Politicians don't matter; the country is run, and ruined, by unelected bureaucrats
The auditors then asked about the contents of some other filing cabinets they saw in Leroux’s home. One cabinet contained business records relating to other years not being audited, while the second cabinet contained personal papers unrelated to his business—documents such as his birth certificate and his will. He told them not to remove any of those documents, since they were originals for which no copies existed. Leroux then left for work, trusting the auditors to abide by his instructions and respect his privacy.
Nevertheless, CRA took the position that Leroux was still responsible for proving his deductions and tax credits, and it was “not our problem” if he could not supply copies of the documents the CRA had lost.
When he returned home, the auditors were gone—and so were virtually all of his original documents, including both the business and personal documents from the two filing cabinets. (...)
About 6 weeks later, Hansen phoned Leroux and invited him down to the CRA office because he had some “bad news” to give him. When Leroux arrived, Hansen told him that all of his original documents—both business and personal—were missing, and might have been inadvertently placed on a pile that ended up in the shredder.
Stuff like this actually matters a great deal to me. Sorry.
How weird are Koreans, really? (UPDATED but still pretty boring except for the end)
Fans of this blog frequently send me material for my regular "Japan: Nuked Too Much or Not Enough?" posts.
And as you know, I've never flinched from posting about Chinese chainsmoking, spitting on the sidewalk and other forms of public expectoration, "colorful" eating habits and those now-infamous "smashed crates of bok choy all over Spandina."
On a couple of occasions, I've been led to ask: why aren't Koreans notoriously crazy, too? I don't recall Frozen Chosin vets bringing back tales of prostitutes with particularly novel and (to me) pointless talents, or bizarre unavoidable cuisine, or irritating group characteristics such as habitual lateness.
Inevitably, my inbox duly fills up with a small number of "don't get me started" type messages, yet I can't recall their contents, which tells you something in and of itself.
Korea is the Asian country too boring to have its own stereotypes -- unless that in itself counts as one. It's like the Rhode Island of Asia.
Consider the ratio of stories like this one compared to similar ones coming out of Japan and China each day. I really don't get it.
UPDATE: my readers never let me down. Alas, the Koreans continue to do so...
OK, I'll leave out their habit of puppy eating (Fettucini El Fido; Borzoi Bok Choy; etc.) and simply point out that Korean companies (led by those boring Koreans) are notoriously and repeatedly guilty of stealing more patents / intellectual property than any other nation, including China.
Korean corporate giants including Samsung, Hynix, Hyundai, LG, etc have been convicted of more 'patent infringement' in U.S., Canadian and European courts than any other nation, by far. I know that's not as colorful as most other crimes, but it's far more costly to innovators and the nations where those innovators live and pay taxes ... no royalty payments from over there = no taxes to collect over here = the potholes never get filled.
Based on our [redacted] years of living/working in Tokyo (and regularly traveling on biz from there to Korea) I'd say Koreans are so boring because they work so long and hard ... never seen such LONG hours by so many ... they make the Japanese look like welfare panhandlers sleeping on Toronto streets by comparison.
But when Koreans steal and use the patents of others (mostly American) without paying, it's worth BILLIONS in unpiad royalties with a B ... boring, but BIG.
FYI, the memory chips in your computer and mine (as well as in all cell phones and digital cameras) which make this whole internet thingy so fast and fascinating were invented and patented by a U.S. company named Rambus ... that IP was stolen and used by Samsung and Hynix years ago (and is still being used - but not paid for - today) and a lawsuit by Rambus to collect on the damages has been slowly dragging through the U.S courts since 2005 with no trial date yet set! The damage amount claimed is $4.2 BILLION ... if it's not settled before trial, California law automatically triples the damages (as a penalty) so that makes the lawsuit worth almost $13 Billion = clearly the BIGGEST heist in history by far, perpetrated by those "boring" Koreans.
Keep on kickin' lefty ass, Kathy ... we love it, and you!
Good point here:
"I think the whole Christianity thing tamps down on the crazy."
