Rahim Visits Tim Hortons

H/t

Open Parliament

Just to echo the sentiments of a number of people, this site looks really, really useful. It also looks like a lot of work, so we'll see how long the creator sticks with it. One interesting feature is: the site will send you an email alert whenever your MP (or any MP you wish to follow) speaks in the HOC. Be really interesting if you could get an alert whenever their website/facebook page is updated.

Spot Helena!

The further to the right, the further "back" in the back-benches you are. The real plan is here.

No Word On The Number Of Busty Hookers...

...but one salad

roasted tomato with lollo rosso bouquet, tomato vinaigrette, manchego frico, avocado mousse and sherry gastrique

...at Sassafraz restaurant, where Helena Guergis dined with Nazim Gillani, the financier at the centre of the Jaffer affair, will run you $14. And the "rare Bluefin Tuna" costs you $35. Sweet. Eating a threatened species.

I wonder who wound up footing the bill?

Loyalty Over Talent

Impolitical chronicles the adventures of Dimitri Soudas, Harper's new "communications director", and a sad tale of public relations bungling it is.

To gloat a bit, I was the guy to figure out that Dimitri had mistaken Iggy for Gordon Smith at the G8 summit in Italy. But, in any case, if your purpose in life is to make fun of the Harper government--and mine is--your job just got a little easier.

They Get By With A Little Help From their Friends

The pollster nobody believes in the papers nobody reads.

We all know how Ipsos-Reid works--CanWest's paid samplers, hence the CPoC's paid samplers.

Just ignore them

The Green Party/Tory Connection

Several polls over the past few years (but none that I can find right now, sorry) have suggested that a fair percentage of Torys would make the Green Party their second voting choice after the CPoC or provincial counterpart. I've always wondered about the logic behind that choice.

Now, Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner makes it all make sense:

Schreiner says even though Simcoe Grey has pretty much always been blue, 11.4 percent of the vote in 2007 in the riding was for the Greens.

He tells us many people in the riding have been receptive to the Green Party's pledge to support small businesses and family farmers as well as promote local food.

Indeed, Schriener's creds as an entrepreneur all involve bringing Ontario farm products from their rural producers to urban consumers. A little bit blue, a little bit green. Reminds me a bit of David Orchard who, if you will remember, wound up an LPoC member towards the end of his political career.

...which is to say that there's nothing in Mr. Schreiner's shtick that couldn't be co-opted by a federal or provincial Liberal party. Hint hint.

Bill Murdoch On What's Wrong With Toronto...

...and why he would kick it out of Tim Hudak's Ontario:

Q How does the Toronto mentality differ from, say, the Ottawa mentality?

A I think a lot of the cities like Ottawa and London have been settled with people from rural Ontario. Toronto's been settled by people from out of Canada. So it's a whole different, multicultural city

I think what Bill means is that he came to town once and seen hisself a neegro. But maybe I'm over-analysing.

And on the capital city of the new Ontario:

One guy wrote it up, here in my own riding, that we'd have it in Bognor. That's where I live ... and we have a new bridge.... We didn't have a bridge for a long time and we argued and fought about it and finally they built us one.

So, in conclusion, if Hillier retires the PCPO has a substitute redneck to come in off the bench.

Canadian Bar Association on Section 13

Here is their submission to the Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in regards to Section 13 (the hate speech provision) of the Canadian Human Rights Act. All common-sense stuff, and not particularly surprising; 13 itself is okay, but they recommend removing section 54(1)c and (1.1) (the penalty provisions) from the act, which seems to be the legal consensus as far as one exists.

Don't know if they've already presented this to the committee, but my understanding is that its already moved on to other issues, so maybe they won't get a chance. One interesting bit:

The Special Report recommends that the Act be amended to permit cost awards in cases where the Tribunal is of the opinion that a party has abused the Canadian Human Rights tribunal process. The CBA endorses this recommendation and recent experience suggests it is overdue. In its submission to the Canadian Human Rights Act Review, the CBA advocated that the Act be amended to empower the CHRT “to award costs in exceptional circumstances, which would include claims or defences found to be frivolous.”27 The power to award costs is a discretionary one and would be exercised only after all the circumstances of a particular case are taken into account.

The CHRT already has the "residual power" to award costs under such circumstances--and indeed some of its provincial counterparts have occasionally employed such powers--but the CBA would make it explicit.

