Your Daily Nazi: Nazis Press For Passage Of Lemire Resolution (P-203)

Its out of the Plenary session and, maybe, headed to the floor. Now some of the big-wigs in Canada's Far Right community are trying to put the Lemire Resolution over the top.

Tomasz Winnicki is out there spreading the word, asking his fellow white supremacists to "E-mail Conservative MPS to repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act". Trace the link back to Stormfront and you will find, if the site is working (it wasn't earlier), that the man behind this whole outburst of on-line activism is ex-Progressive Conservative Paul Fromm.

Go lads! Help land this hot potato in Stephen Harper's lap!

H/T NoOne Special

Update: a cached link to Mr. Fromm.

I Didn't THINK I Was That Popular In High School

When Classmates.com told user Anthony Michaels last Christmas Eve that his former school chums were trying to contact him, he pulled out his wallet and upgraded to the premium membership that would let him contact long-lost fifth-grade dodge-ball buddies and see if his secret crush from high school had looked him up online.

But once he'd parted with the $15, Michaels learned the shocking truth: No one he knew was trying to contact him at all. Classmates.com's come-on was a lie, and he'd been scammed.

I signed up for their basic service ages ago, and every week I get a similar message. I've never bothered forking out the extra $15 to find out who it was from because, well, there are very few people from that time in my life that I want to run into again.

But this makes it official: that girl who wouldn't dance with me at the prom ISN'T trying to apologize and ask me to take her back. Good to know.

Accused Bomber's Publication Ban To Be Challenged

As is standard in bail proceedings, the evidence presented in Mr. [Hassan] Diab's is covered by a publication ban. The Citizen is attending the hearing at the Elgin Street courthouse and intends to report on the outcome.

Sources tell me that Edith Cody-Rice, counsel for the CBC, has indicated CBC will challenge the publication ban.

Guess Its Time To Rev Up The Ole Liberal War On Xmas

The Atheists claim they are not trying to offend anyone with deeply held Christian beliefs, but of course we're lying.

By the way I have it on good authority that not only was Santa black, he was morbidly obese.

Alternative Energy & Grid Reliability

Since NERC's (North American Electric Reliability Corporation) jurisdiction extends to a number of Canadian provinces, this new report detailing the impacts of climate change initiatives on the North American power grid system is particularly relevant. Some points to note:

1) Coal is not the future. Natural gas is.
Natural gas has increasingly been viewed as the “fuel of choice” by the electric industry as natural gas-fired generating plants are typically easier to site, have shorter construction times, and have lower carbon emissions than coal plants. Coal plants, on the other hand, have been facing increasing opposition and delays over the past several years, with over 30,000 MW of coal fired generation canceled or deferred between 2002 to 2007 (see figure) and an additional 3,500 MW cancelled or deferred in the first six months of 2008 (Figure 2).8

With that in mind, here is some rather important news you can file under "resistance to coal". Although Eli says its a little early to celebrate.

2) Clean coal is not out of the question, but not a slam dunk either.

The technology in its present form, however, requires further development before it can be relied upon as a significant portion of North America’s fuel mix. These technologies must become commercial before 2025 in order to become a viable option.

One big obstacle is, apparently, generating the extra electricity to run the carbon sequestratin' machines!

3) Cap and Trade Schemes are tricky.

Looking ahead to a potential cap-and-trade environment, managing carbon credits and allowances to permit critical coal (and gas) facilities to run will be essential to maintaining reliability. In specific reference to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the Northeast, Peter Carney, Lead Environmental Engineer at New York ISO in Rensselaer, NY commented: “Without sufficient allowances, generators cannot operate to meet bulk power system electricity needs and also comply with the RGGI program.” While it may seem to be only a matter of setting reasonable annual targets, Carney continues by explaining: “The minimum level of allowances needed in New York State will vary from year to year, depending upon a number of factors including, but not limited to, weather conditions and the availability of hydroelectric and nuclear generation. Several situations can be postulated that can result in an insufficient supply of allowances. For example, a loss of a major nuclear plant could translate into a need for an additional 10 million tons per year of CO2 allowances.”

4) Transmission, Transmission, Transmission

Existing transmission infrastructure is inadequate to reliably integrate new renewable resources to demand centers.15 Evidence of this exists today, as “transmission limitations are already imposing significant constraints on wind development, with massive interconnection queue backlogs and forced curtailments of wind.”16 Further, the transmission grid was not designed for the long distance continental transport of power, and will require enormous study to ascertain the best plan to meet potential requirements of climate change initiatives.

[...]

“areas that are rich in renewables … do not correspond with areas where the transmission system is the strongest.

And if anyone is suggesting a nuclear renaisance, the last statement applies in that case as well.

As an aside, all sorts of opportunities for NIMBYism here. You can't consistently be in favor of green power but against the power lines that are supposed to carry it.

5) The grid can be made smarter.

Lots of talk of Demand Side Management, Energy Efficiency, and the like.

6) National policies on climate change are needed

Some (Nordhaus I think) have argued that any over-arching climate change agreement should be the sum of local/regional initiatives. NERC stake-holders don't buy it.

One thing is made clear by the responses to NERC’s request for comments: legislative and regulatory uncertainty is problematic: “This uncertainty makes it difficult to determine the potential impact and risks associated with GHG emissions; to make effective, strategic capital investment decisions; and to project our costs, revenues, and profits. A clear national policy on global climate change is needed for our industry to plan for the future,” as Dan Steen, VP Environmental, FirstEnergy Service Company of Akron, OH comments. For, “while deliberations on climate change must consider economic and reliability factors, the uncertainty associated with the outcome of protracted deliberations is the most problematic issue,” as Bob Kahn, President and CEO of ERCOT in Austin, TX stated.

Because its not just about boobies here at BCLSB.

Ezra Endorses "Lemire Resolution"

...otherwise known as P-203.

But when it comes up for debate, man, he's gonna be miles away. Unbreakable commitments. Bathing the pet hamster, and so forth. Playing mini-golf with an important business partner. That kind of thing. You're on your own, Speechies!

But keep those pay-pal donations coming!

CanWest Unionists Can't Ride Well

Some otherwise good advise to the Aspers spoiled by pur spelink:

CanWest, Canada's largest media company, now has its stocks trading forpennies not dollars. As with financial institutions south of the border, it isa victim of its own greed. There will be no bail-out, it needs to sell [media holdings] to haveany hope of riding the ship.

CNW charges $2.30 for each of those words, fellas. Don't go wrecking any of them.

Rachel Marsden On The Plight Of The National Post

...frankly, they can bite it.

And biting it they apparently are.

PS. Click through the first link to read Rachel Marsden talking dirty. I mean real dirty.

What's Wrong With Two Toronto Guys

...running for the Grit leadership?

