I found the link to this story on A Chick Named Marzi.

Shock-rock legend Alice Cooper calls rock stars campaigning for Democrat
John Kerry treasonous morons.

"To me, that's treason," Cooper told the Canadian Press. "I call it treason
against rock 'n' roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should
never be in bed with politics."

Alice Cooper may be the guy with the scary mascara, but he's a smart guy. Articulate and informed, he makes some very valid points.

"If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who
to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because
we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit
around reading the Washington Journal."

"Besides," he continued, "when I read the list of people who are supporting
Kerry, if I wasn't already a Bush supporter, I would have immediately switched.
Linda Ronstadt? Don Henley? Geez, that's a good reason right there to vote for
Bush."

As if Kerry's own sparkling personality wasn't enough to indicate to the American public that he's duller than sawdust (which is at least useful for lining the hamster cage), he's got Lida Ronstadt to point it out for him.

As WorldNetDaily previously reported, Linda Ronstadt was escorted off the
property of a Las Vegas casino after publicly supporting Bush-bashing film
director Michael Moore, and singer Don Henley was subsequently booed on stage in
Orange County, Calif., for expressing support for Linda Ronstadt during one of
his own concerts.

I hope Kerry isn't depending on these people!

An Indian man has threatened to kill his youngest daughter after an operation on
his wife failed to stop her getting pregnant.

Class, huh? It seems he didn't want any more children, so he sent his wife for tubal ligation. The article did not mention whether he considered having his own precious manhood rendered harmless, but I digress...

He recently sent an e-mail to Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje,
saying that if something was not done about his case soon he would kill Shalini
- although he later withdrew the threat.

He claims to be unable to afford this latest child, and is even sending her to a second class Hindi school, instead of to the english language school her two sisters attend.

His wife disapproves of his decision to send their youngest daughter to a
different school, but Mr Rathod says that is where she will stay unless the
governments pays for her education.

Can you imagine growing up in this child's shoes? To know that you are so unwanted that your father wants to kill you? What kind of life will she have under this tyrant? How long before she is sold, or worse? I only hope that if she ever comes across articles like the one I am writing, she knows that there are compassionate people in the world who feel for her, and support her.

The father says he would have felt the same had she been a son.

"If I was keen on a son, then I would have not advised my wife to go in for an
operation after giving birth to two children."

You know how people have, since the 80's, hung those annoying triangles in their back windows with "Baby on Board" written on them? Like this is supposed to make other drivers around them more careful. But what about the drivers of these baby buses themselves? Well, here's an interesting article:

A minivan driver backed into an ambulance, struck and injured a police
officer and, finally, crashed into a house yesterday — all with two small
children riding in her van.

This woman must be the very picture of motherhood.

...a woman, who police said had her children, 4 and 7, with her, reversed
out of the driveway, crashing into an ambulance, and sped off toward Yonge St.

Police chased the driver, who blew out one of the rear tires on the
minivan while reaching speeds of 100 km/h, for about two kilometres down Yonge
St. until she stopped at Mulock Dr.

As they walked toward her, the driver put the minivan into reverse and
ran into one of the officers, breaking his leg. She put the car back into drive
and took off again.

Moments later, she lost control of the 1990 Dodge Caravan, which jumped
the curb, clipped a tree and crashed into the front of a house on Yonge St. The
car slowed before it crashed, but police said it was lucky the boy and girl, who
were not wearing seat belts, weren't injured.

Well that's the final straw! They weren't wearing seatbelts? She oughta be ashamed of herself! I hope she gets a ticket!

Saudi Arabia has a hired a PR firm to help improve the image of their country in America. They no longer wish to be seen as breeding and harboring terrorists.

Stung by criticism about its role in fighting terrorism, Saudi Arabia has
launched a radio advertising campaign in 19 U.S. cities citing the Sept. 11
commission report as proof that it has been a loyal ally in the fight against
al-Qaida.

The two advertisements quote the commission's conclusion that the Saudi
government did not fund al-Qaida. One ad cites the report's finding that Saudi
Arabia stopped a 1998 plot to attack U.S. troops; the other cites a finding that
Saudis were not flown out of the United States right after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks.

This is rich. Years of history and fact are to be flung by the wayside, because they're paying for advertising??

But David Sirota of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank
that has criticized Bush's relationship with Saudi Arabia, said the ads try "to
take the focus out of a more broad and historic look at their policies with
regard to terror."

"It's sort of a distraction tactic," he said.

No kidding.

27 years. I was 10 months old. We were at the Cottage. My father said that the news came over our neighbor's radio. His friend Frank served with Big E in Germany - I have the photos to prove it.

I grew up listening to the King. I danced to Jailhouse Rock with my dad at the Lac Notre Dame regatta when I was 5. The first song I knew all the words to was Love Me Tender. For my 7th birthday, my parents gave me a record player and an Elvis Greatest Hits record.

