A Break From The Ever Maddening World Around Us

Dennis Miller's most...

fascinating people of 2009 in response to baba wawa.

Dr Roy's Thoughts |

Your Children, Grandchildren, Etc. Will Be Members Also

Get ready for Generation T

We're largely familiar with Generation X and Generation Y. But perhaps it is time to brace for the emergence of another generation in the United States...

OMG, how obsolete am I?

The problem with trying to sound like you're still with it is that you're bound to make an idiot of yourself

Another Male Myth Shot Down......

The elusive orgasm: Size matters

*According to a new study that is stirring age-old anxieties about the female orgasm, including claims that vaginal orgasms give women better satisfaction about life in general. Sex experts are not pleased

Comrade Miller Has Failed To Deal With This Garbage Problem Also

Man killed in street brawl outside Scarborough complex

by Jasmeet Sidhu

Jul 12, 2009

A man in his 20s is dead after a street brawl outside an apartment complex in Scarborough yesterday morning.

Homicide maps

Canadians Have A Pretty Good System.....

......but anyone using our Emergency Rooms can relate. But putting things in perspective we might have to wait but we do get treatment at virtually no individual cost.

Boomers & Offspring Facing Reality

Oink! Oink! More Worrisome Than Swine Flu

Pork Report

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has come out with a report exposing the wasteful spending practices of the Western Economic Diversification department.

Called 22 years of pork barrel spending, the CTF report explains how much of the WED spending is more about politics than it is about economic diversification.It's just the nature of the beast.And by the way, the Conservative government plans to create two more regional development funds agencies — one for Northern Canada and for Southern Ontario.So that means taxpayers can expect to roll out even more pork barrels.Posted by Gerry Nicholls

Being Right Does More Than Being Left

Andrew Coyne: Canada's left-wing, unconservative, compromise-ridden Conservatives

Posted: April 11, 2009, 10:01 AM by NP Editor

The following is an edited excerpt of Andrew Coyne’s recent presentation to the Manning Networking Conference and Exhibition in Ottawa.

I fear I am here under false pretenses. I was introduced as being a real conservative, somebody who sees things in pure, free-market terms, sort of the good old-fashioned religion.

I’m actually not a conservative — either in name, or in any other way. If forced to describe myself, I’d say I’m a socialist, because by any usual or sensible definition, I would be.

I favour public pensions, public health care, public education, public unemployment insurance. I favour a whole battery of things involving the state function. In fact, I’ve had tangles with some of my conservative friends over things like user fees for health care, or the necessity of carbon taxes to combat global warming.

Click here to read more...

NO! Hey Dullton; "Where !re 4000 Nurses You Promised?

Where does the revenue generated by your health tax (Sorry...you promised no new taxes!) go?

Are we spending wisely on health care?
by Carol Goar

Another No New Tax From Dullton

Terence Corcoran: Ontario’s war on carbon

Thursday, March 5, 2009 The province's green energy plan is turning Ontario into a green police state By Terence Corcoran This is our third day...

Be Ever Vigilant......

Serious security flaw found in IE

Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world's computer users
Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it.

Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world's computer users.

Why Make The Cassidys The Focal Point?

How about the NIMBYers in Leslieville, squatters on Toronto Island, waterfront condo owners and the list goes on and on and on and I don't know if it is just my imagination but these groups seem to consistently vote for left wing politicians.....look at the issue and groups that got Comrade Miller elected.

Windmills vs. NIMBYism

87 min. ago

After three years of effort, a $300 million wind farm that would have brought green power to Ontario has been cancelled. This is the latest casualty of a provincial planning process that just isn't up to the task of ensuring that ...

Bus goes boldly to where NIMBY has no bounds TheStar.com - Columnist - Bus goes boldly to where NIMBY has no bounds

October 20, 2008

Christopher Hume

Truth isn't just stranger than fiction; it's a lot nastier.

Take the case of Sandra and Wayne Cassidy, an Ajax couple who have spent months trying to alter the route of a bus that goes past their lakefront home.

The bus, they argued, is noisy, smelly and dangerous.

Come to think of it, it's a threat to their mental, emotional and physical health. Oh, and let's not forget, it's also a neighbourhood destroyer, a subdivision killer and bad for property values.

It also goes past the Cassidys' house every 30 minutes during rush hour.

Whose idea was it to unleash such destruction on this quiet, peaceful community? Who says these people need public transit? Or want it? Isn't that why they moved to the suburbs in the first place?

According to Cassidys – and they should know – nobody takes the bus anyway.

Well, okay, so there are a few neighbours down the road and around the corner who actually do use public transit – every working day in fact. But maybe it's time they smartened up and started driving to work like everyone else.

Forget all that bunk about global warming, saving the planet, cutting down on vehicular traffic, and the rest of it; no one must be inconvenienced. The bus must be stopped.

Even in a part of the world where the NIMBYs know no bounds, this case stands apart.

This couple has gone well beyond the call of normal self-interest to keep the world from intruding into their backyard.

Forget all those homeowners who show up at public meetings to protest the opening down the street of a home for single mothers, or those fighting valiantly to halt a homeless shelter, halfway house or, worst of all, a condo more than three storeys tall. Nice try but strictly routine, knee-jerk NIMBYism. The Cassidys, those nattering nabobs of NIMBYism, have taken things to a whole new level.

