Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Ted Cruz for president

There is something repulsive about this guy.

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On rival Republican candidate Carly Fiorina



"Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that? The face of our next president? I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not supposed to say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?"

Can you imagine this guy being the president of United States.

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Monday, December 28, 2015

11 Dead Overnight in Texas as Tornado Destruction Spans 40 Miles

Tornadoes continue to ravage havoc in Texas and neighbouring states. There seems to be no end to these tornadoes, rain storms and snow storms. I have never heard about weather like this before. This seems to be the top news coming from U.S for the last many weeks now.


Since Wednesday, 29 people have died from tornadoes across five states - that's almost triple the average number of tornado-related death per year.

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Sunday, December 27, 2015

Donald Trump is not racist




"I have a great relationship with the Blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the Blacks."

"Laziness is a trait in blacks."

Imagine this guy as the president of United States.

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Saturday, December 26, 2015

Death Toll Rises to 14 After Storms and Tornadoes Ravage U.S South

Families spent Christmas trying to salvage what they could in tornado-ravaged parts of Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas as donations pour in.



There seems to be no end to bad weather in U.S.

In Maritime we had a very short summer but on Christmas Day we had 8c. Very erratic weather.

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Thursday, December 24, 2015

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year




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At Least 11 People Killed in Storms and Tornadoes Across South


The unusual spring-like storm system hit Mississippi the hardest, killing a 7-year-old boy and six others as tornadoes tore through the state. Thus Dec 24 NBC



Those are the top news on NBC NIGHTLY NEWS day after day. Does not look good.This is in the middle of winter.

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Republicans Faceplant As Rand Paul Doubles Down On Trump’s Sexist Attack On Hillary Clinton


In case you weren’t sure yet if the Republican party really hates women, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) doubled down on Donald Trump’s vulgar obsession with Clinton’s bathroom breaks, last seen during Trump’s she got “schlonged” rant.

In the middle of charming the mainstream media with his witty airing of grievances against Republican rivals for Festivus (and oh my are they charmed! So witty!), Paul tried to elevate Carly Fiorina to Clinton’s stature by tweeting that she has zero trouble making it back from commercial breaks.


                      Politics U.S.A

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Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Science and Technology - Modern Wars


Iranian hackers infiltrated U.S. power grid, dam computers, reports say


This is scary. Looks like these will be important element of modern wars.


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Deadly Las Vegas Strip Crash Was No Accident: police



Police say 24-year-old Lakeisha Holloway deliberately and repeatedly ran down dozens of tourists with her car on the Las Vegas Strip, killing one and injuring dozens more.



There seems to be no end to this craziness.

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Monday, December 21, 2015

Clinton Zeroes In on Trump at Democratic Debate


Hillary Clinton is sharpening her GOP criticism, calling Donald Trump ISIS's best recruiter, while Trump retorts by saying she 'lies like crazy.



I watched part of the debate. It had a lot better content and rational compared to Republicans's Debate..

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Santa's gift to Justin Trudeau


Justin Trudeau has already received his Christmas gift from the Santa. Now he should be generous to his fellow Canadians. Accepting refugees from Syria is a good start. We are lucky that we don't have meanie like Donald Trump.

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Santa Claus - Donald Trump

This Santa is rich. Expect a lot more gifts.



I must admit that I have run out of material after Harper is gone.

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Saturday, December 19, 2015

Donald Trump 'honoured' by Putin compliment, much to Republicans' chagrin

Poor Trump. He is so proud of his buddy Putin. Repugs are not fair to him.:)))).


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Sanders Campaign Loses Access to Voter Registry After Clinton Data Breach

Access to Voter Registry After Clinton Data Breach FRI, DEC 18 · CLIP 1 of 9 Documents obtained by NBC News indicate that for 40 minutes Bernie Sanders' campaign searched through rival Clinton's private campaign data during a computer breach.


It looks Sanders got screwed by one of his own staffer.

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Friday, December 18, 2015

Officially, Vladimir Putin's net worth is $ 70 billion

"Officially, Vladimir Putin's net worth is thought to be around $70 billion according to Forbes, which makes the Russian the second-richest man in the world since Bill Gates' net worth is $79.3 billion in 2015.Mar 7, 2015."



