Saturday, January 28, 2006

The Love Pope



The lefties in the press, having set up their memes, are now shocked and horrified as Ratzi, like John Paul before him, openly defies their categorizations...

Could it be "part of a vast, rightwing Opus Dei conspiracy, one to set expectations so low that when his first encyclical was released giving us love, love, love everyone is perplexed"?

Hey, everyone said he was evil, and a Nazi and Hitler and everything...

What gives with all the love stuff? This must be a trick.

I have to say I burst out laughing when I read the New York Times headline: "Benedict's First Encyclical Shuns Strictures of Orthodoxy"

because, of course, if you're the New York Times, the entire doctrine and dogma, discipline and sacraments, art and history of the Roman Catholic Church is about contraception, abortion and gays. If the New York Times says that the Church's "strictures of Orthodoxy" are about the Big Three Topics, it must be so...

Now we have a Times columnist getting a clue. Do these people read nothing but each other's editorials?

So, we've never come across St. John of the Cross hey? Never heard of Teresa or Therese?

There's something here the crossed my mind. Perhaps Ratzi didn't like being the prefect of the CDF, a job that was far from using his talents to the full. A guy like Ratzinger, someone whose love of God needs to pour out of him in words, having only his piano to express it, cast by the whole world as the heavy, the Church's bad cop. Maybe he likes being pope better because he can tell us all the stuff he has been saving up and have the world's biggest pulpit to do it from.

Passionate Prose is a Real Revelation
By Ruth Gledhill
Times UK

I STARTED reading Deus Caritas Est expecting to be disappointed, chastised and generally laid low. An encyclical on love from a right-wing pope could only contain more damning condemnations of our materialistic, westernised society, more evocations of the “intrinsic evil” of contraception, married priests, homosexuality. It would surely continue the Church’s grand tradition of contempt for the erotic, a tradition that ensures a guilty hangover in any Roman Catholic who dares to indulge in lovemaking for any reason other than the primary one of reproduction. How wonderful it is to be proven wrong.

The first half of the encyclical, the part on eros written by the new Pope himself, is a startling revelation, almost akin to reading one of George’s Herbert’s poems on love and God
, or C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. The language itself verges at times on the erotic.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Believe me, happiness is shy,

And comes not aye when sought, man.


Happy Feast Day!
(translated in Canada to the following Sunday)

Today, one is obliged to be Scottish.

On the plus side, lovely lovely plaid, soft mists, echoing hills covered with heather, warm fires, and single malt whiskey.

on the down side...

Presbyterians and haggis.

One must take the good with the bad.

(For our friend John Cahill, our most loyal fan.)

* ~ * ~ *

Address Of Beelzebub

To the Right Honourable the Earl of Breadalbane, President of the Right
Honourable and Honourable the Highland Society, which met on the 23rd of May last at the Shakespeare, Covent Garden, to concert ways and means to frustrate the designs of five hundred Highlanders, who, as the Society were informed by Mr. M'Kenzie of Applecross, were so audacious as to attempt an escape from their lawful lords and masters whose property they were, by emigrating from the lands of Mr. Macdonald of Glengary to the wilds of Canada, in search of that fantastic thing-Liberty.
1786


Long life, my Lord, an' health be yours,
Unskaithed by hunger'd Highland boors;
Lord grant me nae duddie, desperate beggar,
Wi' dirk, claymore, and rusty trigger,
May twin auld Scotland o' a life
She likes-as butchers like a knife.

Faith you and Applecross were right
To keep the Highland hounds in sight:
I doubt na! they wad bid nae better,
Than let them ance out owre the water,
Then up among thae lakes and seas,
They'll mak what rules and laws they please:
Some daring Hancocke, or a Franklin,
May set their Highland bluid a-ranklin;
Some Washington again may head them,
Or some Montgomery, fearless, lead them,
Till God knows what may be effected
When by such heads and hearts directed,
Poor dunghill sons of dirt and mire
May to Patrician rights aspire!
Nae sage North now, nor sager Sackville,
To watch and premier o'er the pack vile, -
An' whare will ye get Howes and Clintons
To bring them to a right repentance-
To cowe the rebel generation,
An' save the honour o' the nation?
They, an' be d-d! what right hae they
To meat, or sleep, or light o' day?
Far less-to riches, pow'r, or freedom,
But what your lordship likes to gie them?