After all, the demographic/ethnic makeup of the Greater Toronto Area mirror's that of Canada as a whole. For example, out West we have a lot of stupid people.

Ezra Levant Strangely Silent On Resolution P-203

...while the rest of the Conservative blogosphere churns with anticipation.

He went silent at election time, too. When he could have actually influenced the debate, Ezra disappeared into the Tory War Room for a month where, apparently, you get three square meals a day. As a result, the Speechy Agenda languished. In fact, whenever the CPoC's pitch-fork wielding peasants get a little to close to the village walls, Ezra absconds from the battle-field.

But, true believers, keep those pay-pal donations coming!

Oh, and this little bit of advice of Ezra's...

...remove that filthy wreath from the cenotaph, and place it where it belongs: in the garbage.

...is probably illegal.

Ignatieff Makes Leadership Aspirations Official! Gets Bucket Stuck On Head!

Just kidding.

But will the future resemble the past? Will "gaffe prone" become Iggy's middle name? It would certainly be more entertaining that way although, I suppose, bad for democracy.

PS. From same article, Kennedy is officially out!

Marc Lemire Supports Conservative Party Resolution P-203

...to repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Marc, former leader of The Heritage Front, once member of the Canadian Alliance, (a precursor to today's CPoC), wiki sockpuppeteer extraordinaire.... you still got it, boyo, you still cast a shadow over the Canadian Conservative movement.

So far Marc hasn't weighed in on the whole polygamy debate. We'll have the exclusive here at BCLSB when he does.

h/t RB.

Ezra Pisses Away $500

He sends out a CNW news release demanding that Jennifer Lynch of the CHRC not desecrate the National Remembrance Day Ceremony by laying a wreath in Ottawa!

He is roundly ignored, both in the press and on the ground! The wreath gets placed! The world goes on!

Toronto Life On Aqsa Parvez

A bit of a storm over the Toronto Life story Girl, Interrupted, which chronicles the life of Aqsa Parvez, and her death at the hands of her father. The only problem I have with it is that the TO Life cover -- which contains the words"The untold story of Toronto's first honour killing"--is misleading and unnecessarily inflammatory given that the story itself does not demonstrate that Ms. Parvez's murder was in fact an honour killing, or even really take a stand on the issue. Search it for the phrase and you get:

Was her murder an honour killing or simply a gruesome case of domestic violence? Worldwide, an estimated 5,000 women die every year in honour killings—murders deemed excusable to protect a family’s reputation—many of them in Pakistan, where the Parvez family had emigrated from.

[...]

Aqsa’s death got to the heart of a heated debate about women in Islam. Some progressive Muslims, such as Tarek Fatah and Farzana Hassan of the Muslim Canadian Congress, saw her murder as evidence of rising Islamic fundamentalism in Canada. The majority of Muslim leaders, however, insisted that Aqsa’s murder was not an honour killing. Mohamed Elmasry, who heads the Cana­dian Islamic Congress, and Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, described the death as a teen issue and a case of domestic abuse.

Should it be revealed in court that the death of Aqsa Parvez indeed an honour killing, then arguments like those raised here might be seen as a deliberate attempt to evade the issue.

But, hey, if you're not going to prove it, then you shouldn't splash it across your cover.

Tues. Morning Human Rights Pot Pourri

An editorial from Law Times on our adult dancer and her HRT case. Their take:

This is a surprisingly tough one. It’s as easy to dismiss Kristy with an eye-roll, as it is to argue for the other side. It will be interesting to see how the tribunal rules.

Meanwhile Werner Patels has a nice piece explaining why, among other things, the Stephen Harper gov. won't get within five miles of the Speechy cause. Hint: the Speechy leader is an enormous dick.

Jay Hill: Expect Cuts

In the meantime, Ministers and their departments and staff are already in the midst of intensive activity, review and analysis with the ongoing objective of enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of federal programs and services. Canadians elected us with the expectation that we would look for savings wherever we can to ensure fiscal integrity in government through difficult economic times.

Not too surprising, I guess. But, given the new rhetoric of moderation out of Hill and the CPoC I don't expect these will be large enough to 1) stir up any more than modest outrage, or 2) do much good.

If Only Gays Could Be Satisfied, Like Pigs And Cows And Other Barnyard Animals

Because, as Bourrie points out, while gays got hosed, pigs and cows and other barnyard animals had their rights significantly expanded:

...Proposition 2 is as follows:

- Requires that calves raised for veal, egg-laying hens and pregnant pigs be confined only in ways that allow these animals to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely.

-Exceptions made for transportation, rodeos, fairs, 4-H programs, lawful slaughter, research and veterinary purposes.

-Provides misdemeanor penalties, including a fine not to exceed $1,000 and/or imprisonment in jail for up to 180 days.

They didn't go about protesting in the streets and now they've got rights to about the same level as Gays did back in California in the 1970s. I bet, in the end, they get the right to marry before gays do! Pigs and cows lying down together! Oh my!

Why We Fight...

...for Canadian Human Rights system. Or at least why I do:

Kimberlee sent me the original picture from which the one CBC used was cropped. Plus a couple of extra shots exclusive to BCLSB. The cat is named Monday:

Maybe Mark Steyn and Ezra and Marc Lemire are sending around excellent shots of themselves wearing nothing but Speedos that I'm not seeing, but otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, I'm on the right side of this one.

Here are a couple of the best stories dealing with the case, plus some brief commentary on the possible philosophical issues behind it.

As an update, there may be two further dancers beyond Kimberlee and Bridget that will be stepping forward shortly, and apparently several male ex-employees of the bar in question who may be pursuing legal action against its owner. There seems to be quite a bit behind the story.

So stay tuned! Human Rights! Good looking older women! This one has it all!

PS. No gratuitous piggery in the comments. There's a lady present.

Kinsella's Going With Iggy

He hasn't said anything for sure yet, but I can just freakin' sense it.

This is weird, man. Its like when Captain Picard joined The Borg.

Its Always More Fun In Quebec

Fighting at Nomination Meetings?
Getting busted for ripping down ADQ posters?

The most exciting thing that happened during the Ontario campaign is some guy fell asleep listening to Dalton McGuinty and busted his nose when he did a face-plant on a hard-wood floor.

And I might have dreamed that.

Tarek Fatah's Name Disappears From Silly Article

Yesterday, an article appeared on the website of The American Thinker entitled "The Islamist Role in the 2008 Canadian Elections", and authored, apparently, by "Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah". By yesterday afternoon, however, Fatah's name had disappeared from the article's header, leaving Ms. Raza sole responsibility for the piece. By evening, his name had also been pulled from the version of the article present on the Islamist Watch site. Furthermore, Mr. Fatah showed up in the comments section of this blog, essentially disowning the piece, and wondering how I might have come to "associate" it with him.

