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The Raise the Debt Ceiling Rap

 

Finance Minister on the U.S. debt crisis

Charles speaks with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on the U.S. debt crisis and the ramifications for Canadians. 

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Adler - flaherty

Charles Adler TV monologue - Why won't CBC post pictures of War Criminal Suspects

Click here to watch Adler's Sun News Network monologue 

Charles Adler TV monologue - On the Hunt for War Criminals

Click here to watch Adler's Sun News Network monologue on war criminals.

Charles Adler TV monologue on debt crisis south of the border

Click here to watch Adler's Sun News Network monologue on the U.S. debt crisis. 

Charles Adler TV monologue on three big media lies about Norway massacre

 

 

Tears, and Thanks

Multiculturalism in Canada is an eye-gouging reality

 

By Charles Adler,QMI Agency

First posted: Friday, July 8, 2011 12:00:00 MDT AM

 

How can you not get a huge lump in your throat watching the video of a UBC graduate student, just back from Bangladesh, saying thank you for the support of so many Canadians for her plight.

She is wearing sunglasses and it’s not because it’s sunny in Vancouver.

Rumana Manzur’s eyes were gouged, allegedly by her husband, who is now in prison in Bangladesh. The assault took place in full view of her five-year-old daughter.

This was the story we opened our TV show with on Sun News Network. As host, itis my job to stay somewhat in command of my emotions. But I corral my emotions on the Manzur story by thinking about my reverence for maternal love.

She was in Bangladesh so she could spend time with her little girl. I hope the girl gets to see her mom again. We can only pray some day the mother will regain her sight so she will be able to see her daughter’s beautiful smile.

Only one day earlier, we were witnessing the emotionally wrenching video of Melissa Styles, the widow of York Regional Const. Garrett Styles, at the funeral for her husband.

She was expressing gratitude to her husband for giving her two children, one of whom is only two months old.

We don’t have to guess Melissa Styles knew full well on any given day she was saying “goodbye and I love you” to her husband, he might not make it home that night.

Cop families and military families are always putting fear on ice so they can support the high purpose of community and national service.

I contain my emotion by thinking about how grateful I am for their service.

And only minutes after dealing with the maimed UBC student, our eyes are pried open again to the reality of multiculturalism in Canada.

The focus shifts to Valley Park Middle School in Toronto where the Muslim students are allowed to have prayer services on Friday afternoons. A section of the cafeteria becomes a mosque.

Ali Baig is the volunteer prayer leader.

He told us the school administration, teachers and parents, most of whom are Muslim, have worked out what they think is a practical solution to a real-life problem that pitted religious values against secular public school values.

Muslims are expected to be at prayer on Fridays, the holiest day of the week in the Islamic faith. In what has traditionally been our Judeo- Christian culture, Friday was a school day. Sabbath was, and for most Canadians still is, a weekend event.

Baig patiently told us that for his community this wasn’t an issue of the majority accommodating the minority because at Valley Park Middle School, 80%-90% of the student population is Muslim.

I thank Baig for his comments while telling him from a national perspective he holds a minority viewpoint. He graciously thanks me for the opportunity to express it and my emotions are contained by acknowledging today is eyegouging Canadian reality.

Since many of the people coming to this country in recent years are far more committed to advocating for their values than the rest of us have been in defending ours, only a fool could conclude the less committed side would prevail.

 

My Israel Trip

By David Menzies

Just got back from that despicable “apartheid state.” No, don’t adjust your watch or GPS. This isn’t 1989 and I’m not talking about South Africa “Classic.” Rather, if you believe certain news reports and certain vested interest groups ranging from left-wing radicals to mainstream labour unions, a certain country beginning with the letter “I” located in the Middle East is engaged in the slimy practice of state-sanctioned segregation and discrimination. And, no, it’s not Iran.

Rather, given the boycotts and the flotillas, Israel in 2011 is the world’s new pariah. I just had to check it out for myself, because the way Israel is being portrayed, surely there are certain water fountains for Jews, and troughs for Arabs; surely there are modern air-conditioned buses for Israelis and smoke-belching clunkers for Palestinians. And intolerance, intolerance everywhere. That is the nature of apartheid after all.

So you can imagine my shock and surprise when I walked the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and floated in the Dead Sea that none of this apartheid was anywhere to be found.

Indeed, what I found was an island of tolerance and freedom and accommodation cast adrift in a sea of intolerance, hatred and fear-mongering.

Yet, oddly enough, as Syria continues to commit crimes against humanity by massacring its own citizens and as Saudi Arabia treats half of its populace – that would be the female half – as second-class citizens, where is the outcry on the world stage?

Meanwhile over in Persia, Mr.-I-Need-A-Dinner-Jacket denies the Holocaust as he eagerly tries to engineer another one.

