking a single death to the impact of humans on the global climate.

What seems to have been utterly exploded is 10:10’s credibility. The video was designed to coincide with a series of events at next Sunday’s (10/10/10) “Global Day of Doing.” These included “sumo wrestlers cycling to training in Tokyo.” But now major corporations such as Sony, and climate “prophets” such as Yale’s Bill McKibben, are leaving the sinking 10:10 ship, and climate skeptics are having a well-deserved field day.

According to Mr. McKibben, another mystic numerologist who claims the world is doomed at any level of atmospheric carbon dioxide beyond 350 parts per million, the video “represents the kind of stupidity that really hurts our side, reinforcing in people’s minds a series of preconceived notions, not the least of which is that we’re out-of-control elitists.”

Right on! But the problem is that free-floating moralistas such as Ms. Armstrong have been inflated by the alarmism peddled by the likes of Mr. McKibben. Still, Ms. Armstrong did have some support. The child actor who played one of those spectacularly eviscerated declared: “I was very happy to get blown up to save the world.” "

*
Unreal: figurative enviro-snuff films for the kiddies!
'Blowing up' children to teach them a climatalarmist lesson! It's all fun!!
This is the greenshevism of the kyodiots, writ large.
So, dear sheeple, contact Jim the Liberal Kyodiot Bradley, and McGuinty's education minister Leona Dombrowsky, with demands that this extreme enviro-fascism be brought to Ontario immediately!
The GreenFear warmists have no time for energy pigs anymore - killing off the non-green heathen is the new GreenFear tactic.
The Power Glen GreenFear Prophet of Doom would love this, eh, what with the picking of victims based on gaian greenshevist enviro-moralism, shaming and 'killing off' sinful students who don't worship at the Green Altar of Gore, Dion, Suzuki, Bradley, and Ban Ki-Moon.
It's only a movie, eh... for now...
*

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Jim Bradley's climate snowjob

Isn't it wonderful to read in the Toronto Star, Dec.14, 2010 about how Liberal MPP Jim Bradley is looking after the interests of Ontarians?!
Yep, how about that - another snowjob from Jim Bradley!! Good Ole Jim Bradley - Ontario's Liberal green bolshevik global-warming climate-change fear-mongerer extraordinaire - is now graciously letting us know that hundreds of Ontarians - stuck on highways which have been closed due to all that ahem white global-warming around Sarnia - have been rescued.
Yet Jim Snowjob Bradley is one of those greensheviks who [along with David Suzuki, Al Gore, Stephane Bumbledore Dion, and Michael Moore] have been telling us that the earth is melting; the sky is falling; the floods are coming; the end is nigh! Bradley believes that global warming is one of the greatest threats to mankind!! In his global-warming delusionary state, Jim GreenFear TM Bradley - when he was McGuinty's Liberal Transportation Minister - even tried to blame global-warming for causing rust!!
Ironic how Liberal Kyodiot Bradley has to now explain why people have to be rescued from cars stuck on snowed in highways - where one person died. (It's just an 'anomaly', right Jim?! Snow is a 'climate extreme' now, eh, Jim, morphed from the a-bit-too-specific "global-warming" which you and McGuinty were peddling several years ago. Now it's 'climate change' - whatever that means!! You can bet that the Toronto Star sure won't be bothering to ask Good Ole Jimmy for his definition of 'climate change'!)
Kyoto-pusher Bradley still hasn't bothered to publicly reveal the pseudo-scientific evidence he was using to goad us into the idiotic Kyoto mess!!
C'mon, there Jimmy, you can tell us - was it that Mann-made hockey-stick graph which you tried to snow-job snow-bound Ontarians with?!
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Friday, December 10, 2010

