Santa Claus Convention - Not!

This is really the Canadian Supreme Court.

Free at Last

Miss Universe
Now free to participate in events in Toronto after officials relent and apologize.

My Son Hates This!

My son the blogger tried blogspot but didn't find the community activities he needs so looking around he found Myspace.com. Everything he wanted until Rupert got into the act. Come December it will no longer be free.

New Zealand Leads, Canada Follows

Not only New Zealand finds Kyoto to be a loosing proposition, now Canada finds that the staff members of the organization responsible for implementing the provisions are bailing.

Beauty Illegal in Canada

Canada breaks new ground daily. First gay marriage as the law of the land and now, beauty as oppression. Miss Universe a Russia-born Canadian is forced to abdecate in Toronto. Kate Shaw has some further comments. Thanks to Chrenkoff.

Terrorist Spotting

Having trouble spotting terrorists as you go about your daily activities? Let Frank help.

Too Darn Hot

We have had over a week of daytime temperatures above 100 degrees with night cooling only to 80. This may be normal to Arizonans but to a 30 year Southern California beach guy this is cruel and unusual punishment. We are getting a little releaf now (under 100). Plants wilt each day - and die if I forget to water. Of course, here we have air conditioning which was never necessary near the coast- and a well-insulated new house in which our electric bills are surprisingly low but I am still ready for a return to more moderate weather - and the return of the legendary Delta breeze.

The Battle for Ground Zero

More about the attempt to dishonor America at ground zero.

New Zealand's continuing Kyoto Crisis

The hole is $1.5 billion but Greenpeace is calling for sanity. More from

Tim Blair

Urban Teachers Like Private Schools

But only for their own kids!

Willisms reports stats on private school enrollments in urban environments and finds that urban public school teachers put their own money on private education.

Bin Laden Still Doesn't Get It

William Saletan in Slate. A liberal who wants to live.

Bin Laden's whole game plan is to turn the people of the democratic world against their governments. He thinks democracies are weak because their people, who are more easily frightened than their governments, can bring those governments down. He doesn't understand that this flexibility—and this trust—are why democracies will live, while he will die. Many of us didn't vote for Bush's government or Blair's. But we're loyal to them, in part because we were given a voice in choosing them. And if we don't like our governments, we can vote them out. We can't vote out terrorists. We can only kill them.

Read the whole column.

Since 1993

The Sun created this map of Islamic Terrorism since 1993.


Terror Map 

Powerline asks why liberals think that the London attack is because of the War in Iraq.

Religion of Peace

You hear many people tell us that Islam is a religion of peace, including the muslims. In a Mark Steyn column on the London bombings is this plum.

The easiest way to understand is, again, to take them at their word. Bassam Tibi, a Muslim professor at Gšttingen University in Germany, gave an interesting speech a few months after 11 September: "Both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms these mean different things to each of them," he said. "The word 'peace', for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam—or 'House of Islam'— to the entire world. This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought." Only when the entire world is a Dar al-Islam will it be a Dar a-Salam, or "House of Peace". The objective isn't a self-governing Palestine but the death of the West...

Mark's opinions are, as always, cutting and insightful. Read the rest.

Hamstrung by Tolerance

Victor Davis Hanson on the London bombings and the war on Islamic fascism. Our more enlightened sensitivities make us fair game for attack from within.

In WWII we didn’t care much whether in fighting Bushido some thought we were in a war against Buddhists. We weren’t, and that was enough.

We knew the enemy were Nazis, not simply Germans, and didn’t froth and whine to prove that distinction.

But not now.

To criticize Islamic fascism is supposedly to be unfair to Islam, so we allow on our own shores mullahs and madrassas to spread hatred and intolerance, as part of our illiberal acceptance of “not offending Islam.”

It is not that we don’t believe in Western values as much as we don’t even know what they are anymore. The London bombings were only a reification of what goes on daily with impunity blocks away in the mosques and Islamist schools of London.

The enemy knows that and thrives on it. That refuge in religion is why imams shout that “Islam doesn’t condone such things” — even as bin Laden has become a folk hero on the Arab Street. Jihadists sense that even here at home more Americans are more concerned about a flushed Koran at Guantanamo Bay than five Americans fighting for the Iraqi jihadists or Taliban sympathizers in Lodi, California.

