Economic Primer Or Pipe Dream

How to erase the deficit in four years ... according to Andrew Coyne

Andrew Coyne has done a lot of homework with this piece in Macleans. My head started reeling trying to grasp how Coyne would have the Harper govt underspend and then overspend or perhaps it is first overspend and then control the spending or maybe it's first let the stimulus work a bit and then keep a steady increase or maybe it is stop spending so much altogether so we can erase the deficit b...

Dodo Can Spell |

How Many People Flew Yesterday Without Incident

No-fly concerns growing

Wed Jan 13 2010

Hani Al Telbani, a Montreal university student, is suing Ottawa for stopping him from boarding an aircraft in 2008. He argues it was a breach of his constitutional rights. Toronto cartoonist Shahid Mahmood wants the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to...

Cohn: Fox TV and the politics of profiling

By Martin Regg Cohn

Tue Jan 12 2010 (16)

Terrorism is not just about bombs, bullets or WMDs. It's about mind games and the ability to terrorize – or paralyze – people at every airport in the...

An Upside To Body Scanning

Japanese Deal With Environmental Pirates

Sea Shepherd's powerboat destroyed by Japanese whalers

A space-age powerboat sent to harass Japanese whalers was rammed and sliced in two in its very first clash, dramatically escalating hostilities.

A Large Gap In No Fly Protocol Resolved...

Scroll Down For A Reality Check...

Goodbye 2009 ... good riddance

The year of the massive, enormous, child-swallowing debt is over.

Let's not make it a running gag.

After the country and its provinces put themselves largely back on solid footing over the past 15 years, the economic downturn of 2009 crushed the budgets of the federal government, and provinces including formerly flush Alberta and once reasonably off Ontario.

Income plummeted, spending rose, and our kids will pay.

Toronto, of course, is part of trend. While it runs balanced operating budgets every year, the city is borrowing more money than ever before to pay for long-overdue capital projects, from replacing more than 30-year-old subway cars to spending $180 million on fixing up our roads this year.

But this year Mayor David Miller and friends have decided to pay back the borrowed money over 30 years, not 10 as per usual. That will add an extra $1.6 billion to the borrowing costs (although if inflation continues at the current pace, the hit will be more like $470 million extra).

Gee, thanks.

So goodbye 2009. We've had enough of you, your spending ways, your H1N1 (who would have thought we'd know what that meant 12 months ago?).

OPPORTUNITY TO SHINE

We welcome 2010 with open arms, eager at the opportunity to shine in the world's eyes, starting almost immediately with the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver next month.

As sponsors and the elite carry the torch toward the lower mainland, we hold our breath and hope Vancouver will be able to meet is promises of one of the great sports spectacles of our generation.

We look forward to welcoming the world to the G20 Summit Toronto this summer, and the G8 just before that in cottage country. A wonderful chance to say we're not just about snow in Canada, we have a boatload of mosquitoes, too. Enjoy!

But as this is the start of a New Year, we won't let the cynicism overrun our minds (as the champagne may have done last night).

Canada is still the best country in the world to call home. Along with its many challenges are wonderful opportunities to work, play, and learn.

Here's hoping your year has more play and less work.

Stimulus $$$$ On The Way

* Home Reno Grants
* Comrade Miller's Largesse
* No Income Tax For Panhandlers

Ho Hum!

A Royal rumble

By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD AND TOM FREDA

Royal jelly or royal pain? Sun Media's Queen's Park columnist Christina Blizzard and Tom Freda, national director of Citizens for a Canadian Republic, slug it out. Chuck or upchuck -- you decide.

Thank Gawd For Real Music......

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and the Foggy Mountain Boys performing Polka On The Banjo ¤.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Posted by Vitruvius at October 21, 2009

We Still Got It........

CN Tower remains world's tallest tower, Guinness says

Posted: September 18, 2009, 5:00 PM by Rob Roberts

By Matthew Coutts, National Post

Matter? NO! Anticipating? YES!

Does Seinfeld still matter?'

"My" rabbi, New York's Simcha Weinstein, has some ideas:

Curb Your Enthusiasm returns to HBO on September 20, and this seventh season of the critically acclaimed, award-winning comedy series may turn out to be its best yet.

That’s because this season will really be a combination of two hit shows in one.

In the alternate showbiz universe of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the cast of Curb creator Larry David’s previous (real life) hit show, Seinfeld, are getting together for a (fictional) cast reunion special.

Jerry Seinfeld

, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander

, and Michael Richards and other stars of that classic 1990s sitcom will show up to work out the reunion’s logistics with their old colleague Larry, and hilarity will no doubt ensue.

When this plot line leaked out, you could sense the, well, enthusiasm in the media and beyond. Anyone who wondered if the world still cared about some “old” sitcom called Seinfeld got their answer: a resounding yes. Seinfeld marked the beginning of a new golden age of Jewish comedy. It still matters.

I’ll take that one step further, and argue that Curb Your Enthusiasm matters even more...

# Kathy Shaidle : 2009-09-16 15:48:48 EDT

There Is No Question Beck Leans To The Far Right.....

...but this allows him to look around corners where the left is conniving.

Glenn Beck: Bigger Than ACORN

September 15, 2009 - 23:00 ET

We have some absolutely stunning video, but here's what I hope you'll keep in mind on this story: Everybody has this story wrong. While it obviously involves ACORN, it's not about, ACORN.

Full Story

This Would Be Humorous Except .......

....for anguish of the parents and teachers concerned about the child.