Note--probably not Koreans but not sure:
No Irish need invent urban legends about 'No Irish Need Apply' signs
My new post at David Horowitz's NewsReal blog looks at those largely mythological "No Irish Need Apply" signs, and the broader phenomenon of victim/identity politics.
It's more fun than it sounds, I swear!
Corey Haim: 'May he max and relax in peace'
I had hated him in the eighties, and, knowing that, a friend who was partying with him back then at the Toronto film festival, called me and put him on the phone.
“S'up girlie?” he yelled, cheerfully. “Me and my boy are just maxin' and relaxin'!” I was appalled, but amused, and it would not be until I saw him, that shambolic, big-smiling, sweet wreck, on The Two Coreys that I would like him, very much.
'New Britain was built on Jamie Bulger's grave'
I'm forced to (mostly) agree. Good and evil do exist; the trouble is, utopians like those in New Labour think this can be "fixed."
Once again, the Elites who "know better" ruin the country -- then blame, demonize and penalize those outraged, unco-operative non-elites who dare to protest.
Brendan O'Neill writes:
...the promotion of the politics of emotion and the politics of victimhood [filled] the vacuum left by the death of the politics of conviction.
Ashamed, and possibly even a little appalled, at the backward nation they helped to create, New Labourites and the intelligentsia now try to pin the blame for the whole thing on a handful of weeping Scousers.
***
And there are rare circumstances in which a
little "public hysteria" would make for a welcome and perhaps even edifying change.
Two giant buildings falling down could not be reached for comment
Journalists -- your moral and intellectual superiors!
"I think the first tournament Tiger Woods plays again, wherever it is, will be the biggest media event other than the Obama inauguration in the past 10 or 15 years..."
Ooopsie!
'Teacher calls student a prostitute; I think she deserves an award'
St. ' Patrick did not appreciate the value of faith until he lost his freedom'
But were it not for his early suffering, could Patrick have become such a seminal figure of faith? How many people, afflicted as Patrick was, might decide they deserve a comfortable dotage?
What, then, urged him on? As he put it, “Surely it was not without God or for worldly purposes that I came to Ireland. Who compelled me?...I sold my birthright without shame or regret for the benefit of others...Thus I am a servant of Christ in a far-off nation on account of the indescribable glory of eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Touring the Israeli 'apartheid wall' with its main designer
If you ever get the chance to do this in person, do it. Amazing.
PS: it's mostly just a fence, built after a bunch of you attacked a kindergaarten. Grow up.
Meanwhile, here's the closest you can get right now (complete with videos)
An Arab member of the Knesset who goes all the way to the US and Canada to tell university students and professors that Israel is an apartheid state is not only a hypocrite and a liar, but is also causing huge damage to the interests of his own Arab voters and constituents.
If Israel were an apartheid state, what is this Arab doing in the Knesset?
***
They've got one sitting on the Supreme Court, too. If you yell "token," you're implying he's stupid and unqualified. Is that
really the position you want to take -- that all Arabs are de facto "violent retards" after all? I'll wait...
'Section 13 was part of the CHRA when it was proclaimed in 1977'
Mostly 'verify,' actually...
When vetting a history book, Schweikart first turns to any section discussing President Ronald Reagan.
He says what you find there will tell you everything you need to know about whether or not a book is slanted.
The sad part is that somebody had to write this. Again.
Jonah Goldberg tries to explain the Tea Party movement to anybody who feels like listening (ha ha):
It's all so much nonsense. The Boston Tea Party would make a strange lodestar for an anti-American movement. The tea partyers certainly aren't "dropping out" of the system; if they were, we wouldn't be talking about them. And they aren't reading Marxist tracts in a desire to "tear down the system" either. They're reading Thomas Paine, the founders and Friedrich Hayek in the perhaps naive hope that they'll be able to restore the principles that are supposed to be guiding the system (to the extent they're reading radicals such as Saul Alinsky, it's because they've been told that's the best way to understand his disciple in the White House).
Restoration and destruction are hardly synonymous terms or desires. And maybe that's a better label: a political restoration movement, one that reflects our Constitution and the precepts of limited government.