America's Fiercist Climate Blogger Reams Canadian Oil Company

That's Joe Romm from Climate Progress for the uninitiated, on Husky Energy, who are sticking the following advert on Canadian gas pumps:
Here’s how “Mother Nature” makes her fuel...

First, you take some heavy oil or tar sands from Canada. If you’re a Canadian oil producer, you call tar sands “oil sands” (see Memo to all: They ain’t “oil sands”). Everyone else can call it the “biggest global warming crime ever seen.” See also Canadian bishop challenges the “moral legitimacy” of tar sands production.

Then you refine it into gasoline and add “up to 10% ethanol.” Of course, this is the not ethanol from low-carbon, sustainably grown cellulosic biomass:

Our “Mother Nature’s Fuel” is made from renewable resources such as wheat and corn.

Cough! [Bullshi!t] Cough! It’s made from the most environmentally-destructive form of oil known to humankind with a little environmentally-questionable food-based biofuel thrown in.

Mother Nature needs to hire a good attorney.

Joe's got a new book out, by the way.

Well, There's Irony For You

Ann Coulter flees, but Doug Christie, "partially funded" by Paul Fromm, slips into U-of-O unnoticed. Unlike Coulter's organizers, I suppose, Mr. Fromm is smart enough to successfully rent a room.

And, come to think of it, Doug Christie sounds a little more coherent than Ann.

Out, Out Cursed Logo!

Twenty-four hours later, the CPoC logo is still in the address bar on Rahim Jaffer's website. It's so hard to let go sometimes.

What Were All Those Other Reporters Doing?

Interesting stuff from Jonathan Stray of the Nieman Journalism Lab. These are the people who gave us that nifty research on "The Meme Tracker", which revealed the "shape" of the news cycle and the back-&-forth between between blogs and MSM:

Jonathan Stray did a very smart analysis for Nieman Journalism Lab, looking at a universe of 800 stories about the alleged involvement of two Chinese universities in hacking attacks on Google. His findings were striking: 800 stories = 121 non-identical stories = 13 stories with original quotes = 7 fully independent stories.

Stray coded the 121 non-identical stories that had been clustered together by Google (the clustering algorithms are good, but not perfect – nine stories were unrelated to the specific case of these two universities) and looked for the appearance of novel quotes, which he considered the “bare minimum” standard for original reporting. (Interesting – it’s the same logic that led Jure Leskovec to track quotes to track media flow in MemeTracker.) Only 13 of the stories contained quotes not taken from another media source’s report. The essence of Stray’s piece is the question, “What were those other 100 reporters doing?” The answer, unfortunately, is that they were rewriting everyone else’s stories.

Stray's actual study can be found here.

Rahim Jaffer's Website Up And Down Like The Drawers Of A Busty Hooker

Right now its down. Who knows when it shall erect itself next? I wonder what content is being erased, expunged, and ret-conned even as we speak?

SEE Rahim's Busty Hookers!

The women were supplied by 23-year-old Jasmine of high class escort agency Cachet Ladies.

Jasmine herself seems to be this one, but there are plenty of others. For a laugh, readers with art talents might want to "shop" their three favorite, or perhaps the three bustiest (although which three are bustiest in this context might be difficult to determine) into the photo of Rahim below:


H/T Jimbobby, who's right: I'm losing a step.

Oh Joy! More On The Younger Dryas

As an offshoot of my interest in Anthropogenic Global Warming, I have gradually developed an interest in the Younger Dryas Event, when something 13,000 years ago threw a slowly warming Northern Hemisphere back into glacial conditions for another thousand years. This, as an aside, is the event that served as model for the "climate tipping point" that causes so much trouble in The Day After Tomorrow. I've been particularly interested in the Younger Dryas Impact theory, which suggests that a comet exploding over the Laurentide ice sheet triggered the event. Although this theory seems to have been fairly thoroughly refuted.

In any case, the most common explanation of the event is that, as the ice-sheets retreated North, ice-dams holding in the Eastern edge of pro-glacial Lake Agazziz gave way and spewed vast amounts of cold water through the St. Lawrence river, where it caused a shut-down of the North Atlantic thermocline (sometimes called the great ocean conveyor) which carries warm water Northward via the Gulf Stream. This in turn caused Northern Hemisphere temperatures to plunge, glaciers to advance again, and so on and so forth.