NOT IN THEIR BACKYARD.

Now that Durham Region Transit has dismissed their complaint, life must be awful. They had to hire noise measurement experts – at their own expense, thank you very much – to document the extent of the racket. It's only a matter of time before someone – probably a kid – is deafened, run over or killed.

Let's be honest; both kids and buses should be banned. The roads belong to cars, not people and certainly not bus passengers.

By the way, one wonders if the Cassidys have ever seen – or heard – a Toronto streetcar? Each one is a veritable hell on wheels. Talk about traffic blockers; they're always in the way. Good thing there aren't any in Ajax.

Good thing, too, the Cassidys don't live in Mississauga, where Mayor Hazel McCallion has spoken openly about her frustration with residents who want to keep public transit from their neighbourhood. Their excuse, McCallion explained, was that the arrival of buses would mean a drop in property values.

The fact is that, urban or suburban, the NIMBY impulse comes from deep within. It's not pretty, but it's entirely human, and most of us realize that. The difference is that most of us manage to keep it in check. Given that we belong to a larger community, we quickly figure out it's best to find a balance between selfishness and selflessness.

As appalling as NIMBYism may be, we have empowered it. The bus continues, but only after the expenditure of considerable time and public money. Meetings were held, flyers sent out and consultants hired, all to reconfirm the obvious and keep the buses running.

chume@thestar.ca

There Is No Refuge For Ol' Timers......

I can envision a refugee camp being opened at the Allan & Shepherd Downsview Parc where ol'timers can live out their life on meat pies, jelly donuts and Sanka.

The hipsters are coming!

Having tamed the wilds of Parkdale, The Junction and Trinity Bellwoods, the cool-kid colonization ... (2)

Read Story

Macleans Analyzes Worthington

"Is it not presumptuous to suppose that we humans, with our SUVs, have the power, to influence nature and destroy the world?" Peter Worthington asks in the Toronto Sun. The answer is yes—because climate change science is not settled, because the UN excludes dissenting scientists from its reports, because Kyoto was just a wealth-transfer mechanism, and because carbon dioxide is "nature's fertilizer." We feel so much better!

Blaming Bricks And Mortar For Crime And Violence Is Ludicrous

People commit crimes. Attitude also contributes. Does anyone really believe that if there was no public housing there would not be crime and gang violence of the magnitude we see today? Look at the history and demographics. The public perception, especially that of the social in-activists, that the police should be social workers with guns contributes to the problems. The judicial system that releases someone found with a large quantity of illegal in their vehicle because they were deemed to be profiled contributes to the problem.

GANGSTA BABIES: VIOLENT GANG LIFE FROM PARENT TO CHILD

Fixing public housing will fix T.O.

Looking back on it today, the mistakes made in Toronto's great social housing experiments of 50 to 60 years ago are so incredibly obvious.

Whatever possessed urban planners of the day to jam thousands of low-income earners into these public housing ghettoes, consisting of everything from huge apartment complexes to low-rise buildings and town homes, isolated from their surrounding neighbourhoods?

Worse, they were equipped with few of the amenities that make a community a neighbourhood -- schools, arenas, community centres, local businesses, malls, through streets.

And yet that mistake was repeated over and over again -- in Jane-Finch, Regent Park, Lawrence Heights and beyond.

Today, Toronto Community Housing is the landlord that has inherited all those planning mistakes, responsible for 58,500 housing units across Toronto, accommodating 164,000 low and moderate-income tenants.

Not all the news is grim.

Regent Park is in the midst of a $1-billion revitalization scheduled to finish in 2018, with Lawrence Heights up next.

Despite the problems, many good people have grown up in these communities and gone on to live healthy, happy, productive lives. As is true of any community, most of the people are good.

But let's not kid the troops.

As the Sun's Ben Spencer reports today, the legacy of all those planning mistakes is today found in gangs and guns, violence and drugs, exacerbated by a $350-million backlog of housing repairs.

On Friday, Mayor David Miller announced he intends to use $75 million from the city's sale of Toronto Hydro Telecom to Cogeco Cable to reduce this backlog.

Also on the bright side, today we know, thanks to visionary planners such as the late Jane Jacobs, what works when you rebuild such communities.

We know the people who live in them have to come from a variety of backgrounds and income levels and private housing must be mixed in with the public.

We know there have to be enough different uses of the land -- residential, commercial, educational, recreational -- to ensure a constant flow of families, students, workers, pedestrians, bicyclists, shoppers throughout the day, and into the evening.

That alone, helps reduce crime.

Transportation in and out of such communities has to be adequate and has to make sense -- with accessible public transit and clearly marked streets that don't just peter out into dead ends and barrier walls, providing a haven for drug dealers and gangsters.

We know how to do it. The problem is how do we pay for it?

The answer is that while it will be expensive, requiring contributions from every level of government and the private sector, it's precisely these kinds of investments in our city that make economic sense, create jobs, change lives and make Toronto better.

In the end, we will get the city we are willing to pay for, and investing in these communities, responsibly, will be worth every penny.