But hear, my lord! Glengarry, hear!
Your hand's owre light to them, I fear;
Your factors, grieves, trustees, and bailies,
I canna say but they do gaylies;
They lay aside a' tender mercies,
An' tirl the hallions to the birses;
Yet while they're only poind't and herriet,
They'll keep their stubborn Highland spirit:
But smash them! crash them a' to spails,
An' rot the dyvors i' the jails!
The young dogs, swinge them to the labour;
Let wark an' hunger mak them sober!
The hizzies, if they're aughtlins fawsont,
Let them in Drury-lane be lesson'd!
An' if the wives an' dirty brats
Come thiggin at your doors an' yetts,
Flaffin wi' duds, an' grey wi' beas',
Frightin away your ducks an' geese;
Get out a horsewhip or a jowler,
The langest thong, the fiercest growler,
An' gar the tatter'd gypsies pack
Wi' a' their bastards on their back!
Go on, my Lord! I lang to meet you,
An' in my house at hame to greet you;
Wi' common lords ye shanna mingle,
The benmost neuk beside the ingle,
At my right han' assigned your seat,
'Tween Herod's hip an' Polycrate:
Or if you on your station tarrow,
Between Almagro and Pizarro,
A seat, I'm sure ye're well deservin't;
An' till ye come-your humble servant,

Beelzebub.
June 1st, Anno Mundi, 5790.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Worth dying for?

At dinner with a friend the other night, we were discussing Canada and the perennial vexer, 'national identity.' We talked about the legitimacy, in Catholic teaching, of patriotism as one of the natural loves and whether it is possible to be a Canadian patriot under our current diminished circumstances. Does Canada qualify as a country for which one can have this natural love?

C.S. Lewis gave one of the best starter-kit descriptions I have yet come across for patriotism (which we must distinguish from nationalism.) Despite his reputation as a logician, Lewis had a keen sense of the poetic and visceral. He said, if I remember rightly, that patriotism is simply the natural love of one's home.

But we have a difficult conundrum here. Our home no longer loves us. It is difficult to see why those of us who have been used as a scapegoat in this election, who every party in the race has defined as the enemies of freedom and the principles upon which the country is founded, would continue to love that country. If your country hates you, can you be a patriot?

In the course of our conversation, my friend Neil pointed out that some months ago, there had appeared a little burst of letters to the editor from veterans who said that this thing created in the image and likeness of Pierre Trudeau was not the country they had fought for and for which many of their friends had given their lives.

That is an interesting question isn't it?

Would you die for Canada as it is defined by the Liberal party flackmachine? By Margaret Atwood, Peter C. Newman, Bill Graham and Irwin Cotler?

Who will write high heroic poetry about the New Canada? Who will go over the top of the trench for it? (Notice it seems silly to use the feminine pronoun "her".) Who now, after having been raised in the Liberal party's threatened child indoctrination centres, will love Canada for anything other than the handouts? The state-subsidized housing projects and medical care and state euthanasia centres to speed you painlessly on your way? As Steyn put it a few weeks ago, countries cannot make its secondary products into its primary aims.

How can one die for a meaningless abstraction like "multiculturalism"?

Canada suffers not only from an abandonment of its original guiding principles - they were not perfect, but they at least were founded in something concrete and related to the Natual Law - but from a surfeit, perhaps an obsession with things for which there is no concrete reality. Ephemeral and indefinable slogans have replaced the historic principles. Where we had notions like "Peace, order and good government," "God, the Queen and my country" (if I remember correctly from the Brownie pledge), we now have a state that bases itself on "a woman's right to choose." A euphemism that was devised to deceive, a slogan that leaves one wondering, "Choose what?" (But of course, with a finger laid to the side of the nose, we all know what the woman is choosing yes? No need to say it, no need to embarrass her or ourselves.)