Jim Bradley defends his Liberal's G20 secret Star-Chamber

What a load of exercise Good Ole Jimmy has had this week - so much standing up and sitting down and blowing hot air and exercising his propensity for blowhard rhetoric - during the four days of Question Period this week. Jim Bradley's Dec.9, 2010 Question Period performance was a great example of why McGuinty sent Bradley in to bullshit his way through the Bartolucci-blundered secret G20 law.
Bradley bullshitted his way through countless questions this week from the NDP and the PC's, never really answering any of them. He smugly tried to blame the federal Conservatives, Tim Hudak, and Andrea Horwath for HIS OWN LIBERAL GOVERNMENT'S INCOMPETENCE. It is pathetic how this smarmy Liberal goon Bradley operates.
Bradley continually gloated on about McMurtry's upcoming probe, yet, ignored that the parameters of McMurtry's probe have been predetermined by the Liberals!! Isn't that convenient, eh? Of course, Bradley didn't quite get around to telling us why McMurtry can't investigate the G20-fiasco-culpability of the Liberals themselves!
Bradley purposefully ignored making the link that not only was his Liberal law, for unknown reasons, mysteriously passed in secret, but then, was abused by the police in areas far removed from where Bradley now claims the law was meant to have been applied, ie. only within the security zone. Bradley refused to make this link between his secret Liberal law and how it was subsequently mis-used. Bradley refused to apologize for the civil-rights-violating fall-out.
Bradley purposefully perpetuated this disconnect, telling us that the passing of his (secret) law was meant for terrorists, but then ignored that his same law was used to attack peaceful (not violent) protesters in so-called designated gathering areas, nowhere near the security zone! So: are the people in these officially-designated zones, who had been arrested, detained, or assaulted by the police, 'terrorists' as far as Jim Bradley is concerned? Is that what they were to the McGuinty Liberal government?
That's the issue here, which Bradley is trying not to link - that the Liberals purposefully and inexplicably created secret legislation with their hasty PWPA amendment; then purposefully kept it secret; and then sat by and watched as their law was horribly abused by police, far away from where it was intended to apply. And then, remember, after the riot - McGuinty just vanished!!
It was McGuinty's Liberal Star-Chamber which instigated and created this civil rights fiasco. Bradley would like to portray the idea that the G20 meeting in and of itself was the cause, because it was 'a provocation', and so the Liberals had no choice but to create a new secretive war measures scenario all of their own. [McGuinty essentially also blamed the feds, on Sean Mallen's Christmas interview Dec.19, 2010, on Global TV]
It is absolutely shameful - but not surprising - that Jim Bradley is defending Bartolucci and his Liberal government's dictatorial actions. Both Bartolucci and Bradley should resign.
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also see here
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Thursday, December 9, 2010

What other secret laws do McGuinty's Liberals have?!

Grant Lafleche wrote in "Call grows for G20 inquiry" (St.Catharines Standard, Dec.9, 2010):

"Canada needs a full public inquiry into the G20 summit security scandal at the federal level, said John Pruyn, a Thorold resident arrested in Toronto last June.

"We need a unified body to look at everything that happened at the G20 together," he said Wednesday. "To have a judge look at this law they changed is a piecemeal approach ... all these serious incidents, they're inter-related."

In September, Justice Roy McMurtry was appointed to review an obscure law that was secretly amended before the G20 giving police the power to search and detain protesters. Ontario ombudsman Andre Marin blasted the provincial government's changes to the Second World War-era Public Works Protection Act in a report released Monday.

"The law should never have been changed in the first place -- we have a different constitution now," Pruyn said.

Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services Jim Bradley defended McMurtry's review, which is expected to be completed in the spring.

"He is a former chief justice and a former attorney general so, boy, will he be able to provide an excellent perspective on this," Bradley said.

On Wednesday, Premier Dalton McGuinty admitted his government "moved too quickly" and "failed to communicate" the changes to the law that allowed police to arrest protesters.

Bradley would not discuss the constitutional validity of the act, created in 1939, or the amendment made to it for the G20 conference in Toronto. However, he said he felt the amendment was not all that radical.

"It was just extending to the area inside the fenced security zone what is already in place now in courthouses and public buildings," Bradley said.

At the time of the summit, Toronto police also enforced a five-metre zone outside the fence -- which was not part of the amendment.

Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said the review by McMurtry is "well and good," but not that helpful

"There are already a lot of facts on the table," he said. "We have the ombudsman's report and other investigations. The question now is who will pay the price for enacting what amounts to war measures in the city of Toronto and then conspiring to keep it secret from the public."

Hudak urged Bradley's predecessor, Rick Bartolucci, who held the community safety portfolio at the time of the G20 conference, to "do the honourable thing" and step down from his current post as minister of municipal affairs and housing.

"I think the McGuinty government is hoping this will just go away. The Ontario PCs are not about to let this just go away," Hudak said.

John Pruyn's daughter Sarah Pruyn, who was also detained by police at the G20 summit, echoed her father's call for a public inquiry.

"I don't think it's enough," she said, referring to the ombudsman's report. "It's good, but it doesn't draw enough attention to the widespread violence or cover all instances of police brutality."

Police tore off her father's prosthetic leg and arrested him at Queen's Park last June.

"I'm still anxious and upset about what happened," John Pruyn said. "We were there for a legal protest. I want to know how police were trained, how this spiraled out of control." "


So finally a local reporter sort of interviewed and mentioned Liberal MPP Jim Bradley regarding the G20. That's a first since the Liberals created their controversial amendment!

Yet reporter Grant Lafleche didn't get around to asking Bradley why the Liberals kept the law secret from the public!!

On Dec.8, 2010 in Question Period Bradley trotted out that the ca.1939 PWPA was resuscitated because of potential terrorist threats - but Bradley never explained to the House why it was KEPT SECRET.