Well, I have changed the attribution in the original post but, in answer to Mr. Fatah's question, as noted above (and as you can see from the screen capture below), the original attribution was based on the fact that Mr. Fatah was originally given as co-author.

Interesting, too, I think, in that Raza and Fatah are shown as co-authors of a number of articles previously published, for example here and here.

What the real story behind the cock-up is I have no idea, but I would note that "The Islamist Role...":

1) suggests a "Taliban-style overthrow" of North America is "unlikely, in the short term". Good news, that.

2) suggests that Rahim Jaffer lost out among Muslim voters because he was not ugly enough.

I wouldn't want my name attached to such a piece of crap either.

Taliban Credited With Bringing Down Rahim Jaffer!

Or at least "the Islamists". Apparently, they teamed up with Michael Geist and the folks at AnyoneButHarper.

So says Raheel Raza , at any rate:

In two districts (ridings as they are called in Canada) the Muslim candidates who lost were openly hostile to the Islamist agenda. Wajid Khan in Toronto and Rahim Jaffer in Edmonton. It is rumored that the full force of the Islamist establishment and the mosque structure came out to defeat these two Muslims because they were seen, in the words of one cynic 'too good looking to be considered authentic Muslims'.

I'm not buying it. Wajid Khan is plenty ugly.

A Second Stripper Emerges

November 7, 2008 09:25 AM - A second adult dancer has come forward to file a human rights complaint against the owner of a Mississauga strip club, alleging she too was fired because of her age.

[...]

Sanderson, who used the stage name Bridgette, has been dancing since 2001. She worked at Locomotion for seven months. But, on June 13, she claims she was terminated because she received some bad reviews from customers who called her "old and ugly."

Ouch!

Luckily, there are men's-club aficionados somewhere along the air-port strip with a little more class. Bridgette has found other work.

And, as for me, it looks like I've found a new cause. If Nazis were involved somehow, I'd be in heaven.

Denier On Denier Action! Lorne Gunter Burned By Climate Change Crazy!

For a climate change denier, the most important thing is getting your case "out there"--floating around the blogosphere, linked to by Drudge, unattached to a particular source and, therefore, irrefutable. Graphs get re-purposed, flawed arguments get re-hashed long after their shortcomings have been painfully exposed.

Perhaps, then, the National Post's Lorne' Gunter will be thrilled to know that his Feb. 25th, 2008 column "Welcome to the new ice age" was given a 2nd life by one F. William Engdahl of the Centre For Research on Globalization.

From Lorne Gunter's "Welcome...":

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

From F. William Engdahl's "Global Warming gets the Cold Freeze ":

China is surviving its most brutal winter in one hundred years. Temperatures in the normally mild south were low for so long that some middle-sized cities went weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

From Lorne Gunter:

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

From F. William:

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has been hurt as home buyers have stayed home. In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, breaking the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in 1950.

From Lorne:

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

From F. William:

Now, as a result of the recent record cold weather, the ice is back. According to Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

Lorne (a long one this time):

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.

"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

F. William:

There is also admission by several intellectually honest climatologists that their predictive models are flawed. Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona, two very prominent climate modellers, recently admitted that the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (as in the fictional movie The Day After Tomorrow) are wrong.

In a recent interview Russell said, “It's not ice melt, but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of man-made warming on polar ice melt.” Now that’s very interesting.

When professors Toggweiler and Russell reprogrammed their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator, then back towards it again, the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the recent Arctic warming.

Russian climatologists believe recent weather changes around the globe are results of solar activity and not man-made emissions. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, calls the argument for man-made climate change "a drop in the bucket." His research shows that now the recent very active solar activity has entered an inactive phase. He advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

Kenneth Tapping of Canada’s National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon. The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

Now, the stuff in this last paragraph is a load of baloney, and only demonstrates the maxim that a lie can get all the way around the world before the Truth gets its boots on. What Kenneth Tapping actually said can be found here. The original source of the bullshit version was the Feb. 9, 2008, Investors Business Daily, retailed uncritically by Gunter later in February, and then by Engdahl in April.

As for F. William Engdahl, he is known for (among other things) his theories re the Abiogenic origin of petroleum. An ex-peak oiler, he now believes that oil and gas supplies will never run out.

H/T CW, who did most of the legwork.

Just To Get It Off The Table

I'm beginning to think Winnipeg may become the most hilarious city in Canada next week.

Skeptics Jump Gun On Hurricane Activity

Perhaps discussions of the 2008 hurricane season should wait until the end of the 2008 hurricane season? That is how they do it in Science, isn't it?

Or was a bunged-up headline on Drudge more important?

Your Daily Nazi: CPoC Will Debate Freeing The Neo-Nazis!

Whoopsie! Looks like I spoke too soon! The Speechy Wars are back on!

Mind you, resolutions made by the grass-roots are usually ignored by the party, and in any case I imagine the delgates won't frame the issue as being how the CPoC should make it easier for Neo-Nazis to organize in Canada. They will probably refer to it as a "resolution to keep Ezra Levant in pay-pal donations". Or something of that nature.

h/t NN and FD.

Peace In Our Time!!! Speechy War Finally Over!!! Speechys Lose!

Conservative draft policy resolutions here. Run the terms "free speech", "HRC", and so forth and you come up with doodly!! Nothing, you hear me, Ezra and Connie? You hear me, Mark (and Marc)? Bupkiss! Sweet FA!

And if the Tories won't touch that stuff, nobody will!!

Big h/t to National Newswatch!

Tories Hiding Convention Policy Resolutions

From a Tory insider, courtesy Kadey's comments:

I was just on the phone with the CPC Convention office, and the policy resolutions will only be handed out to delegates on their registration in Winnipeg. I guess this will be part of the convention package, or whatever we will be given when we register.

The resolutions are supposed to be very similar to what was discussed at this summer's regional convention in Que. Anyone know what happened there? Any resolutions to please the Speechy Warrier?

This is an update to this post.

Its Tough All Over For Polar Bears

One objection climate change skeptics raise in regards to the attention paid the Polar Bear--for example, attempts to have them designated an endangered species-- is that, for many sub-populations, there is too little data available to determine the status of the animal. For example:

2) the Chukchi/Bering Sea population (CB, shared with Russia, half in US territory) is tentatively estimated at 2,000 ─ no population survey has yet been done (Aars et al. 2006).

Well, perhaps there has been no survery, but it seems the Chukchi population is indeed threatened:

Polar bears are dying out in the remote Arctic region of Chukotka because of melting ice and increased killing by humans, an expert with the International Fund for Animal Welfare warned on Friday.

The guy doing the warning here is Nikita Ovsyanikov, whose spent a couple of decades studying the bears around Wrangle Island, off the Coast of Russia. Here are a few of his articles on the subject.

