Things have been said. Things that, ordinarily, I would take offense to. But today I am in a good mood, Obama bought a Beaver Tail on the Byward Market yesterday, taking in feelings of joy and hope (along with artery clogging trans-fats), and so I have decided not to go into my usual balk at criticism, but to embrace it and try to grow from it. I may be a conservative, but I am not adverse to change. So, here goes.

It has come to my attention, rumour has it, Twitter Tweets, that visitors to my blog do not like my tag cloud. Which is fine, after all, you’re the ones who have to put up with it day after day. So here’s my thing: if you don’t like it, do something about it. You can change the world (or my blog, whichever is bigger). Let me know what tag-thing you DO like. What WordPress tag widget is better than the (annoying) one I have now, and make your case why. And, if you do happen to like that 3D moving “nauseating” blob I have now, let me know as well, so those whiners visitors that don’t like it see there are another points of view.

Today’s lesson, children, if you don’t tell me, I’ll never know!

And if you give me some good suggestions, I promise to apply more tags to my posts in the future, because, although I have the coolest looking tag cloud on the ‘web, when you don’t apply tags to posts, it doesn’t really mean anything, does it?

O Lord, bless this Thy Holy Meeting.

And Saint Attila raised the Holy Meeting up on high, saying, “O Lord, bless this Thy Holy Meeting.” And the Lord did grin and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats and large chu… [At this point, the friar is urged by Brother Maynard to "skip a bit, brother"]… And the Lord spake, saying, “First shalt thou have thy meeting length set at 20 minutes, no more, no less. Twenty shall be the length thou shalt meet, and the length of the meeting shall be twenty. Twenty-five minutes shalt thou not meet, neither meet thou for fifteen, excepting that thou then proceed to twenty. Thirty is right out. Once the number twenty, being the twentieth number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Meeter a holy Hortons,  who, being Holy in my sight, shall drink it” Amen.

After passing on Ontario’s First Final Offer in November, which was for 12% increase, and passing on Ontario’s Second Really Final Offer in early December, the teachers begrudgingly accepted the province’s Final, Final, Really Final, Officially Final, This Time We Really Mean It Offer yesterday, settling for a mere 10.4%(!) salary increase over four years. They also get improved benefits, and a total of 240 minutes of preparation time (that’s FOUR HOURS folks!) a week, which means, they will even spend less time in the classroom than they do now, but get paid more. With the new agreement, Ontario’s top teacher salary will be around $92,700. Not bad for a job that has the summer off, a week in spring, two weeks at Christmas, and retirement after only 20 years on the job.

Kudos to the Ontario government, for showing some backbone in negotiating with the union. Good job. Oh, and you caved, not  because you wanted to keep your record clean and you need it to boast the next election, but you caved so the Poor Children of Ontario can stay in school. I see. Right.

Union said the strike threat wasn’t about the money, oh no… It was about the Poor Children of Ontario, and how the “funding gap” between elementary and the other schools is still too big. Here’s a thought: cancel the 10.4% wage increase (700000 students, funding gap of $700 each, is a total of $500M, the 10.4% increase has a value of $700M), and apply it to the funding gap. Problem solved! It’s not about the money? Great!

Did I mention the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund is the largest single-profession pension plan in the country, with over $108 B in assets?

The Heart and Stroke Foundation released a ridiculous report this week about the cost of healthy foods across Canada. It found that Calgarians pay much more for healthy foods than say, Ottawa or even North Bay (if you know North Bay, you’d know it’s slightly… uhm… “out of the way”, adding transportation costs), and that in general, healthy foods are more expensive than unhealthy foods. They are implying that price is the biggest factor in Canadians eating less healthy.

The report relies heavily on volunteers who fed their families for a week by shopping at regular well known grocery stores. Items included 6 apples, bag of potatoes, whole wheat pasta, brown rice, 1% milk, cheddar cheese, lean ground beef, peanut butter among other things. They all shopped at different, but well known stores, severely flawing (is that a word?) the study, because in order to be able to compare findings, the parameters have to be the same.

The findings of the report are astonishing: it concludes healthy food is more expensive than non-healthy foods and it says prices on healthy foods vary widely across the country.

I don’t know about Brooks or Calgary, but the prices they give for Ottawa are plain ridiculous: $13.31 for less than two pounds of lean ground beef? $9.70 for 900g of whole wheat pasta? I am sorry, but I don’t think I will be able to find these prices on any stores around town, not even down town in the shop where the senators shop. Lean ground beef is usually $3.99/pound, and if you follow the sales, between Loblaws, Independent, Loebs, IGA, Value Mart, Farm Boy, Walmart and what have you, you can always pick it up on sale for $1.99/pound. $9 for whole wheat pasta? Go to the most expensive store, and it is sitting there right beside the regular pasta for about $2/900gr.

Here’s a thought: homemade pasta sauce. Tomato sauce, lean ground beef, peppers, onions, mushrooms, any veggie you want to throw in there, can of crushed tomatoes, tomato paste. make a big vat, freeze supper size portions, and you can have three, four meals made for about $12 TOTAL. And it’s all veggies in there.

No, I think the problem with Canadians eating less healthy foods is not price, but sheer laziness. It is much easier to open up a can of soup and zap it up, than to start by boiling down your beef bone, add celery, onion, chop your carrots, add some noodles, salt pepper. Of course, a can of soup is laden with fats and salts, whereas your own soup is lean and healthy.