However, according to some reports he is worth $100 to $200 billion.

Beat that Donald Trump.

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Vladimir Putin calls Donald Trump a 'very colourful and talented man'



Russian president speaks warmly of US presidential hopeful at press conference in Moscow, following Trump’s praise for him.


What Vladi is upto? Maybe he is thinking that with a stupid man, Donald Trump,in the Whitehouse he can screw U.S.

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What's in a Name? Ask Isis Pharmaceuticals



Isis Pharmaceuticals on Friday announced that it will change its name to Ionis Pharmaceuticals.

The company's shares, which now trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker "ISIS," will trade under the new ticker symbol "IONS." The new ticker symbol will become effective on Tuesday.

Ionis Pharmaceuticals did not mention the so-called Islamic State, the terror group also known as ISIS.

Martin Shkreli's High-Profile Hubris Hastened Fall, Experts Say

"Our goal is to create medicines that will save patients' lives, and we are proud to be at the forefront of creating innovative medicines," CEO Lynne Parshall said in a statement. "We decided to change our company name because, when people see or hear our name, we want them to think about the life-saving medicines we are developing."

NBC

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Wednesday, December 16, 2015

British PM re: Donald Trump's visit


Trump Will Unite Us'

WED, DEC 16

In response to a petition to block Donald Trump from entering the UK, David Cameron insisted a visit from Trump would "unite us all against him."



Interesting.

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Mike Huckabee on fossil fuels and climate change

Last night I partially watched Republican debate. They strictly concentrated on ISIS. One of Huckabee's statement was amazing. He said that U.S. has the highest reserve of coal, oil and gas in the world. He said " let's produce these fuels and export them. Let's not depend on Middle East for fossil fuels.

He stated that the biggest threat to U.S is ISIS/ISIL and not climate change.

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Harper's Labour Union Busting - Bill c377.


I got this idea of union Busting from Lorne.

I had some idea that Harper wanted to kill unions. I did some research and found out that Harper indeed was trying his best to please his masters and kill unions.



Harper's Rule Breaking Rush to Crush Unions'Suicidal excess': A Tory says his party will pay for ramming anti-labour Act through Senate.

By Bill Tieleman, 30 Jun 2015, TheTyee.ca

Driving C-377: Private members' bill shepherded from beginning to end by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's own office.

"There's nothing democratic about what's going on here. It's like watching the Roman Empire collapse." -- BC Liberal Senator Larry Campbell on Conservative senators imposing Bill C-377

Is there anything more undemocratic than Canada's most tainted organization -- the Conservative-controlled Senate -- breaking its rules and then overturning its own Conservative Speaker's ruling, all to hurriedly impose anti-union legislation before the federal election?

That's what happened last week with Bill C-377, an odious private members' bill shepherded from beginning to end by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's own office, passed by Parliament's Conservative majority and sent to the Senate for approval.

When Liberal, independent and even Conservative senators tried to delay passage of the legislation through extended debate, the Conservative Senate majority moved a motion to end debate.
And after Senate Speaker Leo Housakos -- a Conservative appointed by Harper only last month -- said their motion was "inconsistent with the basic principles of our rules and practices," they simply challenged Housakos' ruling and voted it down.

The rules of the Senate don't apply if inconvenient to Harper's political goals.

'Suicidal' strategy: Segal

But the move may badly backfire, says the former Conservative senator who led a successful revolt against it in 2013 when it first went to the Senate.

"Why somebody would decide that kind of suicidal, ideologically narrow excess is in the national or the party's interests or the prime minister's interests is completely beyond me," Hugh Segal said last week.

And Segal, a lifelong Conservative who also served as former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's chief of staff, said overruling the Senate speaker further undermines its already battered credibility -- disgraced as it has been with Mike Duffy charged and Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau and other Conservative senators under investigation.

"So, whatever the defences were for the continuing existence of the institution and its relevance...those who voted against the Speaker have just cut a huge hole in that flag," says Segal. A final vote on Bill C-377 should come this week.