Martin's hysterics in the last days of the campaign have, at last, shown us what this country is all about: Abortion.

It has been a pretty abortion-free campaign until he stated panicking and telling us what he really thinks. He has told us, the foundational right of the Nation of Rights-without-responsibilities, is abortion. Ours is the abortion state.

In the early days of the campaign, at the debates for example, the old Liberal party rule applied: never never use the "A" word.

For a very long time I have known that the one thing that is strictly off limits for discussion, is the one thing that must be protected, the heart of the matter, the holy of holies and core of our national identity. No other issue is protected so closely that we are forbidden to use the word: Abortion.

If we must mention it, we must use the approved slogans and euphemisms; the knowing wink that we all know what we are talking about, but that it is so sacred it must never be threatened by revealing its true name. This was a hard rule under Chretien, and was broken only on the back of Stockwell Day, that sweet man who never mentioned the "A" word either until the Globe and Mail was ordered by the Party to attack him on the subject.

But again we see it is the Liberal party secret weapon, being weilded very ineptly by Paul Martin. It has long been my thought that abortion being the one thing the Liberal party will never mention, never address in Parliament, never talk about in the media, is in fact, the foundation stone of their government. The right of a private citizen to kill another without even legal scrutiny, never mind legal repercussions, is the right that must ultimately undermine the proper rights of the government to rule.

Looking at it quite apart from the moral issue of whether it is acceptable to kill a defenceless innocent, the rammifications for a government who cedes the ultimate power over the lives of its citizens into the hands of the individual, is a government that has cut off its own feet.

So we have a strange situation. There is no capital punishment in Canada, and for various reasons, though I am in agreement with the Church that capital punishment must remain the right of the state, I sincerely hope that we do not reinstate it until political sanity has been restored. We have a government that on the one hand has deliberately denied itself its proper powers, has eliminated its international stature (once considerable) as a fighting force with a patriotic and strong-minded, stout-hearted populace, and on the other hand has granted the ultimate authority to kill citizens to anyone who wants to. (Oh, I correct myself, to any woman who wants to. But we will save the examination of this other inversion of the natural order for another day.)

It is why the whole enterprise of the New Canada will fail. It is failing of course, but the old assumptions held by most Canadians, (outside the 416 area code) are propping it up. A government that denies itself its proper authority, will not rule long. What I fear is that something much worse will replace it.

Something that does not fear to call itself what it is.

We have been liberated from freedom and citizenship and all to the tune of "rights." But a country that can invent new rights out of whole cloth can do anything. It may have ceded its proper earthly authority, but it has replaced that authority in its own fond imaginings, with godlike powers to invent "rights" ex nihilo. A state with such powers to grant "rights" to selected bodies of the population, is in a position to remove rights with equal facility from other bodies.

What has disturbed me in the course of the election campaign, is that the body most vilified, most demonized has been the chimera, "social conservatives." Harper, Martin, Layton and that other guy, have been unanimous in their characterization of this straw man as Canada's deadliest enemy. The trouble again, with undefined and indefinable slogans is that, having no concrete reality to create a distinction between what a thing is and is not, the indefinable definition can be applied to anyone. In the shifting sands of Canadian political opinion, a "social conservative" is a very useful label. It can be slapped on anyone who does not go along with the crowd.

Having been made the new scapegoats for the New Canada's set of indefinable defining slogans, Social Conservatives have become, without having done anything, enemies of the state. It would be interesting to insist to someone like Martin on a clear definition and examples. But of course, everyone who knows, knows. We know they are among us. They are everywhere. Why, your own family might harbour Social Conservatives. They might be sitting next to you in Church listening. They might be skulking around the water cooler at work. They might be taking notes on your conversation on the streetcar.