When I was 19, I road-tripped across America, and communed with the ghost of Elvis at Graceland.

Elvis will always be a part of my record collection, a part of my life, and a part of American history.

The liberal bleeding-hearts of Britain have outdone themselves this time. Cornton Vale women's prison in Scotland has decided to allow the inmates to raise their children up to the age of five, in the Big House.

The move would see inmates living with their children in independent houses
on the edge of the prison grounds at Cornton Vale, near Stirling.

...

Cornton Vale governor Sue Brookes said she was aware of the criticism the
initiative would attract but added that it was preferable to separating a mother
from her child.

Speaking to the Scotland on Sunday newspaper, she said:
"What's the point of putting these children into care?

"An open prison is a fairly natural environment.
"I would like the
mums to be able to do the same things I can with my children - to play with them
and do their homework with them."

First of all, no prison is a natural environment for children. Second of all, these women are criminals. Are these the kind of people that we want as role models for the next generation? How dysfunctional would it be for little Janey to tell her school friends that she was raised in a prison because her mother was a felon? Kids face enough pressure trying to fit in.

Somewhere along the line, people stopped caring what was best for society (including children), and started more about the rights and privileges of criminals. I, for one, am sick of hearing it. There was a time when women who committed crimes forfeited their rights to raise their kids. Now they get to raise them in prison. Who does that benefit?

I have mentioned this before, but I have a good friend who is valiantly battling her way through the UK adoption system in order to be able to raise a child. She will probably have to wait 2-5 years before one is placed with her. Am I the only one who sees the potential to make everyone's lives (except the bloody criminals) better, just by pairing the kids of inmates with the homes of the childless?

For days I have been suffering because of women on the subway wearing too much perfume. Or any perfume at all, unfortunately. I am part of a very, very small minority of people who are allergic to most fragrances. Much of the time, this results in me getting a mild headache - instantly, from the first sniff. But sometimes, when a person has doused themselves from head to toe in something particularly pungent, I end up with a nauseous migraine, and sometimes I become sick. I have tried running searches on this problem, and all I could come up with was this article from 2002, about air fresheners.

I get up early every morning to wash my hair and body, because I know how offensive it would be to stand next to me if I smelled of B.O. But I don't cover my cleanliness up with a whole new stink. I want to smell like I have been washed, not like a bouquet of funeral flowers. What's the difference between smelling like sweat, and smelling like rotting lilies (aside from the fact that sweat doesn't make me ill)? When you cover your body with a heavy scent, you might as well not bother washing at all. It's a whole new kind of dirty.

So maybe tomorrow I will wear Eau de PineSol, or perhaps a spritz of Toilet Duck behind my ears. So that I can be both clean, and reek like synthetic flowers. I just fear that the irony would be lost on all those smelly, inconsiderate people I have to travel with.

When I lived in the UK, I felt that Britons were among the most miserable, surly people I had ever met in my life. I blamed the weather for the high levels of alcoholism and related violence in Scotland. I just felt that if there was a little more sunshine, the populous would cheer up.

Now, a better idea has come to light - seeing as you can't change the weather:

The British Environment Agency has reported that the anti-depression drug
Prozac can now be found in Britain's drinking water. Prozac is being used at
such an alarming rate in Britain that it is building up both in river systems
and groundwater.

If this doesn't work, at least the fish will be happy.

I finished Letters to a Young Conservative by Dinesh D'Souza today. It was funny, insightful, irreverant, and enlightening. Highly recommended.

I am hoping to put together a "library" page, with a list of all the excellent (and not-so-excellent) political books I have been reading for this site, along with reviews. Be patient. I'm a terrible procrastinator.

I don't solicit funds to run this blog (it being free, and all), or even for the hosting for Girl on the Right. Not my style. But all these books I read to pass onto y'all, well, it gets expensive. So if you buy a book through one of my links, I will be very grateful.

Anyway, enjoy. If there is anything you'd like to recommend to me, please do so in the comments section.

RG

Looks like Immigration Canada has once again opened the country's doors to terrorism.

Sanjay Dutt, one of India's biggest stars, is in Calgary filming his
latest Bollywood production.

He has been cast as an anti-terrorism agent in the action drama Dus,
which means "10" in Hindi.
As it turns out, Dutt may have links to real-life
terrorism.

Twelve years ago, a series of bomb blasts went off in Bombay,
killing nearly 300 people and injuring another 700. Charges were laid against a
number of individuals in the attacks, including Dutt.

So why was this guy allowed to enter Canada?

A special court in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) has allowed Dutt, who has been
linked to Islamic militants, to join a mega-cast of Indian stars for production
of the movie called "Dus", which will be shot in and around Calgary until August
28.

I really don't care what the court in Mumbai says - where was Immigration Canada in all this?