Where, pray tell, are the outcries and the condemnation from the left and labour unions and organizations such as Queers Against Israeli Apartheid?

Oh, speaking of homosexuals, I arrived in Israel just after Tel Aviv’s Gay Pride Parade took place. And again, how odd, I thought, that this minority would be allowed to revel in the streets of such a staunchly apartheid nation? In fact, if Tel Aviv’s Gay Pride Parade was a spectacular success as reported, I can only imagine the pride parades in non-apartheid cities such as Tehran and Ramallah and Tripoli. And then I remembered that parades celebrating alternative lifestyles don’t exist anywhere else in the Middle East. And that even openly advocating for gay rights is very hazardous to one’s health. So here’s hopping that Queers Against Israel Apartheid will send delegates to these other places to advocate for equality – although I humbly recommend that they do so clad in bulletproof burkas.

The purpose of my visit, by the way, was to visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. There are museums all over the world that are filled with antiquities and dinosaur bones and even canoes. But Yad Vashem is something else entirely. As museums go, Yad Vashem is a game-changer. From the opening exhibits chronicling Hitler’s rise to power and Germany embracing anti-Semitism as official state policy to the exhibits that chronicle the implementation of the Final Solution, if you don’t exit Yad Vashem with a lump in your throat and your neck hairs standing erect, I shall pray for your soul. As the museum chronicles, by the early 1940s, the Nazis had perfected industrialized mass-murder to an art form. Indeed, ultra high-efficiency cremation ovens were developed so that three people could be incinerated using the same energy required for a solo incineration. The most perversely chilling detail is that the company that made these ovens for the Nazis received a patent for the technology – just in case any other dictatorships down the road need the infrastructure to carry out their own final solutions. Business is business, after all – even the human extermination business.

It also becomes apparent that Holocaust denial did not develop in the years or decades after the Second World War, but rather, the genesis of Holocaust denial began during the Holocaust. Anecdote time: a Jew is brought into the Auschwitz death camp. Surveying the misery and horror, he utters aloud how this can’t possibly be happening. An S.S. officer overhears him, and starts to laugh.

“You see,” says the Nazi, “even if you were able to escape and tell people about this place, nobody would believe you.”

And so it is today that the propaganda campaigns against Israel embraced by individuals and nations invariably trickle back to the appalling notion that the Holocaust is an elaborate hoax. All of which is why an institution such as Yad Vashem is so important: it exists as a time capsule chronicling that 70 odd years ago, man’s inhumanity to man reached a pinnacle that can never be allowed to be forgotten.

Thankfully, my enduring memory of Israel ended on a positive note. As I waited in line for a shawarma in a Jerusalem pedestrian mall, about two dozen Christians from South Korea assembled to sing rousing hymns in their native tongue. As they did so, a group of Jewish teenagers approached the impromptu choir. And here’s what happened: the teens broke into traditional Jewish dance, joyously whooping it up as the Koreans praised Jesus Christ. It was one of those “golden moments” in life: two faiths and two cultures interacting in complete harmony, regardless of the language barrier. Apparently, these folks didn’t get the memo that Israel is an “apartheid state.” Funny that.

 

10 Car Poolers You Don’t Want to be Among

By The Menzoid

Anecdotal evidence suggests that with gas nearing the $1.50/litre benchmark in many Canadian regions, carpooling is suddenly coming into vogue again. At first blush, sharing a car (and sharing the cost of filling the car’s gas tank) would seem to make perfect sense – especially if all the occupants are headed in the same general direction. Indeed, what’s the downside to communal commuting?

Well, how about this? The complete eradication of one’s much-cherished personal space.

One of the great things about driving a car as opposed to, say, hitching a ride on a public transit bus, is that an automobile is the ultimate freedom machine. A car excels as a bastion of sublime sanctuary. Segregated from others, you can recline the seat as far back as you want; you can play your favourite radio station at your preferred level of volume; heck, you can even shamelessly and unapologetically belch or break wind. Alone behind the wheel, you are master of your wheeled domain.

But the driving dynamic radically alters when there are others in the vehicle. Years ago, The Menzoid found himself temporarily carless and was thrust into a car-pooling arrangement. How did The Menzoid enjoy it? Two words: never again.

Simply put, there is a perverse irony to car pooling: once the car is filled with others for the commute, it has by definition become a public transit vehicle albeit on a smaller scale. So it’s goodbye “Freedom Machine”, hello “TTC Bus #442.”

Thus, even if gas hits $2+/litre, your humble correspondent shall simply grin and bear the cost so that he can continue to fly solo. Need proof of the horror of car-pooling? Then simply consider the following passengers who were encountered during that fateful year of multi-passenger commuting. And keep in mind these are the sort of passengers you might encounter, too, if you foolishly believe that “sharing is caring” when it comes to the morning commute.