As long as there is not any price to be paid for Islamism, either by governments abroad or purveyors of its hatred in the West, the propaganda works and the killing will go on. But when a renegade Saudi Prince, Pakistani general, London imam, or Lodi mosque leader screams out to the jihadist, “Stop that before those crazy Americans really do go to war,” the war, in fact, will be over and won.

Read it all.

More on Asbestos

As the asbestos scam continues, read this letter to the El Dorado Hills Telegraph from a retire health official. Why did the EPA officials not perform the same analysis when holding the community meetings? and why did they refuse to take a position on the dangers they were so eager to measure when the standards are defined.And why is there the apparent attempt to frighten the community and sow mistrust in the county government officials?
Earlier posts here,here,here and here.

From the El Dorado Hills Telegraph June 29, 2005
Chicken Little Comes to El Dorado Hills

Where asbestos is concerned it appears Chicken Little has come to El Dorado Hills. I came to this conclusion based on three factors, government regulations, conditions in El Dorado Hills and how El Dorado Hills compares to Libby, Montana.
The EPA regulates airborne asbestos in schools. These regulations are expected to keep children and adults safe. El Dorado Hills is almost 100 times safer than EPA school regulations require.
Libby, Montana, where asbestos illnesses occurred, had conditions over a million times worse than El Dorado Hills and 100,000 times worse than EPA regulations require.
OSHA and EPA both have asbestos regulations. OSHA regulates exposure in the workplace. EPA regulates exposure in schools. Neither regulates asbestos exposures in the home.
The OSHA limits for workplace exposure to asbestos are 1 fiber per 10 cubic centimeters of air. (.1f/cc) The EPA limit for school exposure iss an average of 1 fiber per 100 cubic centimeters of air. (.01f/cc)
I used the stricter school EPA limit when considering the risk in El Dorado Hills. In El Dorado Hills, the EPA collected and tested air samples in two ways. The PCME method is the acronym for the type of microscope used and AHERA is the acronym for the asbestos in schools regulation.
The EPA PCME tests found average reference exposures of less the 1 fiber per 1,000 cubic centimeters of air (.0008f/cc) , much safer (than) the EPA requirement. Activity level exposure monitoring in EL Dorado Hills showed an average exposure also much safer (than) the EPA requirement (.00938f/cc).
Only in five specific areas while engaged in dust creating activities did personal exposures exceed the OSHA limit.
The EPA AHERA tests did not follow the AHERA testing definitions in El Dorado Hills. In a mailing to the public the EPA footnoted the discrepancy without noting the results published would show a significantly higher fiber count due to this failure to follow the AHERA definition. Nonetheless the average reference exposure was still well below the EPA limit.
El Dorado Hills has been compared to Libby, Montana where there were many asbestos related illnesses. The conditions in Libby, Montana were significantly worse than in El Dorado Hills.
At one of the first public meetings I requested information about the exposures in Libby, Montana. According to the information provided, air monitoring showed the average reference asbestos exposure in Libby, Montana to be one fiber per ten cubic centimeters (.1f/cc) almost 1,000 times greater (than the) El Dorado Hills average and 10 times the EPA limit for schools.
Additionally, air monitoring also showed that dust creating activities in Libby, Montana resulted in exposures as high as 1000f/cc – 100,000 times the EPA limit and more than a million times greater than the El Dorado Hills exposures. A very significant difference. In comparison the asbestos hazard in El Dorado Hills appears minimal.
From this perspective, El Dorado Hills is almost 100 times safer than the strictest regulations and one million times safer than Libby, Montana.
No health professional will say El Dorado Hills is perfectly safe because we are dealing with a carcinogen.
Nonetheless, we deal with carcinogens on a daily basis. Sunlight, dental x-rays and benzene in gasoline are carcinogens. Yet we play in the sum, go to the dentist and put gasoline in our cars. That is because established regulations to keep the cancerous risk low.
In El Dorado Hills we are safely well with the regulations. Hopefully, it puts things in perspective.

Steve Smith, Health and Safety Inspector, retired

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