There is a lot wrong with this country, but I still find an amusing irony here. It is the Social Conservatives who are able to define Canada. The new breed of Canadian, having been raised in the shifting hall of mirrors that is postmodernism, cannot define a rock on which he has tripped. The Social Conservatives, are the type that are willing to give their lives for their country. They know how to define a country, without agonizing or editorializing or establishing a Royal Commission. They know too what value a country has. But we are the enemy, the snake in the grass seeking to destroy the new indefinitions.

By giving the very definition of Canada over to those who resist the principle of definitions, the New Canadians risk having their country disappear, as if it was eating its own tail and finally got to the head.

What will remain to govern those who live within the Old Canada's geographic territory is anyone's guess. But I don't imagine it will be somewhere I or any of my friends would want to live. I venure to guess also, it will not be to the liking of the latte-sipping Annex crowd either. The trouble is that by the time it arrives, people with the will to resist it will already have been made to disappear along with the old definitions.


I am a Canadian,
a free Canadian,
Free to speak without fear,
Free to worship God in my own way,
Free to stand for what I think right,
Free to oppose what I believe wrong,
Free to choose those who shall govern my country.
This heritage of freedom,
I pledge to uphold,
For myself and all mankind.

Toronto Pravda

If Canada were the old Soviet Union, Toronto would be wallowing in nostalgia for the glory days of Communist rule.

Led by The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, the Pravda and Isvestia of Canadian journalism, the entrenched media in Toronto are giant fronts for the old and decrepit Liberal/NDP establishment, wellsprings of agitprop for more and bigger government. On this election alone you could write a book about Toronto journalism and the relentless anti-Conservative twist embedded in most stories and opinion.



That's Terence Corcoran writing in the National Post.

The same National Post that is headed up by David Asper. Who is actively backing the Conservtives. Of course, that sounds good until you look at what kind of Conservative he is backing.

Friday, January 20, 2006

And the Rule of Law is...?

WHATEVER THE HELL WE SAY IT IS DAMMIT!

"I'm merely pointing out a fact that courts for the most part have been appointed by another party,"

And the other party is?

Justice Minister and Attorney General Irwin Cotler suggested Harper's statements had been "disrespectful of the rule of law, of the independence of the judiciary and the administration of justice."

and they've really picked some people with a firm and deep grasp of jurisprudence. yah.

McLachlin laid out her plan for the re-engineering of Canadian – or any like-minded liberal society – away from democratic principles saying, “The rule of law requires judges to uphold unwritten constitutional norms, even in the face of clearly enacted laws or hostile public opinion.”
McLachlin told the law students that Justices must be “emboldened” to supercede even the letter of such foundational documents as a nation’s constitution and that their role ought to supercede that of elected representatives. “I believe that judges have the duty to insist that legislative and executive branches of government conform to certain established and fundamental norms, even in times of trouble,” she said.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

In Search of the Lost World of H.V. Morton



In between thinking Large Thoughts and following the election, I have been enjoying a set of books written by a charming English gentleman, and, in his time, famous travel writer, H.V. Morton.

Warren started me on him by giving me his book In the Steps of St. Paul last year. Just recently, I have been finding him everywhere. I got In the Steps of Our Lord somewhere recently; at least, there it was on my shelf one day so I assume I bought it.

Then when it came time to go prospecting in the Muggeridge library, I found an entire collection. My Morton library now boasts, In Search of England, Ireland (green leather binding and gold edges!), Scotland and Wales, In the Footsteps both of St. Paul and Our Lord. All filled with the lovliest descriptions of the people and places he met on his long rambles and interspersed with beautiful sepia-toned pictures of a world that was, in mere moments, about to disappear forever.

Much of his descriptions are slightly melancholy as, even in the 1920's, '30's and '40's the world he was describing was fading away like elves left behind. It is to this England that I have always wanted to run away, having been raised on books published before 1950. I have to keep reminding myself that were I to go and look for it, I would only end up disillusioned. Best to just keep reading the books I suppose.