So Far, A Whole Lotta Nuthin'

There's been some disgruntlement from rank and file Tories lately over next week's policy convention in Ottawa. For one thing, nobody knows what policies are up for discussion. There are those who feel this is amounts to a deliberate:

...some party members say it's an attempt to muzzle grassroots supporters who might espouse views that could embarrass the Harper government.

"They want to control the message. They don't want people talking about things that aren't scripted," said party member Connie Fournier, co-founder of the popular conservative blog, freedominion.com.

And, as Kady O'Malley noted yesterday, November 5th was the last day for posting the package of constitutional resolutions to go forward for consideration at Convention 2008. Well, those have finally appeared, and dull stuff they appear to be.

Nothing on policy yet, but there doesn't seem a required posting date for the CPoC policy document.

Important news in that, depending on what appears in the Tory policy document, it may well be possible to declare an end to the Speechy Wars. That is, if the Conservatives don't want to propose some kind of "Free The Nazis" amendment to their policy document, the chances of Ezra and Connie and the gang actually accomplishing something on the political level fall to pretty much zero. Here's hoping.

Obama's Election Pays Off Immediately For Canada

OTTAWA — Canada hopes to achieve a North American climate-change deal with U.S. president-elect Barack Obama and will begin working on the file within weeks, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Wednesday.

Meantime, officials told The Canadian Press the Harper government has been waiting for the departure of President George W. Bush to work with his successor on an integrated carbon market.

I believe that Ed Stelmach has come out against even a national, let alone international carbon trading regime as being against Alberta interests. Certainly, Alberta companies will have to buy the lion's share carbon credits if anything like this goes through. Tory on Tory violence?

Good-bye Bradley Effect, or: BCL Admits Error

I am one of the Liberals bobvis calls out:

During the primaries and shortly after, I heard a number of people (liberals) say that Barack Obama would not be elected because when it comes down to it, the Americans are just racist. People will say that they like his ideas and will vote for him, but once they go to the voting booth and ask themselves whether they want the old, white guy or the black dude, they just aren't going to vote for the black man. Some said 'Obama must build a substantially large lead' to hope to avoid the Bradley Effect in November.

These are falsifiable predictions.

If Obama is elected, will they revise their beliefs to account for the evidence that disconfirms their prior beliefs?

I will happily admit to being wrong about Obama back in January of this year. I honestly didn't think he had a hope of beating the Republican nominee. However, a well run campaign, a tanking economy, and many, many Republican mis-steps put him over the top. In fact, I am not even sure about the Bradley Effect holding true in this election. RealClearPolitics gave Obama a 7.5% edge over McCain on November 4th, and the actual spread according to Fox--52.35% Obama vs. 46.35% McCain--came in a bit below that (5.99%). Can this be attributed to anything in particular? I don't know. Certainly, if there is was a Bradley Effect in play, it was a very small one.

Human Rights Battle Moves To The Strip Club, Part II

I'm a bubbly blond with a good personality. The boobs and the blond hair, usually you can't go wrong in a strip club with those two things.

The link contains additional information, including remarks from Ms. Ouwroulis on her case (in the comments) and this new picture.

Meanwhile, commentary from the Ottawa Citizen.

Ujjal Wins By 20

First word of the result here.

Looks like the judge was right: spending all that money, opening all those boxes, didn't get Wai Young the votes. A waste, then?

Update: Its, been a long day and I'm not sure I'm coherent enough to explain why this case bugs me. But if our judge made his initial decision on the basis of some kind of probabilistic metric (this many boxes, this many total rejected ballots= no chance to make up 22 votes), then we are not seeing a triumph of democracy. We are seeing a cyber mob that had to have it proved to them that math actually works, and who eventually nudged the Tory candidate into un-conceding in their attempt to challenge the foundation of statistical reasoning in the name of democracy.

Naturally, math won out.

Flaherty: Quebec Dumped, Ontario Now Cutest Province

Ottawa - Faced with public finances are deteriorating rapidly, the Harper government announced yesterday that it changed the formula to slow the rising cost of this program for the provinces. Résultat: le Québec est légèrement désavantagé. Result: Quebec is slightly disadvantaged. Par contre, l'Ontario touchera pour la première fois de la péréquation, faisant ainsi son entrée dans le club des provinces pauvres au pays. As against, Ontario will receive the first of Equalization, making his entry into the club of poor provinces in the country.

Don't worry, Quebec. We'll take their money and still not vote for them.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! Obama THE ANTICHRIST??

Canadian Catholic novelist Michael O'Brien, best known for his apocalyptic novel Father Elijah, think's he's got our ultra swarthy Spawn O' Satan pegged:

...now that I have seen the video of the Berlin speech I think there is more here than meets the eye. He is indeed a powerful manipulator of crowds, even as he appears ever so humble and wholesomely charming. I doubt that he is the long-prophesied ruler of the world, but I also believe that he is a carrier of a deadly moral virus, indeed a kind of anti-apostle spreading concepts and agendas that are not only anti-Christ but anti-human as well. In this sense he is of the spirit of Antichrist (perhaps without knowing it), and probably is one of several key figures in the world who (knowingly or unknowingly) will be instrumental in ushering in the time of great trial for the Church under its last and worst persecution ...

In fact, not only is Obama the Anti-Christ, or at least the Anti-Christ's cousin, Ghost of a Flea has even more alarming news:

Barack Obama's first job out of Columbia was for a firm called Business International, a Scientology front name if I have ever heard one.

Does this mean John Travolta will be in the Obama cabinet--maybe as Under Secretary for Partying Down? That might good. Stars and Stripes is boring. Maybe he could drop it for something by the Bee-Gees.

Anyway, GoF isn't finished yet:

Barack Obama is a Manchurian Candidate. He has been groomed for this mission since before he set foot in the United States. He cannot become President of the United States.

So Barack's down with both L. Ron Hubbard and the Chinese? I'm a little confused, frankly. Were the Chinese at all into Disco? Maybe Obama should just keep S&S, thrown in a guitar solo and have someone rap the middle verse.

Finally, how does this mere negro hold sway over good, upstanding, red-state, corn-fed Christians the way he do? Answer: he's working some kind of Black Bullshit, some voodoo whammy....He's using hypnosis, gawdammnit!!! There's 60 pages of evidence!!! Can you not see, you pathetic clowns?

Obama’s techniques are the height of deception and psychological manipulation, remaining hidden because one must understand the science behind the language patterns in order to spot them. This document examines Obama’s speeches word by word, hand gesture by hand gesture, tone, pauses, body language, and proves his use of covert hypnosis intended only for licensed therapists on consenting patients. Obama’s mesmerized, cult-like, grade-school-crush-like worship by millions is not because “Obama is the greatest leader of a generation” who simply hasn’t accomplished anything, who magically “inspires” by giving speeches. Obama is committing perhaps the biggest fraud and deception in American history.

Read the whole thing! Obama can't become President! If he wins he's gonna go on TV and make America act like a chicken!