Lafleche didn't report asking Bradley why this Liberal-passed law was NOT immediately made public, but purposefully hidden for several weeks by McGuinty's Liberal government.

Lafleche didn't mention asking Bradley when exactly it was that Bradley himself knew of his own government's secret Liberal G20 law! (Great pre-Wrong-Righter reporting eh?!)

Laflech didn't report whether Bradley was asked to clarify the difference between McMurtry's fixed-terms-of-reference probe into the PWPA itself, vs. an investigation into HOW AND WHY THE EXISTENCE OF THIS LAW'S COVERT AMENDMENT WAS SUPPRESSED BY BRADLEY'S LIBERALS FROM THE PUBLIC.

The McMurtry probe is a but a sideshow to Bradley's Liberal government's complicity in the massive civil rights violations his Liberals created.

It's telling when Lafleche did report that "Bradley would not discuss the constitutional validity of the act" or the amendment which the Liberals made to the act.

The 'constitutionality' of what McGuinty's Liberals did, of course, is the whole point, isn't it?!

So that's why Bradley will babble on about anything else but that very issue!!

Lafleche reports Bradley telling us that the G20 amendment his Liberals made 'was not all that radical'.

Really?! So, it was no big deal, eh?

Yet Lafleche didn't report asking Bradley the far more pertinent follow-up question of why - if the Liberals' secretive amendment was supposedly so meek, so minor, so mild - the Liberals, after passing it, then KEPT IT SECRET!!! That's the point - isn't it?! Don't ask/don't tell seems to be the game here.

Lafleche didn't report whether Bradley was asked to comment on whether he agrees that Bartolucci should resign, or whether Bradley would support a public inquiry. (The Standard has still not bothered to report Bradley's reaction to this week's Auditor's report!)

See how Bradley syndrome works?

Jimmy's apparently the 'good guy' in all this!! Jim's here to fix everything! Jimmy's our Saviour!!

[Bradley also will never discuss the constitutionality of his Liberal single-payer health-care monopoly, either! Bradley also will not publicly reveal his 'scientific' basis for agitating for Kyoto back in the early 2000's!].

When Bradley says in Lafleche's story that the PWPA amendment "was just extending to the area inside the fenced security zone what is already in place now in courthouses and public buildings", was Bradley then asked by Lafleche why people such as Pruyn, who were in officially-sanctioned public areas - NOWHERE NEAR the fenced security zone! - were intimidated and brutally attacked by police?

Was Bradley ever asked these questions by the St.Catharines Standard - at any time since June?!

Was Bradley asked, but refused to answer? Or does the Standard only print tidbits of whatever scraps Bradley chooses to strategically toss their way, and remain obediently ahem non-investigative otherwise?

Who is looking into Jim Bradley's own role in his Liberals' secret G20 law?

Jim Bradley is the white-washing cover-up point-man for his Orwellian Liberal government; we almost expect Bradley to soon tell us, in all seriousness, that 'ignorance of our secret law is no excuse for breaking it; therefore, you are guilty of a secret crime under our secret laws, because you should have known that what you were doing - or thinking - was illegal.'
[!!!...?]

So now, dear sheeple, bend over and willingly submit to Jim Bradley's and Dalton McGuinty's secret Liberal desires.
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also see here; here
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Trust Jim Bradley to sweep his Liberal secret-G20-law under the rug

Antonella Artuso reported in " 'Martial law' imposed during summit: ombudsman" (Toronto Sun, Dec.8, 2010):

"Torontonions were effectively placed under martial law during the G20 Summit, says Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin.

The provincial government’s decision to secretly invoke an obscure 1939 war measures law to give police extreme powers to detain, search and arrest people was likely unconstitutional and unnecessary, Marin says in his report, Caught in the Act, which was released Tuesday.

Toronto Police also went beyond the unusual powers granted by the Public Works Protection Act regulation, using it inappropriately to stop and search possibly thousands of citizen across the downtown core in violation of their Charter rights, he said.

“For the citizens of Toronto, the days up to and including the weekend of the G20 will live in infamy as a time period where martial law set in the City of Toronto leading to the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history,” Marin said. “And we can never let that happen again.”

The now infamous Regulation 233 was quietly passed by the Dalton McGuinty government at the direct request of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair in the days leading up to the June summit.

“Regulation 233’s ground zero was in Chief Blair’s office. No other police agency wanted anything to do with this police regulation,” he said.

Ignoring warnings from his own staff that the legislation might be

problematic, then Community Safety Minister Rick Bartolucci agreed to the regulation, the report says.

The ministry made a conscious decision not to publicize the rule, essentially “entrapping” protesters who were unaware that their legal rights had changed dramatically, Marin said.