I have In Search of England on my lap. Here is Morton's description of his visit to Cornwall:

"There is a strangeness about Cornwall. You feel it as soon as you cross the Tor Ferry. The first sight that pleased me was a girl with a shingled head driving a cow with a crumpled horn. I knew, of course, that I was in fairyland! And the next thing was a village that was trying to climb a hill. One whitewashed cottage had reached the top, but all the others had stuck half-way, with their gardens gazing in a rather surprised manner over their chimney pots. In these lovely, disorderly gardens some of the oldest men I have ever seen had apparently taken root in the act of watching the beans.

When I stopped to give the car a drink of water, a woman came to a cottage door with a jug. And she sang her words prettily, as the Welsh do! Like the Welsh, these people possess a fine Celtic fluency, so that their lies are more convincing than a Saxon truth."


Now I discover that there are quite a few H.V. fans out there. Enough to have a website or two.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Medical matters



Remind me never to go near a doctor again as long as I live...


This from Uncle Di on the new medical ethics (what Diogenes does not mention, is that Servatius was also a doctor. He knew all about the new ethics):

"The trial of Adolf Eichmann, from Hannah Arendt's 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Robert Servatius was Eichmann's defense attorney (emphasis original):


The moment, one of the few great ones in the whole trial, occurred during the short oral plaidoyer of the defense, after which the court withdrew for four months to write its judgment. Servatius declared the accused innocent of charges bearing on his responsibility for "the collection of skeletons, sterilizations, killings by gas, and similar medical matters," whereupon Judge Halevi interrupted him: "Dr. Servatius, I assume you made a slip of the tongue when you said that killing by gas was a medical matter." To which Servatius replied: "It was indeed a medical matter, since it was prepared by physicians; it was a matter of killing, and killing too is a medical matter."

Anyone who wants to know what is happening in hospital bioethics committees these days, (yes, the Catholic ones too) needs only to read two books, Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, and Singer's Practical Ethics.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

FLASH!!! - Depressed People Want Euthanasia 4 Times more than Happy People

Well, it's news to the Dutch doctors in charge of deciding who should be killed at public expense.

The patient's wish to hasten death cannot be put on par with a well-considered and persistent request for euthanasia in an environment where euthanasia is customary.”

“Our clinical impression was that such requests were well considered decisions, thoroughly discussed with healthcare workers and family. We thought the patients requesting euthanasia were more accepting their impending death and we therefore expected them to be less depressed. To our surprise, we found that a depressed mood was associated with more requests.”


These are the people in charge folks!

Saturday, January 14, 2006

"Dogs and cats living together..."


"Mass panic!"

Globe and Mail Endorses Stephen Harper
Toronto Annex-dwellers spotted running in circles at Bloor and Bathurst, weeping into lattes.

Elizabeth II Announces England to be Catholic Confessional State by Spring
Figurehead no more! says Liz kissing Pope's foot

Black Sunrise has Astronomers Stumped - unable to explain rain of "blood"
"We've been hearing this strange sort of musical sound from the sky," says Mt. Palomar researcher

Tuns on Muggs

Paul Tuns is the editor of the Interim, the pro-life newspaper that I sometimes contribute to. Paul is a friend and came out to the pub once or twice with John Muggs. He is the successor as Interim editor to John's son Peter who headed it before I arrived on the scene.

John Muggeridge, a Catholic writer and retired teacher, passed away at the age of 72 at Princess Margaret Hospital on November 25 after a long battle with cancer.

Muggeridge, an editorial adviser to LifeSiteNews.com and senior editor at the New York-based Human Life Review, was the son of noted English author and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, the husband of Catholic author Anne Roche Muggeridge (author of The Desolate City), and father to former Interim editor Peter Muggeridge, as well as former Interim contributor Charles Muggeridge. He was himself an occasional contributor to The Interim, as well as Catholic Insight magazine and other religious publications.