C-377 will cost millions to administer

So why are the Harper Conservatives so fixated on C-377?

And why do seven provinces, every union and labour organization in Canada, the National Hockey League Players' Association, the Canadian Bar Association, police associations and many others all strongly object to the legislation?

Bill C-377 is clearly intended to tie unions up with costly bureaucratic administrative costs, though Conservatives say it is about "transparency."

Every union expenditure over $5,000 must be publicly reported and posted online -- something no other group faces -- not organizations for lawyers, doctors, architects, engineers or indeed any professional association.

That means not only salaries of staff but also fees for lawyers, accountants, contractors and consultants (including firms like mine). Plus the cost of collective bargaining, pension funds, education and political action, administration and much more.

And taxpayers can expect the legislation will cost the federal government itself $20 million to administer in its first two years. As York University law professor David Doorey says: "Bill C-377 is government red tape on steroids."

Yet it's the work of a Conservative government that says it opposes bureaucracy -- unless it applies to its political opponents.

Breaking their own rules and voting down their own representative to crush their opponents with red tape they profess to hate -- the Conservatives are running all the red lights on their own morality.

Bill Tieleman is a former NDP strategist and regular Tyee contributor whose consulting firm has union, business and non-profit clients. Tieleman writes a column on B.C. politics every Tuesday in 24 Hours Vancouver newspaper. Email him at weststar@telus.net or follow on Twitter Twitter @BillTieleman or visit his blog.


Lorne pointed another hideous technique - declare bankruptcy and hence kill any union and restart the same business under a different name. Good-bye unions.

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Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Animated gifs


Since I started using tablet I am unable to use my own Gif programme.I miss it but cannot do much about it. I hope to continue to post interesting stuff. Being a political junkie I hope to find gifs to post in order to keep in touch.


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Natenyahu misses Stephen Harper

Poor Natenyahoo. His bosoms buddy is gone.


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Monday, December 14, 2015

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE & EVERYTHING!?


What if evolution looks like this.



Sounds reasonable.

Update: I did this post to emphasize the calamity of climate change. No strong action is being taken by world leaders to overcome this dilemma and they're behaving like jackasses. 

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Ted Cruz Surges to the Top in NBC News Poll


There's a strong new challenge to Donald Trump as Ted Cruz is now within striking distance to take the lead.




American presidential race is becoming quite interesting. This is taking an interesting turn. I understand GOP is going to denunciate both these candidates.

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Sunday, December 13, 2015

Are humans Earth’s biggest enemy?

Mound of Sound has left a comprehensive comment in response to my post "Are humans Earth’s biggest enemy?". I find it worth posting.

Mound of Sound:
We're the top of the food chain, LD. We are the first species to establish dominion over the entire planet. No other has achieved anything approaching human civilization. We have used our systems of organization, our ability to access resources and our intelligence to grow our overall population more than seven-fold in just two centuries. We now consume our planet's renewable resources at 1.7 times their replenishment rate. In just four decades our voracious consumption of resources and habitat has reduced both marine and terrestrial life by half. We, mankind, have brought a very premature end to an entire geological epoch, the Holocene, in just 12-thousand years, replacing it with a man made geological epoch, the Anthropocene. No species has ever come close to shaping the global environment before.

We always reveled in our strengths, our prowess to bend everything to our immediate advantage. That allowed us to avoid seeing our vulnerabilities, the fragility of our resilience. Now as we've moved into the stage of "early onset" climate change impacts, the nations of the world have scurried off to Paris to sign a list of hopeful promises but do they really have the will to follow through? Will they have that necessary will to transform our civilization, our societies in so many required ways in the years and decades to come? Are we willing to re-invent our very way of life? I know of a lot of people who won't hear of it. They're fine with action on climate change so long as it doesn't interfere with them in any way.

The thing is, LD, there's no meaningful response to climate change that doesn't also address overpopulation and man's over-consumption of resources, our rapacious demands on our environment. Sorry but I don't see it happening - not voluntarily, not peacefully.

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Climate Change

If we continue our current practice of consuming fossil fuels we will slowly but surely turn planet earth into a barren planet.