“Aside from a coterie of senior officials in government and the Toronto Police Service, no one else was aware of the existence of this regulation or the fact that it would trigger what amounted to martial law in downtown Toronto,” he said.

Blair, speaking after someone had already been arrested for approaching the fence, told the media at the beginning of the summit that the law gave officers the right to search and arrest anyone who came within five metres of that structure.

It was only after the weekend had passed that it became clear the

public had been misinformed and that the rule only applied within the fence.

Marin said he got “zero cooperation” from the police chief who said no to interviews on behalf of himself and his officers.

The Toronto Police Services Board issued a statement saying it expects lawful and professional conduct from its officers.

“The Board has confidence in Chief Blair’s commitment to upholding, at all times, the professional standards and core values of the service,” the statement says.

Community Safety Minister Jim Bradley, who was shuffled into the position after the G20 summit, said the government should have been more clear in notifying the public about Regulation 233.



The Public Works Protection Act is currently being reviewed by retired Chief Justice Roy McMurtry, and he expects that changes to the law will be recommended.

Marin has told the government that it should rewrite or drop the Act and take further steps to prevent similar abuses.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said it’s clear a public inquiry is needed to get at all the issues raised by the G20 Summit.

PC Leader Tim Hudak said Bartolucci, who’s still in McGuinty’s cabinet, should be fired.

McGuinty said Tuesday that he had not read Marin’s report but his government has welcomed and implemented the ombudsman’s recommendations in the past. "


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Unbelievable, isn't it: Ontario's ombudsman releases his report regarding the worst civil rights violation by government in Charter history - and yet the disgusting Liberal premier of Ontario claims HE HASN'T READ THE REPORT!!!

Seriously?!? He 'didn't read the report'??!!

Are we supposed to believe that McGuinty had SOMETHING BETTER TO DO than read this extraordinary report which outlines the frightening extent of McGuinty's fascist-style police state?!!!!!!! [That's an evasion tactic similar to Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's, who, just after the NHS's HIP report was released in 2008, told us he still had to read the report - and we've not heard his reaction to it ever since!]

The St.Catharines Standard newspaper, in Jim Bradley's own riding, has not once written a story providing a local interview with Jim Bradley about the G20, or, more recently, about the Auditor's 2010 report - see here.

No one in the local press has bothered to ask newly 'shuffled' [as Artuso makes great pains to tell us - as if that makes him somehow less suspicious!] Bradley - the puppet-master now in charge of the G20 limited-scope cover-up/ fake investigation, for cryin' out loud - to publicly reveal when he first learned of his own government's secret G20 law.

When exactly did Jim Bradley learn of his own Liberal government's secretive actions?

Why hasn't Bradley revealed that tidbit of information?

Isn't that important for the public to know, seeing as McGuinty 'shuffled' Jimmy to head the Liberals' sweep-the G20-under-the-rug campaign?

Where was Jim Bradley when his Liberal goons were passing secret laws and planning to violate our Charter of Rights with a virtual martial law? [Wasn't that exactly your dictatorial Liberal government's intent, Jim?] Where was Jim Bradley when the riots were occurring? What did Bradley do - prior to, and during, the riots - to subsequently deserve being promoted by McGuinty to become the Grit's Chief G20 Sweeper-Upper?

When Bradley says that his Liberal government "should have been more clear in notifying the public", is Bradley referring to himself also? Did Jim Bradley - McGuinty's new G20-Clean-Up/Cover-Up Man; the new Grit fox guarding the hen house - know about the G20 law for weeks prior to its public revelation? Did Bradley himself fail to warn Ontarians about his own Liberal government's secret G20 law? Or did Jim only find out about his Liberals' G20 law while watching the riots on TV?

McMurtry's limited-by-clever-Liberal-design 'probe' is about the old 1939 act, and not about what McGuinty's Liberal dictatorship did in enacting a secret law and then casually sitting by as the ugly aftermath unfolded.

McGuinty's Liberal cabinet should be indicted on criminal charges for what they purposefully created.
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[Shouldn't it be "Torontotonians" not ...onions?!]
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Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Liberal asshole Jim Bradley refuses to apologize for civil rights breaches caused by Dalton's secret G20 law

It's astounding: perusing the Dec.7, 2010 issue of the St.Catharines Standard, there is no mention at all (as I predicted) of Ontario Auditor Jim McCarter's recent 2010 annual report, which severely criticized the McGuinty Liberal government on numerous fronts. Of course, there is no mention in the Standard, either, of local Liberal scumbag MPP Jim Bradley; no reports giving us his reaction or comments regarding the Auditor's report. It's as if Good Ole Jimmy had nothin' to do with any of it!