***
However, any small loyalty Tea Partiers might feel toward Buckley is a combination of polite respect, nostalgia, a natural if unhealthy attraction to "glamour" and a lack of complete understanding.
Actually, using t-shirts as a barometer of Tea Party affections (and believe me, this is a sound strategy), we can see that the Founders, Rand and Reagan are ubiquitous, whereas I have yet to see one sporting the face of the man who started and ran the National Review.
There IS an anti-elitist streak (four lane highway?) running through the Tea Party, and it stretches from leftist academe to the Beltway GOP.
While I actually have more sympathy than Goldberg does for that notion that the Tea Partiers are a right wing reincarnation of the Merry Pranksters (I've heard Andrew Breitbart say they were his inspriation, too; some of us had already read Alinsky before last year, thanks), the Tea Party looks to me like the rebirth of the mostly forgotten "hard hat" blip of the early 1970s, along with the Goldwater/anti-ERA campaigns.
The difference is, the only "alternative media" those people had back then was country music, bumperstickers and, yes, rude t-shirts.
Heh.
Europe trades 6 million Jews for 20 million Muslims
How's that workin' out?
The motion was “Europe is Failing its Muslims”. I’m happy to say that Flemming Rose and I convincingly won the argument, with the audience voting overwhelmingly (and despite considerable intimidation in the hall on the night) that Europe is not in fact failing its Muslims.
One of the two clerics who whipped up hatred against Denmark around the world, in the wake of my colleague Flemming’s commission of depictions of the historical figure Mohammed, arrived in Denmark from Lebanon in the 1990s.He went to Denmark because he has a disabled son. The country which he came from could not look after his child but he knew that Denmark would. And it did. He repaid the society by inciting hatred and violence against it.
(via)
And let's not forget Lenny Bruce's 'little electric chairs'
RightWingTrash trashes the late-lamented/overrated Bill Hicks:
Sadly, his fanatical following now brings us the insanely self-congratulatory trailer for American: The Bill Hicks Story.
That trailer does a pretty good job of suggesting how dull Hicks was in his outrageousness. Among his many moronic routines was one about those crazy Christians who wear crosses, with Hicks noting it was like honoring John F. Kennedy by wearing a small gold rifle. I remember my sister making that same comment when she was about 13 years old, and lots of other kids have done the same at that age. Hicks just took a lot longer to figure it out.
Pentagon reading my blog now
I've often said that unless we can somehow train polar bears to catch and kill terrorists, the bastards can go ahead and get extinct for all I care...
New exclusive interview with Ann Coulter
Check out the new interview with Ann Coulter, discussing her upcoming trip to Canada -- and how much she loves Ezra Levant.
See you all in London, Ontario for the first leg of her tour, next Monday.
PS: the "editor" "Doug" she mentions is Doug Pepper of McClelland & Stewart.
PPS: She will be on the Michael Coren show next week as well. I'll give you the details as I get them.
UPDATE: Ann Coulter will be on the Michael Coren show Tuesday March 22.
David Codrea demonstrates once again why he is a daily must read
The Gun Rights Examiner writes:
We talked yesterday about a new national "conservative" group founded by the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and I raised concerns about automatically aligning the liberty movement with prominent members of the Republican Party establishment. (…)
We need to look through the anger and the rhetoric and make all of these people prove themselves, regardless of party or generalized platform statements. That's why I designed the gun rights political questionnaire--to be one of the tools we can use to help determine an unequivocal position on the right to keep and bear arms.
Glenn Beck insists pompous blowhard Springsteen's anthem is anti-American
The only "news" here is that this opinion -- that "Born in the U.S.A." could be considered anti-American -- is what now constitutes "news" by some "news" organizations.
All the lefties and liberals writing these shocked, shocked articles today only like "Born in the USA" because they think it is anti-American.
That's why Reagan's (people's) brief choice of the song for his campaign was treated as "proof" that he was a tone deaf twit. Duh.
Conservatives forget stuff too. George Will's take on Springsteen and this song was memorably obtuse, and has always crippled my ability to take the man seriously on any other subject.