H/t dawg.

Ujjal Dosanjh Hanging On!

"Mr. Dosanjh is still leading by 21 votes," explained Dosanjh's lawyer, Ravi Hira.

A change of one vote since all the kerfuffle broke out. Has democracy been served, or Conservative Conspiracy theories indulged because one their candidates was too dumb to know they had thrown in the towel already?

With 80% if the polls counted, Dumb is looking like a good bet.

Please Let Her Win At The OHRT

It would give people a reason to visit Mississauga.

Anyway, you should never be judged on your age, only your talents and work ethic.

There Goes The Neighborhood

The owners of Parkway Mall, a shopping centre on Victoria Park Avenue for a half-century, want to completely redevelop the site and add 2,200 residences, a Scarborough councillor says.

That's where I shop. If you know this part of Toronto, Parkway Mall and Parkway Plaza are now slated to go condo, and rumours have Eglinton Square next up for re-development.

Both [concepts for the property], he said, call for 2,200 residences - some in townhouses but most in nine buildings of eight to 21 storeys - on the 18-acre Ellesmere Road property.

The mall itself, including a grocery store Thompson said has significance as a heritage building, would largely be removed and replaced by 100,000 square feet of new retail and about the same amount of office space, he said.

Ugliest heritage building you've ever seen, if true. That line won't convince anyone to leave the place standing. Still, they want to add 2,000 people and replace almost 300,000 feet of retail with about a third of that. Slowly, they're trying to herd everyone to the new Walmart on Eglinton.

Global Warming And The U.S. Election: The People Vs. The MSM

Austin, Texas-based, Global Language Monitor (GLM) documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis upon Global English.

During the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election cycle, GLM has tracked the "Top Political Buzzwords of the 2008 Presidential Campaign" in an effort to determine what concepts are driving the vote. For example, during the 2004 elect, GLM was the only source to predict that the

...electorate voting with their moral compasses rather than their pocketbooks.

This year's result is particularly interesting when it comes to the concept of global warming or climate change:

The second-most discussed term of the campaign barely surfaces in most media reports, and this is the combination of ‘Climate Change’ and/or ‘Global Warming’....Global warming within 1/2 of 1% for the overall lead.

The overall lead word, incidentally, is "change".

What's interesting about this is the brief gloss provided by GLM: The second-most discussed term of the campaign barely surfaces in most media reports. Since the GLM covers a combination of what the campaigns are saying and what the media are saying about the campaigns, what we see here is a disconnect between what the campaign senses the people want to hear discussed, and what the MSM is willing to tell them.

The situation is reversed with the concept of race. The media is obsessed; the folk, not so much

Everyone is talking about race (No. 16) except, apparently, the electorate.

The people smarter than the press? The campaigns (both of them, apparently) more responsible than the press? Seems to be. Once again we are let down by our informational "gate keepers".

From Blogosphere To MSM

Kate Allen has expanded her piece in The Thundebird on the role of bloggers in our last federal election campaign and it appears as "Federal election gave bloggers the taste of blood". In it I muse as follows:

Murphy thinks downsized newsrooms and lack of time mean that reporters don’t have the resources to look into the kind of stories he is breaking. His relationship to the traditional news media is cooperative, rather than competitive. “You’re hoping the mainstream media is going to pick up on something you do and broadband it,” he said.

In practice, a Canadian bloggers best shot at getting material into the MSM (unless perhaps you're working as an unpaid word-slave for The Post) is via National News Watch. If you ever discover and blog about something that appears news worthy, I strongly suggest emailing "Paul" (if I remember his name right) and letting him know. As Kady O'Malley has written, if National News Watch has it, then the MSM has it (because journalists all read the NNW). It also helps if you can arrange the post to (more or less) resemble a news story. When Cherniak was still writing, it always used to bug me because he would have information nobody else had access to, but would stick it in the 2nd to last paragraph in a boring long post about something else entirely.

The Story Behind The (Margaret Wente) Story

Margaret Wente's now infamous October 25th column, What Dick Pound said was really dumb - and also true, appears to have based almost entirely on the research of Marxist scholars Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard, whose views are discussed briefly in this National Post profile from Saturday, November 1st. These two have been around for awhile, and in fact are given credit for instigating a debate over the usefulness of employing indigenous "traditional knowledge" in policy making for Nunavit and the NWT. This is how they got their start:

Northern organizations, governments, and governments-in-waiting have been formally and informally attempting to incorporate “traditional knowledge” into policy deliberations for some time. A public debate about this practice began in fall 1996, when Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard published criticisms of the Government of the Northwest territories’ (GNWT) Traditional Knowledge Policy and of the requirement that traditional knowledge be incorporated into environmental assessments. Widdowson was at the time a contract employee of the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development (Howard and Widdowson, 1996). As the controversy developed, she was suspended for one week as punishment for her public criticism of government policy.

In the Canadian parliamentary tradition, public servants do not have the right to publicly disagree with the policies they are hired to implement. Employees who find themselves in fundamental disagreement with the decisions of elected officials have two options: they may work from within to bring about a change of policy; or, failing this, they must resign. As private citizens, they may—and should—criticize government policy freely. Widdowson should have resigned before speaking publicly, but at least her action stimulated public discussion of some very important questions (GNWT, 1993; Howard and Widdowson, 1996; Berkes and Henley, 1997; Howard and Widdowson, 1997; Laghi,1997; Stevenson, 1997).

Now, I won't go too deeply into a critique of their thinking (I'm hardly qualified), other than to point out a couple of things. Firstly, as I suspected, Widdowson and Howard employ some variant of the theories of Lewis H. Morgan. But this stuff is science from a 100 years ago, long since discarded:

Ms. Widdowson's work has been roundly criticized by other scholars in relying on a long-discredited theory of evolutionary stages of development through which every society must pass in the long march of "progress."

Secondly, even the National Post story notes that their version of Marxism is "outmoded", and in fact these two points go together. Morgan's theories of cultural evolution lingered on in Marxist circles long after they had been superseded in the broader anthropological community.

A quick glance at their views on traditional knowledge is interesting in light of Wente's story, however.

On one side of the debate are its instigators (Howard and Widdowson, 1996, 1997), who have argued that TEK is unscientific and should not be made a mandatory part of environmental impact assessments because it is spiritually based. Their argument is twofold. First, they object to the mandatory inclusion of TEK in impact assessments because they consider that it implies "the imposition of religion" upon Canadian citizens (Howard and Widdowson, 1996: 34). Second, and more importantly with regards to the present argument, they suggest that TEK is unscientific, since "spiritualism is obviously inconsistent with scientific methodology". They conclude, therefore, that TEK "hinders rather than enhances the ability of governments to more fully understand ecological processes", since there is no way in which "spiritually based knowledge claims can be challenged or verified" (Howard and Widdowson, 1996: 34).