Now today, we have Ontario's Ombudsman Andre Marin releasing his report on the Liberal's secret G20 law, as CTV (Dec.7, 2010) reported in "G20 law gave cops 'wartime' power, ombudsman says":

"The G20 summit regulation that expanded police search powers entrapped legitimate protesters and "likely" violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Ontario’s ombudsman said Tuesday.

"I'm convinced the regulation was unnecessary and probably illegal," Andre Marin told a news conference.

"Here in 2010 is the province of Ontario conferring wartime powers on police officers in peacetime."

He said the provincial government has indicated it will act on his main recommendation: revising or repealing the Public Works Protection Act, which dates back to the late 1930s.

The authorities used that act to develop a security plan for the summit, held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in the heart of downtown this summer.

That act was introduced shortly after Canada joined the Second World War, as part of an effort to protect public works infrastructure in Ontario by allowing police to question and search people near dams or electricity plants, as two examples.

The 1982 Charter limits police powers to search or detain people arbitrarily.

On June 2, the government quietly passed Regulation 233/10 to expand police powers.

The so-called "five-metre rule" was never publicized until after the G20 summit, held on June 26 and 27, had ended.

Marin said it should have been aggressively publicized.

"Perversely, by changing the rules of the game without real notice, Regulation 233/10 acted as a trap for the responsible -- those who took the time to educate themselves about police powers before setting out to express legitimate political dissent," he said in his report Tuesday.

The regulation was initially interpreted as allowing police to arrest anyone who came within five metres of the fence that ringed the G20 zone, and who refused to produce identification or allow themselves to be searched.

However, it should have only applied to people inside the security zone.

Marin said the regulation was really about expanding police powers at the three access points through the security perimeter that ringed the meeting site, and not protecting infrastructure. It did so by designating those gaps as public works.

Marin said this was probably illegal. "Nowhere does the Public Works Protection Act authorize the government to enact a regulation to protect people rather than places," he said.

"Apart from insiders in the government of Ontario, only members of the Toronto Police Service knew that the rules of the game had changed, and they were the ones holding the 'go directly to jail' cards," Marin wrote in his report.

Asked on June 29 if there was such a 'five-metre' rule, Toronto's Police Chief Bill Blair said, "No, but I was trying to keep the criminals out."

Blair has said he received clarification on the rule on June 25, but Marin said that didn't solve the problem.

"Throughout the weekend of the G20 summit, police exercised their powers under the Act well beyond the limits of the security perimeter, even after the misinterpretation on the part of the chief of the Toronto Police Service had been corrected," he said.

Blair didn't co-operate with the review and declined to allow Toronto police officers to be interviewed, Marin said.

Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash told CTV News that Marin doesn't have any jurisdiction over Toronto police.

Blair had been acting on advice from lawyers. When the lawyers said they were incorrect in their interpretation, Blair amended his order to his front-line officers, Pugash said.

Marin received almost 170 complaints from the public over the law. In response, he launched a review.

The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services didn't have bad intentions, but the government didn't find the right balance with respect to people's right to express legitimate dissent, he said.

Marin said if the government wants to use such a law to protect people and not infrastructure, it should clearly be spelled out.

He also wants the government to publicize when police powers have been modified by legislation, "particularly in protest situations."

Jim Bradley, the current community safety and corrections minister, agreed the government should have done a better job of communicating the law. But he declined to either apologize for any breaches of civil rights that may have resulted or to say the Liberal government had acted in secret.
In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, the Toronto Police Services Board issued a statement that it has commissioned an independent civilian review, which is currently underway.

The board supports the various reviews of G20 policing "and is satisfied that the Toronto Police Service, too, has extended similar support," it said.

The Ontario NDP say a full public inquiry is needed, but the Progressive Conservatives said one wouldn't be necessary if the government answered questions and had former community safety minister Rick Bartolucci resign from cabinet.""

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Jim Bradley - what a Liberal asshole.
It's astounding that the local newspaper, the St.Catharines Standard, in Jimmy's own city, has yet to interview secretive Jim Bradley about his government's role in the G20 secret law fiasco!! There have been no interviews with the secretive Jim Bradley about this issue in the Standard whatsoever!!
No comments from Bradley on the recent Auditor's report, either!!
Jim Bradley and his dictatorial Gang of Greasy Grit Goons violated Canada's Charter - yet even that isn't enough for the Standard's Bradley sycophants to even bother getting an interview from their hallowed Grit deity!! Bradley is inexplicably idolized and treated with the finest kid gloves by the local press; delicately protected and sheltered from controversy! Reporters frequently simply omit mentioning any word of Bradley (or even the Liberals!) when writing stories dealing with provincial issues. It's a bizarre habitual bias at the Standard, and quite noticeable. The unabated Liberal ass-kissing unabashedly continues.
We need a remedy beyond having that turd Bartolucci resign, beyond even a public inquiry: there should be a criminal trial on this, indicting McGuinty's entire cabinet.
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Monday, December 6, 2010

Time to finally bury Tommy Douglas

Andrew Hanon wrote in "Canada told to go Dutch in health" (QMI, Dec.7, 2010):

"The Fraser Institute wants Canada to lift a page from the Swiss and Dutch health-care playbooks.

