Updates April 25, 2006

Canada: DND -- write to our troops

We feel sadness at loss of young lives but I believe that the media is going overboard with the controversy over whether or not to have the flag at half-mast with every military death. Why do I feel the media concern with the flag issue is less concern for the troops and their families than it is anti-American and politicking anew for the left, using overblown grief mongering, wallowing in the story and making utterly foolish and harmful statements. A quote heard today:

Why is this government trying to "hide" the return [of the dead troops]?

[overheard on CBC perhaps from Don Newman, but check.]

Maybe the families would like to grieve in peace, not be badgered by reporters with their dumb question, "How did you feel when ...?"

In actual fact, under the Liberals, the flag was lowered very selectively. Was it lowered for those who died in Bosnia? I believe not.

The Liberals use this kind of situation for emotional impact to drive their own political agenda, IMHO. The MSM who were fed the slant or what to write by the Libs/PMO find it so much easier to go along with this ........ what? Maudlin playing to the lowest common denominator emotions? Is that too harsh?

The kind of appeal to the emotions that a Liberal PM would have made ........while playing politics over equipment ... promising and not delivering ....cancelling a helicopter contract out of pique with the Conservative PM Mulroney's order ... and then choosing equipment that did not come from the same company / companies so as not to have to admit his error, over the advice of members of the military ... buying subs, not when they were needed, which would have involved taking some political heat, but buying old subs that had sat rusting for five years later, much later ... and it goes on ..........politicizing of equipping the very men Canadians look upon to serve and protect .... young men who deserve our support.

Additionally, it is bad for troop morale to over-hype, to use for non-military motives the emotional impact of deaths in a combat zone.


Russ Lord: East Coast Reporter embedded with the troops NatPost, Apr. 25, 06

[. . . . ] For us -- a couple of guys from the supposedly "economically-challenged" Maritimes -- this trip is already changing our perception of poverty and struggle-- in a big way.

And, it's deepening our appreciation for members of the Canadian Forces -- laying it on the line for the chance to make a difference in a place that desperately needs help. [. . . . ]

Mr. Harper decided that the flags would not be lowered each time a soldier was killed; instead, the government would return to a protocol dating back almost a century -- the Maple Leaf atop the Peace Tower would be lowered only on Nov. 11, the day Canada honours all of its war dead. Mike Blanchfield, NatPost, Apr. 25, 06




We must keep our grief in perspective NatPost, Apr. 25, 06

[. . . . ] Time for a change of reporting. Perhaps a decent "Remembering" section in the paper would be a special way to honour the fallen. That would be sufficient, also.

Raymond J. Lefebvre, Edmonton.

Leadership

Robert Rae - Federal Liberal Leadership candidate CNEWS, Apr. 25, 06.

Various people comment or include links on the topic.

silver_paladin -- See also Globe&Mail paper, April 18, page B17, titled "Dowdy mall REIT best left off résumé of a potential PM"
BCNU2 -- on socialists running an economy
uplink -- I do believe he sees a positive aspect to Bob ... if Ashley (MacIsaac) isn't running ... and I concur.
Gemini -- the following quote

[. . . . ] Who did he have standing front and center on the stage? None other than disgraced Liberal MPP Greg Sorbara. He of the RCMP charges in an investigation of his family's Royal Group Technologies and recently an investigation into the leak of the Ontario budget information to the Mayor of Vaughan prior to the official release. [. . . . ]

Rae makes run at federal Liberal leadership -- "he would stake out the political centre" -- Would that be the same as the leftist 'centre'? Tara Brautigam, Apr. 25, 06

[. . . . Carolyn] Bennett

a family physician by trade, attacked Stephen Harper's approach to politics as divisive and accused the Conservative prime minister of promoting policies that are turning Canadians against each other.

She cited the Tory child-care plan, which offers $1,200 a year to parents for each eligible child under six, as an example.

"It offends me that Mr. Harper's idea of choice in child care pits those parents that have been able to stay at home to raise their children against those who have chosen to return to the workforce in the best interest of their children." [my italics . . . . ]

Not all parents nor scientists agree with Bennett: related FHTR
April 24, 2006: #1 -- Daycare / Childcare articles

More than once I have read that it is not the poor but the more affluent who want more daycare; the women have an education fitting them for careers while most of the poor do not. They also use a neighbour or a relative for child care often or they live in the rural areas where the money would help them more than a new urban daycare center.




The ultimate conformist -- Why, Pierre hardly knew ye. John Robson, Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2006

As the federal Liberals search for the next Trudeau, an embarrassing revelation has emerged about the last one: He was not deep but silly. [....]

"I knew that, like many of his contemporaries, Mr. Trudeau had been appallingly indifferent to the horrors of the Nazi regime ... the reality is much worse than I thought ... as late as 1944 (he was 25), he admired the writings of notorious French anti-Semite Charles Maurras." [....]

But the worst was his failure to "escape the dominant ideology ... far from being the free-minded spirit he appeared to be later on, he was a conformist."

[....] his major legacy, the 1982 Constitution, was a hideous hybrid of parliamentary and constitutional sovereignty that threatens both self-government and the individual liberties he professed to cherish. [....]

He followed the zeitgeist ... but with a degree of panache.




Girl charged in murders -- 12 year old accused of killing her family -- "She -- and her family members -- cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act"

.... her mother, father and younger brother in the family home on a quiet street in Medicine Hat, Alta

[....] Jeremy Allan Steinke, 23, of Medicine Hat is charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

Evil at any age ..... Should she be named if he is .... or do we assume a female that young could not be filled with evil?



The World's Best Roast Chicken Recipe -- Butterflied Roast Chicken Lesley Chesterman, NatPost, Apr. 24, 06



Mothers need milk for unborn babies
study: Deficiency nearly as bad as smoking Sharon Kirkey, CanWest, Apr. 25, 06

[. . . . ] The babies of the women who drank less milk weighed about four ounces less, on average, than babies born to women who drank the three cups of milk per day that Canada's Food Guide for Healthy Eating recommends. [. . . . ]