Immigration Canada does not comment on specific cases but a retired Immigration
control officer told The Asian Pacific Post that cases like Dutt's usually
require "special dispensation".

Great. So because he's a "star", and maybe Calgary needs all the movie money it can get (not that Calgary has ever been cash-strapped), whether it comes from Hollywood, Bollywood, or terrorism, this guy gets special dispensation to bring his militant ass into Canada. But let me guess, he's really a nice guy, right? WRONG.

He has been charged with assault on a rickshaw driver, accused of slugging a
journalist during a concert tour in the U.K. and had a serious drug problem.

Welcome to Canada, son. You'll fit in nicely.

All the while when I was in the UK, I heard horror stories about how dirty the hospitals were, and how people were dying from infection. To have a simple, routine operation was to take your life in your hands. And then the same reports started to come out of Canada. I can't say this surprises me. Once upon a time, the UK social healthcare system was touted as the greatest in the world, and Canada based their system on it. And now they're all falling apart.

Dr. Mark Miller, the head of infection control at Montreal's Jewish General
Hospital, told reporters, "It is the general sanitation in the hospitals that is
under the microscope right now. You've got fewer housekeepers. You've got less
cleaning of patient rooms and less intensive cleaning." The situation is as bad
in Ontario.

I was born at that hospital. It used to be one of the best in Canada. Now they're worrying about keeping the floors clean.

Cleanliness practices have been dangerously eroded and hospitals are
overcrowded. "We have a big problem in terms of infection control," Dr. Karl
Weiss, an infectious disease specialist at Montreal's Maisonneuve-Rosemont
Hospital, told the medical association journal. "We are practising 21st-century
medicine in a 19th-century environment."

The Ontario government also must make special resources available for
hospital cleaning.

Its recent budget gave Sunnybrook hospital, as an example, a 1 per cent
increase. Hamilton Health Sciences Centre received a 1.3 per cent increase.
Inflation is 3 per cent. How are these institutions to cope with demands for
higher standards of cleanliness without additional targeted resources?

C. difficile is spread through the environment or by fecal-oral
transmission. The germs can survive for long periods outside the body on walls,
doorknobs, and furniture. The organisms can spread quickly throughout an
institution from patient to patient, or from caregivers to patients.No one is
necessarily safe.

Last night, just a few minutes after I completed my half-assed post about Bill Clinton, and I was getting ready for bed, the fire alarm sounded. Mr Right and I live in one of these swank highrise apartment complexes, with an integrated alarm system that rings not only in the common areas, but sounds a siren in every apartment through a speaker system designed to allow "those in charge" to communicate and tell you when to evacuate, and when it's a false alarm. This was not a false alarm.

Mr Right and I grabbed the cat, his passport (it would be harder to replace his UK passport than my Canadian one), our wedding album, and headed for the stairs down from our apartment.

Due to some plumbing work being carried out throughout the week, a leak was allowed to go undetected and it short circuited part of the electrical system, causing a small fire in an empty apartment on the first floor.

For two chilly hours we all (250 units worth of people), milled around on the front and back lawns, occasionally catching a whiff of smoke, just to remind us not to go back inside. Patiently we waited. Somehow I managed to keep myself together. You see, fire has been my greatest fear for my whole life. My first nightmare at the age of 3 was about fire. And last year, I lost my greatest love - The Cottage - to this elemental killer. I can smell a fire from half a mile away. I can tell you what's burning (wood, brush, electric, chemical, etc). If a fire has been put out, I can tell you how long ago, and whether it was with water or CO2. One day, I swear my nose will save our lives.

The point of this post was to thank the Toronto Fire Department for their effeciency (expected) and geniality (not expected, but appreciated). I also wanted to give kudos to the staff at High Park Village for keeping us informed, securing and searching the building alongside the Fire Department, and generally speeding things along. A special thanks goes out to one of the Superintendents, who's name I do not know, who upon ushering us back into our safe (but smelly) building, handed out free soft drinks with a smile, saying "We like to make your fire experience as pleasant as possible (Wink)!"

I might have gotten to bed a little later - and a lot more frazzled - than I would have preferred, but after all, this is what I'm paying rent for. I want someone looking out for me. I want to fall asleep safe in the knowledge that if something happens, I will be advised immediately, and guided through the process of getting things back to normal. My rent is high, but worth every penny.

Bill Clinton descended on Toronto today to schill his epic tome, My Life. The women of the city turned up in droves, and security didn't even bother to check their breath on the way out!

While about 2,000 people lined up around the block of the Indigo store
at Toronto's Bay and Bloor intersection, only about 1,000 people were actually
allowed in. But on his way out, Clinton stopped for several minutes to
greet the throngs of people who has gathered on the sidewalk outside the
store.

Security was tight for Clinton's visit, complete with secret service
agents and an inspection tent set up outside the store. Those entering were
required to surrender their cell phones, cameras and all bags.

What about condoms?