John Muggeridge was not nearly as famous as his father, but his influence is arguably as great. He counted as friends some of the leading lights of Canadian journalism, including David Frum, George Jonas, Peter Worthington and David Warren, and Catholic leaders, such as Fr. Jonathan Robinson and Janet Smith. In a column for the Ottawa Citizen, Warren said that Muggeridge was a “man of national significance,” even though “he was nearly invisible as a public character, was aloof from conventional politics, had no ambitions in the media (and) sought no audience.”

Yet, Warren notes, “his influence was steady.” Warren continued: “John was a man who, simply in being what he was, helped to keep the old Canada alive. Men and women of good will came to him, spontaneously.” He no doubt influenced them during countless discussions in his home and at the pub. As Warren said, his teaching extended beyond the classroom and often merely by example.

Muggeridge was a member of the advisory board of LifeSite and penned several stories for them. The Interim reprinted his article on the politics of new Governor-General Michaelle Jean in September.

He also wrote one of the first scathing critiques of Pierre Elliot Trudeau for the now-defunct Northern Institute Quarterly. Yet, as his friend Warren said, he hated writing, it being an almost painful exercise. In a column remembering John Muggeridge, George Jonas wrote in the National Post: “It’s one of life’s ironies that the best writers often dislike the process of writing and the best people rarely put a premium on self-expression. The best are busy being spouses, parents and friends. They’re spouses, parents and friends first and writers second.”

It was a mark of the man that he didn’t need, nor want to write, to become famous and popular. He was busy raising his four sons and one daughter and being a grandfather to his 16 grandchildren and grandfatherly to other children. The Globe and Mail reported in its obituary that Muggeridge “subsumed his own ambitions” to raise and support his family, but that implies a sacrificial choice. By all accounts, he never thought of it that way. He was a husband, a father and a grandfather. A friend and a teacher. He taught through the written word only reluctantly.

But when he did write, he wrote masterfully and often scathingly in defence of truth and against the perpetrators, enablers and defenders of the culture of death. In a June 2004 eulogy for Ronald Reagan composed for LifeSite, Muggeridge recalled the stirring words of the former president in defence of the unborn and pondered: “Wouldn’t it be nice if our own Paul Martin could bring himself to use such language in public? Canadians still wait for such a defence of life in any of their leaders.”

The funeral for Muggeridge, who often battled with the Catholic hierarchy over liturgical disputes, was held at Toronto’s St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church in the Traditional Latin funeral rite.

His friend, Catholic writer Hilary White, mused: “I thought that it was one of John’s great jokes, played on all his nice neo-Cath and non-Catholic friends, to force every one of them to attend the mighty traditional liturgy of the church and done at its best (in this country, anyway.) As though he was saying, ‘See? This is what Anne and I have been going on about all this time.’”

He continued to visit his wife Anne at Castlewood Wychwood, where she has been convalescing in recent years, battling an Alzheimer’s-like disease that sometimes has left family wondering if she remembers them.

Still, as Jonas recalled in his column: “He saw the best in the wife he loved so dearly and continued to see it even as she fell ill with an Alzheimer-type disease in her early 50s and failed to recognize him. Cancer should not be allowed to stop his caring. Every sort of medical indignity was embraced by him, if only it would yield the strength for one more month to visit her and the time to see his children. Those who did not know him might have thought, observing his grace in the face of so ferocious an illness, that he was putting on a brave performance. It was not performance, only the man himself.”

Friends and family will miss John Muggeridge, because as Hilary White said just days before he died, “The world needs more people like John Muggeridge, one of the most gentle, decent and intelligent men I’ve met and soon, it won’t have the one it has.”

The Cassandra Club


Now Steyn gets to say it too...