Well, this seems a profoundly blinkered attitude. If there is no way that traditional knowledge can be "verified", then this suggests that, for example, Inuit societies have managed to survive in the arctic through mere luck, and that the gradual adaption of the dog-sled and igloo was not the result of innovation, trial and error, but instead just happened.

And this is surely implausible.

It should also be pointed out (and has been, but I can no longer locate the source document), that every culture possesses traditional knowledge of the environment it has grown up in. If we were to attempt to develop policy for rural Saskatchewan, it would be entirely uncontroversial to consult with local farmers re the climate and wild-life around them. Why does the same thing become controversial when the knowledge we are trying to get at is partially embedded in native myths and stories?

National Post Cuts Back In National Capital!

You will no longer be able to buy copies of the National Post out of a vendor box in Ottawa as of Midnight tonight. I've heard this from two sources, one being this anonymous commenter on Bourrie's site, the other an Ottawa area resident (via private e-mail) who helpfully suggests that the boxes be converted to ice-cream machines.

Here's the reason behind all the gloom:

Bond rating agency DBRS said yesterday that it was putting Canwest Media Inc.'s debt ratings under review for a possible downgrade, citing a Canadian advertising market that has "weakened substantially." DBRS said it was "likely" the situation could have a material impact on Canwest's advertising-dependent conventional television business and could put pressure on the company's debt covenants.

Similarly, Moody's Investors Service on Thursday also put the long-term debt ratings associated with Canwest companies under review.

"Moody's also believes it is more likely that Canwest will have to sell assets in order to address 2010/2011 refinancing milestones related to last year's acquisition of the former Alliance Atlantis' specialty television operations, and that the related divestiture proceeds will be below earlier expectations."

Update: Jerad has photo evidence of the Natty Post's demise in Toronto.

Feds Dump Result Of Their Bad Budgeting Onto Provinces

OTTAWA, TORONTO — Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, facing Canada's first budget deficit in more than a decade, said he will limit the growth of equalization payments to the poorer provinces.

You know, back in the early 1990s everyone was spending like drunken sailors. The Feds, the Provinces, the Cities. Everyone. And so it was only right that everyone was forced to tighten their belts. Now, however, the nation's precarious financial state is almost entirely the result of decisions made at the Federal level (GST cuts, anyone?). How just is it that places like Fredericton should pay for Jim Flaherty's deficit?

On the up-side, lots of potential for Tory-on-Tory violence as a result of this announcement.

Campaign Life Coalition On The Election That Was

The Campaign Life Coalition has done a wrap-up on the Oct. 14th Election. Here are some of the highlights:

1) The Christian Heritage Party ran 59 candidates and received 26,722 votes in total – its lowest total vote yet.

2) Many alleged pro-life candidates were unwilling to say as much:

In many cases, we were assured by local pro-lifers that a particular candidate was pro-life even as the candidate refused to answer questions on the issue. This made it difficult to identify confirmed pro-life candidates and pass this information on to supporters.

3) Liberal Party President Doug Ferguson wrote CLC a letter in which he claimed:

On the issue of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, Ferguson said the Liberals recognize they are illegal and do not “plan to change the laws governing these issues” but would “continue to listen closely to the views of Canadians on these and other end-of-life issues.”

I have no deeply formed opinions on these issues. But...interesting.

4) The CLC is majorly pissed with Stephen Harper:

Stephen Harper is definitely not pro-life.

5) The CLC is still hawking its KLVU Research "massive poll" that found 56% of Canadians opposed Morgentaler's receiving the order of Canada. While I think KLRVU has done some decent polling work since, that one was a stinker.

6) Overall, the CLC claims pro-life candidates "held their ground" in the 2008 election. My own bad math seems to indicate that they are down 2 bodies. Tom Wappel was replaced by pro-choice Michelle Simson in Scarborough Southwest, and Paul Steckle was replaced by Ben Lobb (who refused to answer the CLC questionnaire) in Huron-Bruce. I am willing to be corrected on this, however.

Getting Rich By Being Poor

NEW YORK - For the third straight year, the Toronto Maple Leafs are the NHL's most valuable team, worth $448 million.

..and all for fielding a squad that couldn't pull down a bronze medal at a Ringette tourney.

This why Toronto is a Mecca of Post-Modern Capitalism, and why other Canadians hate and fear us. In most towns you have to succeed to succeed. Here we rule by sucking.

National Post Getting Less National All The Time

Bourrie observes:

Friends tell me notices have appeared on National Post boxes in downtown Toronto saying they will no longer be serviced after Saturday. Similar (or the same) notices popped up on boxes at service centres on Highway 401 east of Toronto earlier this week.

He also points out that the paper is essentially high-tailing it out of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Another, perhaps relevant series of factoids: BCLSB regular Jermo Sapiens recently placed this piece in both the National Post's on-line and print editions, but received nothing in the way of recompense. Now, I remember The Star publishing some of my stuff as Op-Eds back in the 1990s, at which time they paid out $150 per article. Finally, if you read the on-line NP these days, you'll see a fair bit of content being supplied by various Blogging Tories (Taylor and Janke esp.). So, as things go sour on The Natty Post, are they turning to writers who are willing to wordsmith for free? Are they using bloggers as unpaid labor?

PS. The Natty Post website is silent on what they pay for Op-Eds.

Religion And Politics: U.S. Vs. Canada

Raised by Monks, once an MP for the New Democratic Party, Dennis Gruending writes Pulpit and Politics, one of my favorite Canadian Political blogs. In his latest, he offers a terrific look at the differences in how Canadians and Americans mix their religion-politics cocktail. Nothing particularly surprising, other than his observation that it has been Obama who has been engaged in the most "god talk" during this latest U.S. election cycle. But I suppose as a Dem. you have an inherent "God Deficit" to make up. I also suspect that crusty old John McCain is genuinely reticient about baring his soul for public inspection. A rather admirable trait.

Harper On Newly Moderate CHRC

...the PM assures [Brian Lilley] that Canada has expressed its concerns to the Afghanistan government at the “highest level”...and then notes that the human rights commission issue involves a delicate balance; the most “egregious” cases are before provincial commissions, so he can’t comment on those examples, but he thinks the Canadian Human Rights Commission may be moderating its actions.

Well, this is not the exact wording but a summary by Kadey O'Malley. Nevertheless, I bet some people out there named "Ezra" are crapping themselves. Cuz it sounds like our PM is primed for inaction on this particular issue.

Another hint along the same lines comes from Stephen Taylor's response to Shaidle, in which he argues that HRCs are doing a good job "self-discrediting". Presumably this is in advance of their spontaneously disbanding.

There Is Nothing Undemocratic In Trying To Get Margaret Wente Sacked

Cries of "political correctness gone wild!" once again ring out through the blogosphere, this time over the Fire Margaret Wente Facebook Group, the goal of which is to have the G&M dismiss Ms. Wente over her October 25th column "What Dick Pound said was really dumb - and also true".

