Friday digest

- Following in the footsteps of the esteemed Ginger Spice, the UN has named Drew Barrymore as their "Ambassador Against Hunger". Seriously, could they have come up with anyone more ditzy and vapid than Barrymore (and remember, Paris Hilton is out of the running because she's going to be in the slammer)? The moment I see someone like, say, William Easterly appearing on "Inside the Actor's Studio" is the day I consider her to be a credible voice on international development issues.

- A lot of the press coverage surrounding the Government of Canada's attempt to get more people out to vote in Canada has focused on the fact that nearly 1 in 2 eligible voters in this country didn't bother to even show up to cast a ballot in the 2004 election. Things improved marginally in 2006, but even then, 1 in 3 couldn't be bothered despite the fact that the main issue of the day was the far and away the biggest scandal in Canadian history as perpetrated by federal Liberals in Quebec. How can one not afford to care about the laws we live under, or how much money is taken from your paycheque and what is done with it by the government? Even if you don't like the options, you can still at the very least spoil your ballot. What makes this even more galling is that there are still far too many people around the world who don't enjoy the privilege of the franchise, but here, a sizable portion of the population just takes it for granted.

Shameful.

- Rush Limbaugh is an asshole, plain and simple.

- The Achilles Heel of the Left has always been Israel. Here are the words of one diarist who has broken with the socialist American website Daily Kos because of the unholy alliance between the far Left and radical Islam.

- Tax cuts will allow the American deficit to be almost halved within one year. What's less encouraging is this.

- The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives demonstrates their complete ignorance of economic truth once again by suggesting that Canadians are paying too much for their gasoline. You know what? If I didn't want to pay a buck a litre for gas, I wouldn't. I'd take the bus. However, Mrs. H and I like to listen to the Team 1200 Sports Radio during the ride in to work in the morning so we're willing to cough it up for that convenience. It's not an issue of underhanded profiteering by the oil companies. It's an issue of consumers paying what they're willing to for the privilege of driving a car. Besides, if the prices were lower, wouldn't that encourage more gasoline consumption, which we are all repeatedly told is a major cause of global warming by the Centre's good pal David Suzuki?