According to the institute's Mark Rovere, both Switzerland and the Netherlands have a public health-care system, but all health insurance is private.

"Of course, the devil's in the details," Rovere said. "You have to regulate the insurance industry, but those are two countries that have zero wait lists and a universal health care system."

Rovere added that it makes better financial sense than our system, where everyone - no matter how wealthy - gets government-subsidized health care.

"We believe that is a better model and use of taxpayers' money. If you can afford to buy private insurance, there's no reason why you should have the state buy it for you."

But the head of Alberta's Friends of Medicare said there's no need to radically overhaul our current system. David Eggen said the government simply has to commit to fixing it.

"You can't fix wait times with empty rhetoric," he said. "You have to actually do something. Right now there's political paralysis. The events in the last weeks and months in Alberta have only reinforced that."

He said the government "clearly needs to increase capacity" in the health-care system. The biggest problem, he explained, is a shortage of people willing to work in health care.

"We already have a fairly intact single-payer system," Eggen said. "You just need to buttress that we should be able to realize real reductions in wait times."

But maverick former Tory MLA Raj Sherman, said fixing the system isn't a matter of money. Sherman, an emergency-room doctor, was booted out of the Tory caucus last month for his withering criticism of the government's handling of health-care.

"There's enough money in the system," Sherman said. "It's just that every inefficiency affects everywhere else in the system.

"The devil's in the details. You have to regulate the insurance industry, but those are two countries that have zero wait lists in a universal health care system." "
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Tommy Douglas' friend Eggen talks of 'empty rhetoric' - that's ironic. Yes - we do 'have to do something': we have to phase in a planned de-monopolization of state-controlled health care throughout Canada.
The 'political paralysis' is with Tommy's health-monopoly-pushing friends of all political stripes.

Why not charge McGuinty's Liberal health-care monopolists with manslaughter?

After reading Tanya Talaga's story "Woman dies as ER waits continue" (Toronto Star, Dec.6, 2010) about Ontario Auditor Jim McCarter's latest findings regarding McGuinty's disastrous monopolist health care system, it seems like this is all a repeat of the same old things from Liberal health care disasters past, from previous reports by McCarter going back years; it's like the Groundhog Day of health care: same health care horror story, another year later.
Somehow, Dalton McGuinty along with George Smitherman and David Caplan, and now Deb Matthews, were able to just slough all of this off, year after year.
So what that a patient died waiting in the hospital emergency room!? Just don't tell Michael Moore about how Tommy Douglas works, and all will be be fine.
The Liberal-voting sheeple of Ontario will soon forget about this latest indictment of Liberal health care incompetence, and be told to view the Liberals as they should be seen: which is as being the saviours of health-care!! Yep, read that again - it's exactly what I meant: the Liberals have nothin' to do with any health care problems; and magically, the Liberals will fix all the health care problems which someone else - not them; not ever them!! - caused.
(What are the chances that the St.Catharines Standard tomorrow will have nothing to say about, or bother to obtain comments from, local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, regarding McCarter's report?! Chances are pretty good that the Standard's Jim Bradley Fanclub will faithfully perform the Bradley Hindlick Manoeuvre and keep Good Ole Jimmy outta this; after all, what's Ole Jim got to do with any of this - right?!)

Let's look at a recurring issue that McCarter mentions yet again in his 2010 report, about there not being enough hospital beds. The bed shortage in McGuinty's Liberal health care monopoly is not news - this has been known by the McGuintyites for years - see: Time to debunk Liberal health care myths.

Remember Dalton McGuinty even smugly telling us in 2006 that more hospital beds weren't in the cards for Niagara? see: Sadistic Liberal health care in Ontario

[... Also see:
- St.Catharines Standard still protecting Liberal Jim Bradley
- No beds available: Go die at home
- Patients forced to wait a day in underfunded ER, while MPP Jim Bradley says nothing about Liberal monopoly health-care failures ...]