Trying to deny a columnist an outlet for her controversial opinions? Oh my, how Fascist!!

But wait, what are the people behind Fire Margaret Wente" actually asking people to do? From the Facebook page:

1. Send a letter to the Globe and Mail:

To: Letters@globeandmail.com, egreenspon@globeandmail.com, sstead@globeandmail.com, nacampbell@globeandmail.com, pmartin@globeandmail.com, nhassan@globeandmail.com
Cc: mwente@globeandmail.com

2. Call the Globe and Mail
416-585-5000
Find Patrick Martin and Edward Greenspon in the directory, and demand Wente be dismissed.

3. Cancel your Globe subscription, or call someone you know who subscribes and encourage them to cancel.

4. Educate yourself about the real history of Indigenous peoples on this land, and share accurate information about what went on, and what's going on, with your friends and colleagues.

Well, it sounds like they are asking folks to use their powers of persuasion on the Globe's editorial staff. Scary shit! And it also sounds like their asking people to exercise their rights as a consumer to withdraw the money they send every year to the paper and use it to purchase other goods and services. Can you not just feel the Totalitarianism oozing off your computer screen?

And lets imagine for a moment that they succeed: the G&M looks to its bottom line and, weighing subscriptions lost vs. losses it might take were Ms. Wente to write for some other publication (maybe these guys), they decide to throw her overboard.

Has something undemocratic happened? Hardly, I would argue. In fact I would even go further: something wonderfully Capitalist has happened. The Market responded to the desires of the marketplace. Carry on Capitalism!

When Barbara Kay Reads, Bad Things Happen

Barbara comes to the rescue of Margaret Wente and Dick Pound by--and you knew this had to happen at some point--invoking JJ Rousseau:

One really has to wonder what the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have made of this nonsense. The term "noble savage" signified high praise by Rousseau and many other romantics of the eighteenth century, when "primitivism," another word that would raise native hackles today, was all the rage.

For one thing, this in context is a lotta hoosegow. Neither Pound nor Wente used nor intended the term in the sense noted above.

Secondly, the concept of the "noble savage" entails its own set of condescending stereotypes. For example, the "noble savage" as a literary character tends to physically resemble a white guy with a tan. For example, check out this description of Oroonko, the protagonist in Aphra Behn's early novel "Oroonko, or: The Royal Slave":

He came into the room, and addressed himself to me and some other women with the best grace in the world. He was pretty tall, but of a shape the most exact that can be fancied: the most famous statuary could not form the figure of a man more admirably turned from head to foot. His face was not of that brown rusty black which most of that nation are, but of perfect ebony, or polished jet. His eyes were the most awful that could be seen, and very piercing; the white of 'em being like snow, as were his teeth. His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth the finest shaped that could be seen; far from those great turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the negroes. The whole proportion and air of his face was so nobly and exactly formed that, bating his color, there could be nothing in nature more beautiful, agreeable, and handsome.

And it is entirely unsurprising that the most famous example of the type, Tarzan, is in fact a white man transplanted into the jungle.

But arguing like this with Barb Kay is essentially offering pearls to swine. After spending a good couple hundred words of digression on how not all uses of the term "savage" are derogatory, she simply pivots in the last few sentences to offer her own personal assurance that Margaret Wente doesn't have "a drop of racism" in her. Since all this babbling about Rousseau and Co. does absolutely nothing to prove this contention, one wonders what the point of it all was. A gratuitous display of erudition? Or, perhaps more accurately, of googling skills?

PS. Jonathon Kay claims that the assertions in Wente's column are "entirely substantiated". Claims, but does not offer a shred of proof. Well, here's a point-by-point debunking of those assertions. Care to put up or shut up, Jonathon?

Twitter Squatting

Def. grabbing up twitter IDS like twitter.com/coke in the hopes you can sell them off for a huge sum later.

From The Slashdot comments:

It's as if someone said, "You know, I like MySpace, but the blog posts there just aren't inane enough. I wish there was a site where people could quickly and easily share every minute of their boring lives with the world."

My sentiments exactly.

File Under "Sucks To Be Poor", or: Why Bono's Midlife Crisis Looks A Bit Different Than Yours

Here's his.Here's Yours:
Shoulda learned to play the guitar/shoulda learned to play them drums.

A Great Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing?

The campaign, I mean.

When did you decide which party to vote for?
On election day 15%
After the leaders debates 12%
Before the leaders debates 15%
Before the campaign began 54%


Here is the complete poll. I'd be interested in knowing what the party breakdown was for voters who made their minds up before the campaign began, vs. those who made their minds up during its course. I don't think you can derive that from the numbers given here, but its early and I still need to coffee up.

Ezra Levant: To Know Him Is To Sue Him

Lawyer on lawyer violence set to break out. Of course, I am cheering for WK.

Interesting how little role "Free Speech" Issues played during the last election campaign. This battle is over, I think. With M-446 dead and a Tory Majority thwarted, all the Speechies have to show for it is their mounting legal bills.

Oh, and by the way. Some good news re real Free Speech threats. Just linking to material that might be considered defamatory won't get you in legal trouble. Down with Wayne Crookes!

More On Lib Fundraising Problems

An interesting observation from Norman Spector:

Nor is it clear that the Liberals' financial problems are organizational. Unless you're a lawyer who wants to become a judge, why would you send them your hard-earned money instead of contributing to principled parties such as the NDP and Greens?

In other words, once you gave money to the Liberal Party--not because of their platform, which was malleable--because it seemed inevitable that they would win. Since that no longer appears to be the case, what exactly is your donation buying you?

A warning to those who might take the party to the mushy middle. There's gotta be some "there" there.

Cue The Peasants With Pitchforks!

Catholic Insight's Alphonse de Valk:

It is highly undesirable that Stephen Harper continue to hold the Prime Ministership for very much longer for a number of reasons.

— First, he has made the mistake of coming to believe that his persona is the personification of Conservatism. Thus he tolerates no views other than his own, is suspicious of others in the party, bullies his MPs, and cannot delegate tasks without giving up personal control.

— Under his regime the PM’s Office (PMO) with over 100 people has consolidated the vices introduced under previous prime ministers. For example, during preparations for elections, candidates are parachuted in, ignoring the wishes of riding associations which increasingly tend to be bypassed anyway.

— The democratic character of the party organization is set aside whenever it is deemed desirable. Even the local handling of candidates is taken away, as was the case with Diane Haskett, a former mayor of London, whose efforts were thwarted by direct interference from Ottawa (which did not like her Christian convictions).

— Also, Harper seems to have turned his back on what he himself understood in earlier days to be threats to the nation, such as the electoral gag laws silencing third parties, as well as the ever more unsavoury actions of Human Rights Commissions which, instead of bringing equality to Canadians, are pitting groups against one another while extinguishing freedom of speech.