The problem with healthy food is that you actually have to prepare it. You have to spend 30 mins before supper washing and chopping your veggies, and people don’t want to do that any more. They also do not want to drive to Walmart to pick up what’s cheap there, then head on to Loebs to pick up what’s on sale there, then head to Loblaws to shop sales there. If you plan your route, you can hit three, four stores on one saturday afternoon, and have bought only sale stuff to prepare suppers for the entire week. But you see, this requires effort.

It has nothing to do with price: picking up a pizza is so much easier, even though it’ll cost you $20 for one supper, whereas if you made pasta sauce, you would have had six suppers for the same money, and eat much, much healthier.

This report goes in my “give a break” file.

It has come to this: we are now officially issuing “Rainfall Warnings“.

We’re gonna get some rain today, and by golly, be warned! You might get wet!

Give me a break.

Ottawa radio host Lowell Green was reprimanded by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Counsil for “abusive and discriminatory” remarks to Muslims in a show he did in December 07. The show was a reaction to the story of a British teacher who had named her teddy bear “Muhammad” and was effectively chased out of Sudan. Of course, a show of this kind brings out the most vocal of Muslims, as it has many times. And all it takes is one complaint.

One example of the silly ruling:

In one instance, Green responded to a Muslim caller with the word “Baloney!” and, in another, told the sympathetic, apparently non-Muslim, caller she had “abandoned common sense” and was being “silly”.

If you know Lowell at all, you could substitute the words “Ontario teachers”, “OC Transpo Drivers”, “CAW Union Workers” for the word “Muslim” in the above quote, and you’d have a regular Lowell Green show. But then again, Ontario teachers, union workers or drivers won’t call the CBSC and cry discrimination.

Of course, thanks to the liberal ”values” in this country, Lowell cannot know his accuser, nor can he respond to the accusations. He cannot ask any questions on the subject, nor can he defend himself. He cannot even discuss the fact he was reprimanded, a rule he blatantly violated this morning by having a show about it! He may just be taken off the air for this.

Such is the state of freedom of speech in this country.

You should all tune in at cfra.com and listen online. This is a fight for freedom of speech in this country.

If you’re interested in the CBSC decision, you can read it here. The media release is here. If you wish to send a well-worded email to the CBSC, you can contact them here: Ronald I. Cohen – National Chair, John MacNab – Executive Director, Teisha Gaylard – Director of Policy.

PS. The story in the Ottawa Citizen states that “Lowell Green did not return the Citizen’s calls on Friday”. Lowell Green has just stated on the radio he never received any calls for him on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, neither at home or at work from the newspaper.

EYEBROW ALERT

If you caught Iggy’s media scrum yesterday concerning allowing the six Newfoundland MPs to vote against the Liberal Party the budget, maybe you have noticed how Iggy’s eyebrows (you can’t miss ‘em: they’re right above his eyes) tend to go up when he says something he does not agree with. They are perched right over his eyes most of the time, and once in a while they’ll move upwards.

I’m going to keep my eye on them—as disturbing as that may sound—I think Iggy’s eyebrows are a tell-tale as to his true feelings. Some people have a tic, or a hand gesture, but I think Iggy’s eyebrows are the window to his soul. I think they are down when he’s speaking the truth, and they go up as he is straying away from the truth, be it a lie or something he has to do he does not agree with.

Yeah, I’ve got an eyebrow project and I will be issuing EYEBROW ALERTs in the future when necessary.

What good is an Economic Dream Team, if you either 1) Do not take their good advice, or 2) take their bad advice?

Protectionism (“Buy American Only“), of course, cannot be a part of any sound economic plan: an economist will be the first to tell you international trade is the backbone of the global economy. All of our economies are too much intertwined to extricate one of them, let alone the largest one. Protectionism is the death of your economy: one cannot ween off one’s largest supplier without affecting one’s largest customer if they happen to be the same. In the case of America, Canada is their largest supplier but also their largest customer. We are their biggest supplier for over 300 billion dollars of stuff every year, and we are their biggest customer with over 248 billion dollars a year (2007). For Canada, American protectionism means: less sales means less money to buy. Very simple. Your exports go down and so will your imports. Protectionism only harms your own economy, unless you can produce all your goods domestically.

So, if Obama’s “Dream Team” came up with this doozy it’s a “Lousy Team”, and if he went against his  ”Dream Team”, why have a “Dream Team” at all?

Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don’t forget your booties ’cause it’s cooooold out there today. Especially cold, okay, but the big question on everybody’s lips… On their chapped lips, right: Do ya think Phil is gonna come out and see his shadow? That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers – it’s  GROUNDHOG DAY!

Great news from Phil, Willy et al: it’s going to be an early spring! Actually, almost all of the famous rotund rodents saw their shadow today, and technically that means six more weeks of winter. However, since they are only right about 39% of the time, and it’s a 50/50 kind of thing, we can conclude that, statistically, the opposite must be true: seeing shadow means early spring!

This is going to play right into those warmists hands… darn.

My favourite <insert expletive here> Lizzy May was interviewed by Kate Heartfield of the Ottawa Citizen this morning. Of course, she was peddling her new book, Global Warming By For Dummies, co-written by a student (!). In between the own horn tooting, she mentions this little tidbit:

I’ve already gotten in trouble for suggesting giving a copy of the book to Stephen Harper! Conservative bloggers thought this was an insult.

And there you go. Once again, we made a difference!

So where’s this “climate crisis” everyone keeps talking about?