And don't forget when St.Catharines mayor Brian McMullan pompously promised in 2007 that he'll press hard for more hospital beds! hahaha!
So, which part of Jim Bradley has McMullan been pressing for the last three years; where are the beds?!
McMullan and Bradley have by 2010 dumped millions of tax dollars into expropriating land and building an arts centre in St.Catharines, appropriating money that should have been prioritized for health care.
This Liberal health care duplicity must be stopped.
When Ontario's auditor continually finds the same systemic health care problems, year after year; when Liberals underfund their unreasonable, ideologically-enforced single-payer health monopoly; and when patients die as a result, then McGuinty's Liberal cabinet of health care monopolists should be charged with manslaughter.
That seems to be the only way to make these Liberal FLICKERS accountable. They knew or should have known that their health care duplicity - in enforcing a health-care monopoly which they then underfunded - would have serious repercussions.
After reading years of Ontario auditor McCarter's reports as evidence, it is now obvious that the Liberals DID know, and banked on Tommy Douglas to cover for them. (While we're at it, charge Tommy Douglas with manslaughter as well.)
McGuinty's health minister George Smitherman even admitted that 'Ontario can't do it all' (St.Catharines Standard, Aug.11, 2005) yet, he nevertheless continued to force his state-run health-care-monopoly onto Ontario's patients.
And when patients die waiting for Tommy, no Liberal is held accountable.
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Sunday, December 5, 2010

Petty Greenshevism

In light of the recent snow and cold...
[down in Buffalo, cars stuck in snow on Interstate 90 for 24 hours; record snowfall on Dec.4, 2010 in Chicago (which, ironically, was the former home to Al Gore's recently failed CCX carbon credit exchange!]
... here's a hilarious piece of global-warming GreenFear-mongering spread by Graham Pett in the Dec.4, 2010 St.Catharines Standard, titled "Mr.Baird goes to Cancun":

"In keeping with the old adage that everything old is new again, Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently recycled John Baird back as minister of environment.

This is the same Baird who, when last in this portfolio nearly four years ago, promised Canadian industry that emission regulations would soon be coming.

We're still waiting.

Just several weeks ago, the Canadian Council of CEOs (including those from the oil industry and tar sands operators), released a paper stating it was imperative the federal government develop a plan for encouraging clean energy technologies to deal with climate change, and this needs to include carbon pricing. This from the very same "industry" whom Baird (and of course Harper) argues needs protection from the ravages of climate change regulations.

Clearly "industry" knows the Conservatives have no plan. In the meantime, Baird has won himself an all-inclusive trip on the taxpayers' tab to Cancun, Mexico (site of the upcoming round of global climate change negotiations).

Since he doesn't do negotiations (rather letting the United States do the dirty work for us), he might as well kick off the shoes, soak in the sun, dapple in the water and maybe down a margarita or two. Cancun in early December is a mighty nice place to bury one's head in the sand."

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I don't recall Pett's letter about how he 'waited' for Liberano Jean Chretien's Kyoto faux-commitments to come into place for some thirteen years! Did Pett whine about that particular Liberal "climate-change" (or is it "global warming"...?!) duplicity? Who has no plan to stop the cooling?
Did Pett complain about Liberal GreenShift Goof Stephane Bumbledore Dion's climate-change/global warming GreenFearTM crapola?!
Did Pett ever moan about the 'taxpayers' tab' of sending Mr. Liberal Carbon Pricer Stephane Dion and his fellow greenie warmists to countless useless climate extravaganzas? Yeah: Dion, the pathetic Liberal clown who was so enamoured by the idiocy of Kyoto that he actually named his dog after it...
Will Pett be whining about how many Liberals went to Cancun?
Will Pett also be whining about how many Liberals didn't go to Cancun?!
Will Pett be whining about why Ignatieff didn't go to Cancun?! Will Pett be asking why going to Cancun wasn't a Liberal priority?!
Did Pett whine about the 'taxpayers' tab' of Stephane Kyodiot Dion's trip back in Sept.2010, when he was in Cancun, and got sick?! How about Bumbledore's Copenhagen jaunt - has Pett complained about the cost of that - both in taxpayers' cash, and in planet-killing Liberal air-travel/carbon-footprint AGW hypocrisy?!?
Will Pett moan about why U.S. President Obama ain't even goin' to Cancun?
Did Pett whine when the U.S. outperformed Liberal-run Chretienite Canada on so-called "climate change" for over a decade? Who was doing Canada's 'dirty work' for Liberal cretin Chretien then?!
And what's with Pett's use of quotation marks around "industry"? Oil isn't an industry in Canada?!? The concept of "climate-change" as used by Pett should itself be in quotation marks, seeing as Pett doesn't, and likely can't, define what it is (don't worry - neither can Al Gore - that's the beauty of greenshevism)
But at least one thing's obvious: Pett hates Conservatives, and that's what his political rhetoric is all about!!