"If it's a Muslim who finally makes it to the Supreme Court of Canada with a polygamy case, I'd reckon their lordships will rule that forbidding it is an unwarranted restriction of charter rights. And I'd wager a few of those justices will be happy to license polygamy if only to prove that their demolition job on 'traditional marriage' was legally grounded rather than mere modish solidarity."

Anyone want to take that bet?

Going too far



"Why are they doing this? I feel so...so...so violated!"

We call it "freedom of speech" duckie.

There there. Don't cry dear. I'm sure there will be plenty of people who still want to kill your child for you.

Hey kids!

Scare your mum!

Terrify your friends and teachers

with this do-it-yourself "I'm a Scary Conservative with a Hidden Agenda" Self-Demonization kit!

(This ad in no way implies endorsement of Stephen Harper or the Conservative Party of Canada, who are not scary and, as far as real social conservatives can figure, has absolutely no intention of turning back the clock one single minute.)

Canadians are Soooooo Stupid!

How stupid are they?

A friend of mine passed around the following to some people:

"We need to get people giggling whenever they see a Liberal attack ad:"

* * * * *
Stephen Harper has a dog.
You know who else had a dog?
Hitler.
Adolf Hitler.
That's who.
Did Stephen Harper train his dog to attack racial minorities?
We don't know.
He's not saying.

Choose Your Canada.

*********

He then started recieving emails from people on that list who were terribly upset that Stephen Harper has trained his dog to attack ethnic minorities.

He was happy to report, however, that even these drooling morons were still so fed up with the Liberals that they were going to vote conservative anyway. (No, not making it up!)

Someone alert PETA!

*******

I suppose that so much subtlety is more than a typical Glib n' Stale-reading, Annex-dwelling Toronto halfwit can assimilate.

Maybe these ones from a Saskatchewan radio station will be obvious enough for them. I hope so, they are clearly labelled, "parody."


* * * * * * *

Have you ever noticed that Stephen Harper's hair never moves?
You've seen it, know why?
He's got the mark of the beast on his head.
That's right.
Stephen Harper.
666
Mark of the beast.
Stephen Harper is the anti-Christ.
Is that what you want for Canada?
January 23, vote for the non-anti-Christ.
Vote Liberal.

* * * * * *

Stephen Harper likes guns.
Stephen Harper likes to shoot guns.
Stephen Harper will use his guns to kill the Easter Bunny.
Guns.
Easter Bunny.
Stephen Harper.
No Chocolate eggs for you.
Is that what you want for Canada?
January 23, vote for all things warm and fuzzy.
Vote Liberal.

* * * * * *

Now, compare them with the real thing on the Librano website and see if they don't make you giggle. They parody themselves.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Who's Crazy and Paranoid again?

yes yes, I know; everyone is carrying this...

Study recommends repealing polygamy ban in Canada

It's funny though, the "I told you so" thing isn't giving me the thrill I expected.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

I TOLD YOU SO!!!

I guess if you're as famous and respected as Leon Kass, you get to say that and no one accuses you of being ingenteel.

I normally avoid bioethics lectures because of the difficulty I usually experience at them of refraining from standing up and screaming and going into apoplexy followed by coma. But I went to listen to Kass once at UofT speak on whether we really want to indefintely prolong human life.

Yes, I kid you not, this is a serious line of thought in the bioethics world, "do we want to live forever?"

Errr. yeah. So, you're assuming we can huh?

And they say the pro-lifers are irresponsible fantasists.

Still, his lecture was interesting.

"Even now Dr. Kass remains stuck in what he wearily calls 'embryoville.' Ever since his appointment in 2001 as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics (a position he relinquished last fall), he has been gamely and evenhandedly trying to work his way through the embryo debate, which really is just a salient in the larger culture war between 'choice' and 'life.' But in an era in which biomedical technologies have already begun to alter the broad and basic contours of human nature, questions about when life begins, or what is permissible in the name of medicine, seem almost quaint. 'Killing the creature made in God's image is an old story,' he says. 'Redesigning him after our own fantasies: That's what's really new.'