Bravo, northern cousins! You’ve shed the yoke of the Tories and put another Trudeau into office. Long may he rein, undoing the Harper malfeasances.
Shut down the damnable tar sands! Refund and rejuvenate public services! Renew the social contract! Keep faith with the native cultures! Spare your natural resources the plunder they suffered south of your border. O Canada!
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New e-mail disclosures again portray former U.K. PM Tony Blair for the unmitigated sleaze we always thought he was. In bed with Bush II on invading Iraq long before the idea was exposed to public scrutiny, even as he lied blatantly to his constituency.
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Thanks, too, to Edward Snowden, for calling our attention to Hillary Clinton’s blatant lies in the Democratic presidential debate about “protections” for whistleblowers. They don’t exist, and haven’t since the cowardly congress passed the atrocity called the USA Patriot Act.
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Britain’s MSM are no better than their American counterparts, who repeat government lies as “news” and hew to the Washington line, no matter how far from truth it strays. Apparently Jeremy Corbyn, the new Labour Party leader, failed to sing the national anthem during a public sing of the thing. From the outcry in the press you’d think he’d pissed on a Buckingham platter at a luncheon with The Queen. Turns out he simply had never bothered to learn the words. Remindful of how the Yank MSM pounced on Dennis Kucinich’s harmless idiosyncrasies (including being short) rather than listening to the public policy profundities he uttered, sometimes with Lincolnian elegance, as in his powerful “Prayer for America” speech. That speech ought to be put with the Gettysburg Address as required recitations for schoolchildren.
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CNN to my knowledge has not denied reports that its real-time polling of viewers showed Bernie Sanders receiving 82% support as the winner of the Dem debate — but that it never screened the numbers and ordered its talking heads into “Clinton won” mode after the show was over.
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Utterly lacking any scientific basis (like, say, a Republican candidate for president), I offer herewith my proof positive of habitat degradation in New Mexico lands mismanaged by the Bureau of Land Management: Number of rattlesnake sightings (by me), 2001-2008, 19. Number of rattlesnake sightings since: zero.
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I’ve seen this mentioned a couple of times online, but seen no satisfactory explanation: Where do the rebels and jihadists in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen etc. get all those pickup trucks? And why are they all Toyotas?
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Jim Webb did the right thing by pulling out of the campaign for the Dem nomination. His performance on the stage in Las Vegas last week was an embarrassment not just to him, but to those who recognize the real contributions he has made in his public life. Now he should whisper into Lincoln Chafee’s ear. (Martin O’Malley, on the other hand, should hang around, if only to keep reminding us that 100% renewable energy is not an impossible dream.)
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Some literary awards are richly deserved. Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer and others for “The Road” come to mind. Now there’s the 2014 Man Booker prize winner, “Narrow Road to the Deep North,” by the Australian, Richard Flanagan. Powerful. Powerful.
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As the autumnal light limns our landscapes so magnificently, I give profound thanks that the abomination called Daylight Savings Time will soon end. Daylight cannot be “saved;” there is so much of it and that’s it. The idea that fiddling with the damned clocks twice a year accomplishes anything good for mankind is one of the great scams foisted on a gullible public by their guileless leaders. A pox on it and them.