No End In Sight To Worldwide Glut Of Journalists

A 5-year-old Van Buren kindergarten student who disappeared on the first day of classes was found safe in a first-grade classroom.

Posted by Kate

Our Own Bad News Bears

You have to marvel at the Cinderella story of an east-side baseball squad

The best sports story in Vancouver these days is 4,800 kilometres away in Val-d'Or, Que., where a team of youngsters forged on the mean streets of the city's east side is marching toward the Canadian Little League Championship.

Baseball being baseball, the Hastings Little Leaguers could still fall short, but they rampaged through the tournament's round robin with a perfect 5-0 record, outscoring their opponents from across the country, 81-15.

What's so great is that this is the first time in 30 years a team from the gritty Hastings side of the tracks has represented British Columbia at the national show. For years, the B.C. Little League crown has been the preserve of powerful squads from the well-manicured suburbs - Langley, Coquitlam, White Rock - where, in summertime, the living is easy.

Home diamond for the Vancouver crew is wedged in among the Playland amusement park, busy Hastings Street and the roar of traffic from the nearby Cassiar connector.

Now, they are just two games from Canadian Little League supremacy. For Cinderella fans, it's sort of like the Brooklyn Dodgers finally winning the World Series in 1955 by beating the hated New York Yankees.

As one might expect, the team reflects the area's rich cultural diversity. Look at the names: Lee, Wong, Carusi, Matsuda, Vincelli, Woo, Cusati, Burman. ... Then there's the team's first-sacker, Katherine Reyes. That's right. A girl. It doesn't get much better than that.

Your Reputation Is Following You......

Freed reporters 'excited' to be coming home: Clinton

Could Be A Boost For Richard's Career

Seinfeld reunion!!!

Better yet, George, Jerry, Elaine and Kramer will be reuniting on Larry David’s ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’

To discuss click here - 0 Comments

Larry David, co-creator and executive producer of Seinfeld, never wanted any part of it. Neither did the character he now plays on TV’s Curb Your Enthusiasm—Larry David, the co-creator and executive producer of Seinfeld, whose many, many interpersonal disasters make up the bulk of the HBO show’s story lines. Now the real David has agreed to a reunion of the legendary Seinfeld cast, who will appear in roughly half of this season of Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes, a plot detailing efforts to write and produce a Seinfeld reunion. “[H]e became interested in the idea when he began to think of it as a ’show within a show’ that plays off of his curmudgeonly character on Curb,” writes the New York Times’s Edward Wyatt. But while the David of reality might countenance the idea of bringing George, Jerry, Elaine and Kramer back together again. Curb’s David never would. Indeed, says David: “My guy could well wreck it.”

Source

Lighter Side

Going Postal: Man snitches on himself, air mattress blows up apartment and an expensive smoking habit

by Matthew Coutts

A man who was about the rob a bank called 911 on himself and warned police of his intentions.Terrence Joseph Germani got in line at a neighbourhood bank and called police, giving them his description, his intentions and telling them he was not armed. He reportedly told the dispatcher he had been mentally unstable all of his life.
“I've got a note, I am going to rob the bank,” he said. “I need to go to prison. I can't live like this anymore.”Officers arrived at the scene and spoke with the man, who insisted they arrest him. After consultation, the officers took him into custody.

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A man who tried to fix a leaky air mattress ended up blowing up his apartment. The man, 45, used a tire repair solvent, apparently a flammable one, to patch a hole and sparked it when trying to fill the mattress with an electric air pump the next day. The blast was extensive. A wall collapsed.

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A concerned -- and I feel compelled to use an exclamation mark mid-sentence here -- passenger snapped several photos of a bus driver reading a book while making her rounds. The passenger sent the pictures to media and reported that the driver read for of the the 20 minutes she was on the bus.

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A New Hampshire man was charged more than $23 quadrillion for cigarettes by his bank who, presumably, really wanted him to stop smoking.

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A California ice cream shop has but to rest a debate with my coworker, who, when I opined that bacon should be added to everything, suggested ice cream could not be included on that list. The Moo Creamery has released several unconventional ice cream flavours which includes bacon. Other types include beer and jalapeno.
"A friend of mine loves bacon on everything, so she had asked me to make bacon ice cream. So I had a home ice cream maker and I made it and thought it was a terrible idea. So she had me try it and after three days of tasting it I finally thought it was good," co-owner Jessica Pounds said.

Screw TheMarquis Of Queensberry - Bring On The Gladiators

Colby Cosh: Red-diaper babies be damned

Posted: July 17, 2009, 9:01 AM by NP Editor
Filed under: Colby Cosh

Dear future: Yes, back in the year 2009 it did seem kind of odd to some of us that Canada was the world “Mecca” of mixed martial arts (MMA), and yet MMA competitions were formally outlawed in the nation’s capital, in its largest city and in English Canada’s second-largest city. I know that to you MMA is a fairly mainstream popular sport that seems safer and more sensible than the outmoded Victorian practice of “boxing.” This was, for those who don’t remember, a form of combat in which grappling was forbidden and gloves mandatory, resulting in an inescapable emphasis upon the application of extreme compression and rotational G-forces to the opponent’s brain.

Who, you might be asking, could look at both and think that MMA was the innately more “bloody” or “barbaric” spectacle? But remember, readers of tomorrow, politicians have always been politicians: craven, smug and allergic to sense. I’m sure that however much time has passed, you haven’t figured out a solution to that one.

Click here to read more...

Sotomayor Confirmation