It is almost impossible to understate the influence of Mr. de Valk and his magazine, and you can make a good argument that Harper won the '08 election without the SoCon gang on-side and can therefore ignore them going forward. That is, Harper won by ignoring his base, not embracing it. But it is interesting that Mr. de Valk's commentary echoes, in some of its complaints re the anti-democratic process involved in choosing candidates, allegations made by disgruntled non-SoCons within the party. For example, Charles Conn (Mississauga Reform Party candidate in 1993) represents the small government/socially moderate wing of the CPoC. During this election campaign, Mr. Conn wrote:

The history books are full of 'strong leaders' whose dictatorial, my-way-or-the-highway rigidity led to disastrous consequences for their people.
[...]
...lwhatever you do, whichever party is involved, shun like the plague every appointed parachute candidate who was shoved down the throats of members in so many constituencies. Just last fall, an impressive majority of Ontarians rejected MMP. Don't let the backroom party big shots in Ottawa sneak it in by stealth.

So what's the possible upshot of this simmering discontent?

MPs should revolt over this “trained-seal” scenario by quietly but aggressively organizing a bloc of members who will, if necessary, break away to form a new Reform party and do what our Prime Minister will not do but what must be done to save Canada.

...a scenario which is probably not likely at the moment. But who knows? Given the economic hardship ahead of the country, and the persistence of Quebecers demanding money from the Conservative government while not offering it much in the way of electoral return, such cracks in the fragile alliance that is the CPoC could be exacerbated.

Update: What I said.

Wai Young Files An Appeal

...over the slightly funny-smelling recount in Vancouver South. Conservative party official Ray Leitch doesn't expect to get the judge in question to change his mind, but what the hey. I'd like to hear the reasoning behind the judges decision here myself.

Shipping In An Ice-Free Arctic

Given the expected timeframe for the clearing of traffic routes [2013], the important policy questions are not restricted to how this might be prevented or reversed. Countries like Denmark, Russia, Canada and the United States are are already starting to grapple with what policies need to change when shipping changes routes, requiring people, ports, defense and security in places where virtually none of these (and almost as few people) have been for a while.

Original story here.

David Frum Advocates A Green Shift

Today’s lower prices, welcome though they are, threaten to halt the progress away from oil.

The answer is to prevent the cost of oil to the consumer from declining any further. Let consumers pocket and benefit from the decline to US$65. Then impose a stand-by excise tax on any further declines. If oil goes to US$64, the government taxes $1. If the decline continues to $63, $2. And so on.

Consumers will continue to substitute away from oil. Manufacturers will be induced to continue investing in efficiency. Homebuilders will continue to shift to smaller, more centrally located development. Revenues to the governments of producing nations will be squeezed. Revenues to the governments of consuming nations will rise -- and those governments should use the new tax to cut other taxes, especially taxes on work, saving and investment. I’d nominate the corporate income tax as the first tax to cut -- and ideally eliminate.

Before you faint, Frum has been trying to get his fellow conservatives to take AGW seriously, and has in fact been advocating a carbon tax coupled with cuts to other taxes, for a number of years now. Mind you, he went totally quiet on the issue during our recent election campaign.

Funny, that.

The Next Leader Of The Ontario Conservative Party?

Q: Do you still believe greenhouse gases are nothing to worry about and it would be wrong to shut down coal-burning power plants?

A: There are greenhouse gases. I disagree that human contributions to greenhouse gases are so significant that we should be hysterical running around suggesting we have to do all these things to prevent its catastrophe.

We've had periods of global warming and global cooling from the beginning of time and there weren't too many cars or factories at the last global warming period... I think science is far from conclusive.

Randy Hillier, if you haven't figured that part out. Incidentally, the WS piece refers to the Lanark Landowners Association, and Ontario Landowners Association, which Hillier played a large role in, as "excellent associations, worth joining and supporting". Well, yeah, if you like spending the night in jail.

Kudos, incidentally, to the new Western Standard. Looks like they're getting their hands on some half decent material these days. (although it looks like this interview first appeared in the Ottawa Sun)

Pinball Will Not Save The Liberal Party Of Canada

...as this article rather naively suggests. However, Michael Clemons might well pull the City of Toronto from the clutches of David Miller, and its more than a bit odd that Rob Granatstein's column today doesn't mention him as a possible candidate. Sure, Clemens has said "no", but the race is a couple of years down the road and there is still time for him to change his mind.

Unless you live here, it is hard to appreciate just how much Toronto loves its Pinball. I have had the pleasure of listening to him speak, and he is (at least when delivering a set-piece) very good. Afterwards, though, when he allows himself to mingle with his audience, is when the wild stuff happens. His bodyguard is apparently under instructions to treat the crowd with kid-gloves, and he is almost literally mobbed by (primarily although not entirely) middle-aged white women, usually a couple inches taller than he is, who want to touch him. The mayoralty is his if he wants it, and who knows that that might serve as a stepping stone to higher office.

So while Pinball is not Canada's Obama, at least not yet, he may be our new Mel Lastman.

Sky Stones Over Guelph!

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2008) — For the second time this year, The University of Western Ontario Meteor Group has captured incredibly rare video footage of a meteor falling to Earth. The team of astronomers suspects the fireball dropped meteorites in a region north of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, that may total as much as a few hundred grams in mass.

Astronomers think this are likely "stony-type meteorites", pictured top left. Of these, it is written:

Because they so closely resemble rocks, stoney Meteorites are much harder to find and are more valuable than metallic Meteorites.

Get looking people:

Associate Professor Peter Brown and Phil McCausland, a postdoctoral researcher in Planetary Science, are hoping to enlist the help of local residents in recovering one or more possible meteorites that may have crashed.

...find one and you'll have beer and pizza money for a week.

Wente On Pound On Native Savagery

He wasn't being racist, just employing obsolete anthropological terminology.

But then how does this square with his remarks being "true", as Ms. Wente claims them to be? Anthropological classifications, presumably in this case something like Lewis H. Morgan's phases of cultural evolution, come and go for the same reason as they do in other areas of knowledge: they are superseded by better and more accurate classifications. The obsolete classifications are then generally referred to as "false".

In any case, its wonderful how Ms. Wente turns a bit of idiocy on the part of Dick Pound into a bout of native bashing.

Deniapalooza II Coming To New York City

Monckton Will Be There? Will You?

Senator McCain's Quest For The Presidency Is Over

...forever linked to race-baiting.

Thats from Fox News Executive Vice-President John Moody.

And as it should be. McCain's first response was to swallow the whole story hook line and sinker.

The Lancet: Don't Vote For Geezer McCain! He Could Stiff It Any Time!

... the world's most prominent medical journal, not being political at all.