 

Giggling Gina

Gina was a bubbly, perky gal who always had a smile on her face and a giggle in her voice. While a tad endearing on Monday – nobody wants to sit beside a sourpuss – Gina’s act wore razor-thin by Wednesday. It’s not merely the fact that she giggled incessantly – but that she giggled for absolutely no apparent reason whatsoever. Examples:

Driver: “Did anyone see the game last night?”

Gina: “Tee-hee tee-hee tee-hee...”

Driver: “Who needs a Timmies break?”

Gina: “Tee-hee tee-hee tee-hee…”

Driver: “Gina, what’s so damn funny?”

Gina: “Tee-hee tee-hee tee-hee…”

And so on...

 

Know-It-All Knowlton

Good old Knowlton. It’s all about me-me-me, with Knowlton. Thus, when we hit gridlock on the Don Valley Parkway, Knowlton naturally admonishes the driver given that Knowlton claimed to have known the parkway was going to be a write-off (alas, Knowlton never offered to reveal such a crucial piece of information prior to the car getting on the merge ramp, mind you...)

Knowlton would then go on to pepper passengers with useless (and very questionable) “facts” about subject matter that nobody cared about.

 

Musical Moe

Moe absolutely needed his music in the morning. And that music was always ghastly heavy metal on his custom-recorded cassette (“It’s the soundtrack of my life,” Moe would say, without a hint of jocularity.) So it is that Moe, when allowed to get his way, would rock his head back and forth to the music as if he were a passenger in Garth’s AMC Pacer from Wayne’s World. Silly, sad, and sonically horrendous.

 

Inebriated Ian

The quintessential lush, you could practically smell the Sambuca on Ian’s breath a kilometre away. However, much to our horror, about once a month, Ian would yell, “Pull over! Stop the car!” Sometimes Ian would make it out in time. On other occasions, the ol’ Honda Accord would resemble the Vomit Comet due to Ian’s dishonourable discharge. Life of the party indeed.

 

Doris Downer

For dear old Doris, the glass was always half-empty; no cloud ever had a silver lining. She had a special skill when it came to finding a dark side in every situation. Examples: filling up with gas at the local Esso, Doris would drone on about the dangers of benzene. Buying some snacks on the go, Doris would recite the caloric and cholesterol content pertaining to every pastry and potato chip. And she’d also question if anyone was packing peanut products – even though nobody in the group (Doris included) had peanut allergies. What a downer.

 

Tardy Tina

Rolling up at Tina’s place and honking the horn, Tina would invariably come to the door clad in her bathrobe, a telltale sign she had yet to shower. A five-finger signal conveys she’ll be ready in “five minutes” (although we already know it’s going to be at least 15 given her makeup requirements alone). We do a slow burn waiting for Tina to get ready, knowing that she will profusely apologize for being late and will promise it will never happen again... even though we just know that we’ll be going through the exact same routine the next day and the day after because Tina is incapable of programming a digital alarm clock.

 

Too Much Info Tommy

If Tommy “scored” last night, we’d hear about it. If he bench-pressed 350 at the gym, we’d hear about it. If he’s suffering from hemorrhoids we’d be told all the nitty-gritty details. Tommy was a one-man all-news network, every item pertaining to the peaks and valleys unfolding on Planet Tommy.

 

Sleep-Deprived Sylvester

Oh, Lordy. You could always tell by his dopey mug and crease-ravaged face that Sly had pulled an all-nighter. Or he had watched a west coast game that went into extra innings. Whatever the case, Sylvester would almost always nod off, and with his trip to dreamland would come eardrum-shattering snoring, sometimes accompanied by a little river of drool meandering out the corner of Sly’s gaping mouth. (One time we actually thought that Sly had died – turned out he was just in the midst of a really deep slumber with virtually no vital signs.) Fun City.

 

Sporty Spencer

The conversation always began with his “trademark” phrase, “Hey, how ’bout those Blue Jays?” (which, of course, he had ripped-off from a local TV sportscaster.) Then Spencer would transform himself into a walking, talking Elias Sports Bureau of completely useless, irrelevant and mind-numbingly boring baseball trivia dating back to the days when the Dodgers and Giants were based in New York.

 

Hygiene-Challenged Hank

Hank was proof positive there are some people in our modern day world who just don’t pay attention to all those ads promoting Old Spice, Colgate, Listerine and myriad other personal hygiene products. However, Hank always seemed well-versed in the merits of consuming raw garlic. Thus, with Hank in the car, it wasn’t unusual to commute with the windows rolled all the way down – even if the temperature was a somewhat less than balmy minus 23.

Afghanistan - Parade for our returning soldiers?

Have a listen to Charles' monologue on Afghanistan... 

Afghanistan monologue july 7th