Now, however, a new theory suggests a quite different route for this pulse of cold water. Instead of running East,

...geologists now believe they have found traces of this flood, revealing that cold water from North America's dwindling ice sheet poured into the Arctic Ocean, from where it ultimately disrupted climate-warming currents in the Atlantic.

In any case, you can read the whole thing through the link. As an aside, Nature, the magazine in which this new research was published, has just moved its news site outside of its pay wall. Lotsa fun there.

Machetegate: A Quick Update

As of this moment, we have 40 MSM stories on the adventures of Nick Bergamini and Mark Klibanov and no new information. There is, however, this mysterious post on Mr. Klibanov's Facebook page:
The knife vs. machete distinction is not so important--but a three on three fight? Where did the third guy come from suddenly? He's definitely talking about the same incident; his link goes to Bergamini's original account.

PS. Tim Hudak has denounced the alleged attack, and the Jewish Defense League (JDL) is off to Ottawa to knock some heads together.

Canadian Coalition For Democracies...RIP?

One of my favorites sources of Conservative crazy, the Canadian Coalition For Democracies (CCD) appears to have gone T.U. Its website is dead, and not too long ago (around late 2009, if I'm reading the history of edits page correctly) its wiki entry shifted from present to past tense.

All hail the CCD. Once supported by the likes of Tony Clement (formerly the head of CCD's Advisory Board) and Peter Kent, it was very, very good to this blogger.

All Hail The Northern Sierra Madre Forest Monitor Lizard!

A new, six foot monitor lizard discovered in The Philippines. It lives in trees and eats fruit, and is apparently itself good eating.

Another news story with more pics here. More BCLSB Monitor Lizard action here.

On Martin's Fix

Well, let's get one thing straight. This is not, contra National Post writer John Ivison, the Liberals' problem. It is the government's; as of this moment, the Harper Tories have a maternal health plan that does not include family planning measures, and this summer they will attempt to foist it upon the other seven members the G8. Given the U.K. and American response thus far, the odds are very much tilted against their finding success.

Here's where MP Keith Martin's "fix", first reported last week in The Mark, comes in:

Mr. Martin appears to have found the solution. He said Stephen Harper should embrace the World Health Organization’s position of supporting women’s access to safe abortions in those countries where it is legal. Yet he recognized many members of the Conservative government have their own opinions that have to be respected. He suggested Mr. Harper could square his opposition to abortion while still implementing a maternal health plan by proposing each G8 country take the lead on one of the treatments.

“For example, Canada could be the lead nation on training healthcare workers and micronutrients, another country could focus on providing medications, another on access to family planning and safe abortions etc. This would enable Mr. Harper to move forward with an effective plan of action while being sensitive to the views on abortion of some of his members,” he said.

This, as I wrote at the time, is the solution employed by the George Bush II administration under similar circumstances--ie under similar pressures from its own political right flank.

Aside from problems of implementation--another state would have to come forward and offer to pay for third world abortions, which may not be so easy given the domestic political pressures within various G8 countries--there is a larger issue at stake: contra Ivison, and with all due respect to Mr. Martin, Martin's Fix is not a commonsense solution or a reasonable compromise. It constitutes an accounting gimmick, a butt covering exercise.

The G8's situation today might be visualized as follows: everyone throws their maternal care money into one big pot, and it is spent willy-nilly on the various "treatments" Martin specifies. Under the Martin proposal, each country would throw its money into one of several little pots, labelled "medications" or "family planning" or etc., and their money would be spent just on that one medical option.

Well, for one thing, how is it possible to ensure that, once the money have been turned over to the G8, it remains in its particular pot? How is it possible to determine if, for example, a dollar from Canada has wound up paying for a box of condoms in Kinshasa? It seems to me that it isn't. And, more importantly, in the end Canada's initiative still winds up paying for abortions in foreign lands, despite Harper's insistence that it not do so. Martin's plan, that is, simply provides a fig-leaf for a government climb-down.

Now, for progressives like myself, that's fine. Canadian policy as practised by several government's, both Tory and Liberal, does not change. The problem for Harper will come from his own political base, from the true believers for whom abortion is a make or break issue.

Will they allow themselves to be fooled by Martin's gimmick, which essentially gives them nothing?