Speaking of greenies burying their 'head in the sand', maybe Pett and his ilk should have a look at Terence Corcoran's article, "Beyond Cancun, a fossil-fuel world" (National Post, Dec.4, 2010 [the same day as Pett's funnee greenism appeared in the Standard]

... or Pett could read Lawrence Solomon's article "Green collapse" (National Post, Dec.4, 2010)

... or Pett could perhaps read Rex Murphy's article "The last global warming conference ever?" (National Post, Dec.4, 2010)

... or maybe Pett can try to make a coherent argument about climate hysteria over at CO2 Insanity...

Or, the kyodiots can continue burying their heads deeper into their asses - it's warmer, and closer to their "truth".

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Jim Bradley's horrific healthscare monopoly

Further to the subject of my earlier post "Another health care horror story in Niagara", we see that Jim Bradley's Liberal health-care nightmare continues for Niagara's patients, as Christina Blizzard wrote in "A health-care horror story in Niagara" (Nov.27, 2010):

"When Guy Simpson woke up with a bad headache in January, he thought his sinuses were acting up.

Two weeks later, when the headaches got worse and other symptoms appeared, the Fort Erie resident went to his family doctor.

He sent him to an eye doctor, who sent him for a CAT scan in Niagara Falls. He was told his symptoms were neurological and he needed an MRI.

On Feb. 2, Simpson, 49, was given an MRI date of April 15.

With the help of a friend, he managed to push up his appointment with a neurologist from April 1 to Feb. 23.

By Feb. 9, he was bedridden and in unbearable pain.

His family doctor tried to get an emergency MRI at St. Catharines General Hospital and sent Simpson to the ER with a note.

In St. Catharines, Simpson was told his family doctor didn't have the authority to order an MRI. He was told he had a head injury and the condition would improve on its own.

Meanwhile, another doctor managed to move his MRI date up to April 1.

When he got the results April 6, he was told he had a large, possibly cancerous tumour around his pituitary gland compressing the nerves in his eye and extending into his sinuses and wrapped around his carotid artery.

His doctor pushed for an appointment with a neurologist for a body MRI to check for the spread of cancer. The earliest date for that MRI was in August. He got an appointment with the neurologist for April 28.

He was told by the neurologist he needed surgery, but no date was set.

By May 18, Simpson started to have trouble breathing. His wife wanted to call an ambulance, but worried they'd end up sitting in the St. Catharines ER for hours, so she called his doctor, who had him admitted immediately to Hamilton General Hospital.

He had an MRI and a CAT scan within hours. He'd been bedridden for weeks at this point.

He was scheduled for emergency surgery, but it was cancelled three times.

"The way it was explained to me, I was critical but I wasn't at the priority of the critical list, so they were taking priority patients ahead of me.

"It was a 10-day wait before I had surgery," he told me in a phone interview.

On May 26, five months after his symptoms started, surgeons removed a large portion of the cancerous tumour. He came home June 4 and was told also he had an aggressive form of lymphoma and had only weeks to live.

"If I'd had the MRI earlier, which the first couple of doctors I saw were pushing for, I feel I would have been diagnosed earlier," Simpson said.

"I don't think it would have got into my lymph nodes and spread to the rest of my body."

So far, though, he's beating the odds.

The Liberal government has gutted health care in the Niagara Region. Beds have been closed, ER departments either shut down or turned into walk-in clinics.

Simpson read a recent column I wrote about patients being sent to Buffalo for neurosurgery. He wasn't offered that option.

We brag about our universal health-care system. When that universe doesn't include places like Niagara, you have to think this is a health system that's on the ropes."


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Funny how Jim Bradley can't be found for a comment... you can just imagine, though, the indignant uproar which would have erupted from sanctimonious Ole Jim had this happened during Harris' tenure!!
But now, miraculously, this has nothing at all to do with Jim Bradley!! Now, Ole Jimmy's done been vanished, guldarnit.
Where is Good Ole Jimmy's response to this story, which has revealed yet another example of his Liberal health-care monopoly's failure?
These Liberal health-care horror stories keep on piling up, sequel after grisly sequel.
Secretive Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley WILL NOT REVEAL how many Ontario patients are being exported to the United States for medical treatment which mysteriously was not readily available in Ontario's single-payer, Liberal-enforced healthscare TM system.
Liberals Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor are certainly the ones around here in Niagara who have 'bragged' (more like LIED) about the superiority of their monstrous single-payer health-care monopoly.
Jim Bradley, along with the rest of McGuinty's slimy duplicitous Liberals, have smugly laughed at Buffalo for years, deriding their health-care system - and then shuffling patients to Buffalo and other American medical facilities because the Liberal health-monopoly couldn't provide the necessary care here in Ontario!
The real horror story in Niagara and the rest of Ontario is how health-care-cutting, single-payer-monopoly-enforcing Liberal goons such as Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, Dalton McGuinty and Deb Matthews have been lying to us.
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ps: no need to let Michael Moore or Dukakis know about any of this...!
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