BURNS NIGHT!

I don't feel much in the mood for pointing out Leftist distortions and deceptions today so I will talk about more personal things. I might however note in passing that there is a particularly poisonous Leftist site here that seems to be enamoured of the egregious Prof. Ward Churchill. They seem impressed that Churchill is popular with his students. The fact that con-men are usually popular is not mentioned. There is a systematic dismantling of some of their deceptions about Churchill here

With that aside, I am going to say a few words about what I did on Monday. Monday was Anne's birthday and preparations also had to be made for Burns night on Wednesday (TODAY!) so I was busier than usual. At 9am I set out to track down and capture a haggis for Wednesday dinner. And it was in fact more of an expedition than I had expected. Being a lazy sod, I don't make my own haggis but get it off a very talented man who is both a master butcher and a brilliant pastrycook. Visiting his shop is always a great pleasure. His website is here. I usually get to his shop by taking an exit off the freeway that leads straight to the shop but on Monday I discovered that the bureaucrats who know better what is good for us than we do ourselves had closed that exit off. So I spent half a nerve-frazzling hour trying to find an alternative route to the shop. I eventually succeeded more from luck than good management. And, Yes, I DID stop and ask for directions at a nearby service station but the young girl on duty there did not have a clue, not too surprisingly.

Anyway, I did finally get my haggis plus some clootie dumpling for dessert. I am marking the birthday of the poet in a very low-key way this year. No speeches etc. There will be just four of us at my place to share some haggis and probably read some of the poems. For those unfortunate souls who have never been to a proper Burns night, you can at least read about it here. My own previous post on it is here.

Anyway, on Monday night I took Anne to the Hilton for the smorgasbord. The Hilton smorgasbord is probably the dearest in town but the food is probably also the best -- including a big bucket of the incomparable Sydney rock-oysters in prime condition. I had bought Anne some white slacks (of a very un-slack kind) plus an embroidered white top for the occasion and she got into high heels for what she said was the first time in 40 years so she looked pretty good to me. For some inscrutable reason she seemed to think that I looked good in a blue shirt and grey slacks but there is no accounting for taste. Anyway, we people in our 60s can still have a lot of fun, surprising though that news might be to much younger people.

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ELSEWHERE



Tory win in Canada: "Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party won national elections Monday and ended 13 years of Liberal rule, a victory expected to move Canada rightward on social and economic issues and lead to improved ties with the United States. The Conservatives' winning margin was too narrow to avoid ruling with a minority government, a situation that will make it difficult to get legislation through a divided House of Commons... With nearly all votes counted in the race for the 308-seat House, officials results showed Conservatives with 123 seats; Liberals with 103; Bloc Quebecois with 50, New Democratic Party with 28; and one seat to an Independent. Three seats still haven't been determined. Prime Minister Paul Martin conceded defeat and said he would step down as head of the party"

Amusing: My post yesterday about the hate-filled Canadian John Chuckman seems to have got under the chuckful one's skin. I got a speedy email rejoinder from him. I cannot find the rejoinder online at the moment so I reproduce it in full here (together with a few more comments from me) for the entertainment of all.

Israel has Leftist loonies that are arguably the looniest of all. They abuse and call "Nazis" the very Israeli soldiers who protect them from extermination by the Arabs. What would Leftists do without the word "Nazi" to abuse people with?

Blair tries to cut one of Britain's biggest rackets: "Ministers will try to sound the death knell of the sick-note culture today by unveiling plans to take a million people off incapacity benefit at a saving of up to 7 billion pounds. The proposals will mean hundreds of thousands of people who have been on the benefit for many years being asked to attend interviews to judge their suitability for work. After Tony Blair made clear yesterday that he was ready for a showdown with his party over the education Bill, he will open up a new battlefront with his backing for the plan that John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, will present. Like the schools Bill, it may receive support from the Conservatives. Doctors will be urged to consider alternatives to writing sick notes if they believe that their patients will be helped by doing work"

While the Da Vinci Code movie debuts at Cannes, the real story of a fake gospel goes unnoticed in the mainstream media. The late professor Morton Smith apparently created a fake "Secret Mark" gospel with the intent on showing that Jesus was homosexual. Apparently Morton Smith was homosexual although it is never openly documented owing to political correctness. This new book by an attorney, Stephen C. Carlson, has debunked the whole thing. They will never make a movie about it. Instead millions will flock to the fictional Da Vinci Code and swallow it hook line and sinker. I have never read nor do I intend to read the Da Vinci Code but it apparently contains some very large howlers. It refers for instance to Opus Dei monks whereas Opus Dei is a layman's movement.

The EU pot calls the Turkish kettle black: "The European Union today welcomed Turkey's decision to end the prosecution of Orhan Pamuk, the country's best selling writer, but urged a wider reform of the country's free speech laws.... Olli Rehn, the EU's Enlargement Commissioner, said the collapse of the case should lead to a "positive outcome" for the dozens of Turkish journalists and authors currently facing similar charges.... "It is clear for me that Turkey needs to fill properly the loopholes of the current Penal Code, which leave too much room for abusive and restrictive interpretations limiting freedom of expression.""

Chris Brand has just put together a new lot of posts which he believes represent good news on racial matters.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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