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Are humans Earth’s biggest enemy?


The Earth was once populated with beasts such as the woolly mammoth, illustration pictured. Over the last two million years many of these giant beasts, known as megafauna, have been wiped out completely. The debate on exactly what caused this mass extinction ranges from changes to hunting by humans
.

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Friday, December 11, 2015

Syrian refugees now in Toronto look forward to 'beautiful future'

That was great of Prime Minister Trudeau to welcome refugees.

Then there is Donald Trump in U.S. who wants to ban Muslims entering U.S. It is a moment of being proud to be Canadian.



"Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise," Jamkossian told Trudeau through an interpreter. "That's how we feel."

Read the full story First refugees arrive.

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Thursday, December 10, 2015

Kim Jong Un awarded trophy


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Kim Jong Un Heir of Kim Jong Il

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North Korea's Kim Jong Un Claims a hydrogen bomb


Too many crazies in this world.

Imagine Donald Trump 'President of United States' in confrontation with Kim Jong Un. Bye bye life on the planet earth.

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Tom Brokaw Reflects on Trump's 'Dangerous Proposal' to Ban Muslims

Brokaw reminds us of the horrible chapters in human history including the holocaust. Brokaw primarily compares Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler.

TUE, DEC 08
History is replete with examples of what happens when fear and intolerance take hold and an entire category of people is marginalized, as Tom Brokaw remembers.


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Wednesday, December 09, 2015

Saturday, December 05, 2015

British bombers hit ISIS oilfields in Syria for 2nd time



It is hard to watch news these days - it is either tragic war in the Middle-East or deadly weather. Weather is really bad in U.S.



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Thursday, December 03, 2015

San Bernardino Shooting


It is absolutely crazy. It seems some demented gets hold of fire arm, goes to a public place and starts shooting and killing. No place seems to be safe. U.S definitely needs gun control. No one in the Congress and Obama have guts to take on this serious challenge. It looks pro-gun lobby prevails.

Two Suspects Dead, Third Reportedly Detained. At least 14 people were killed and 17 wounded in a mass shooting at a center for developmentally disabled in Southern California. A male and a female suspect were killed in a shootout withe police.

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Climate change and polar bear


Polar bear is sad about the climate change. He feels that not much is being done to overcome this problem which threatens his life and life of his species. He is drinking bear to overcome his sadness.


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Justin Trudeau




Justin Trudeau at the Climate Change meeting. He looks like a kid amongst all the old leaders.  I am sure he did well. It is good to know that he believes in global warming and willing to take appropriate actions.

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There is no scarcity of crazies in this world.

 Fans of Donald Trump.

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Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Music and Human Brain

I always wondered about the complexity of human brain and how music impacts human brain. We all have tragedies in our lives. Music provide calmness. Certain sad event happened in my life and I cannot listen to music anymore. I have a large collection of music CD's but I hardly ever listen to them anymore. Another mystery of life..


Music perception involves complex brain functions underlying acoustic analysis, auditory memory, auditory scene analysis, and processing of musical syntax and semantics. Moreover, music perception potentially affects emotion, influences the autonomic nervous system, the hormonal and immune systems, and activates (pre)motor representations. During the past few years, research activities on different aspects of music processing and their neural correlates have rapidly progressed.

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Adele - Set Fire To The Rain (Live at The Royal Albert Hall)

Adele is a rising star. She is very popular and has broken past records of sales of songs.

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Tuesday, December 01, 2015

OBAMA AND THE GROUP

Happy bunch.

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Israel ----Palestine



PARIS — An encounter with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Paris climate conference should not be misinterpreted as a harbinger of a rapprochement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, hours after the two men shook hands.

“It was purely protocol, not a working meeting,” the prime minister told reporters on the sidelines of the climate conference.




It is one of the worst tragedy in the world. Netanyahu's army continues to slaughter Palestinians. It boggles the mind that western countries continue to ignore this atrocity. Hitler carried out Holocaust against Jews and sadly Palestinians/Arabs are paying the cost.

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Refugees from the Middle East

It is heartbreaking. Why we humans are so cruel? Middle East turmoil has left millions homeless. Sad!

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