Ezra Levant's Hearing Before Alberta Law Society Has Been...

...postponed while they consider his application to resign.  Sounds like he wants to swing a trade; he'll quit if he exits with a clean slate.  In the end, though, he won't be able to say he's a lawyer anymore, and he won't be able to make $ from it.  Good either way?

On That Motion Condemning The BDS Movement

...supported by the CPC and most of the LPC (some dissented, and some more didn't show for the vote); opposed by the NDP; and therefore ultimately adopted...It's a stupid thing. Anti-free speech, maybe.  Anti-Democracy, Anti-Capitalist, I'd even argue.  Telling you that you are bad if you have made certain decisions about how you spend your money; and that its bad to try and change things by directing your consumer choices one way or another.  I don't think the BDS movement is inherently anti-semitic, although I am sure some anti-semites find it a convenient method of legitimizing their hate.  But even if it were, I'd probably argue that its OK to be racist with your money; or at least that you have an absolute right to be racist with your money.  You want to protest the homosexual agenda and be clean in my books, then go boycott Disneyland (*).  Its a free country, and you express that freedom through your money.

But the thing is, the HOC just passed a motion.  Just a statement of condemnation.  Everyone in support might as well have dropped their pants and farted in the direction of McGill.  It would have had a similar practical effect, meaning none.  So it isn't really something to get too worked up over. Nobody is going to, because nobody can, force you to buy Israeli wine, or to stop you from trying to convince others that they too should avoid buying Israeli wine.

---
(*)  Its been tried, incidentally.  It didn't really work.

Josh Gelernter, Science-y Type Guy

He writes, bitching about The Left, Science, The Earth Centered Universe, Climate Change, and all that:

People tend to think that proponents of an Earth-centered solar system were nothing but intransigent religious fanatics. In fact, they included scientists of Galileo-level genius, like Ptolemy and Aristotle. When their theories were weakened and their opponents’ strengthened, they switched sides — and the “scientific consensus” changed.

From wiki:

Aristotle, 384–322 BC
Claudius Ptolemy, c. AD 100 – c. 170
Galileo Galilei,  15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642

Aristotle and Ptolemy couldn't "change sides", Josh.  They'd been dead over a thousand years.

Exclusive: Slowly Dying Media Continues To Slowly DIe!

From Toronto Sun Family blog:

Layoffs over at 333 King today. 3 advertising coordinators, and I'm sure there will be more to come before the big move to the National Post building.

PS.  The new NP "building" isn't really so much a building as a tent city on the banks of The Don River. The reporters who are left file from a nearby Tim Hortons, using the complimentary wifi there, and pee into the river itself, which is why nothing can live in The Don.

Ezra Levant, The Alberta NDP, And Journosplaining

I guess I should say something about this.  Alberta's NDP government decided they weren't willing to put up with any more disruptions out of kooks from The Rebel (the online HQ of Ezra Levant's personal death cult), and kicked them out of one of their press conferences.  They're rationale was that Ezra was, in his own words, "not a journalist".  Of course, when the real journos heard about this, they collectively shat, and rushed to our lads defense. Not like rational men.  Like Pavlov the dog drooling at his master's bell.  Like chimps chasing a stray banana.

And their arguments were quite silly. There's apparently no way to tell who is a journalist and who isn't; also, its important to allow even bad journalism.  Imagine if someone had applied this line of thinking to cars.  How can we really know which cars are safe?  But we must allow even shitty cars!

But of course nobody making these arguments believes them for one second.  What real media outlet would be willing to hire Ezra Levant after all those lost libel cases?  Let alone the nine-tooth yobos that make up the "contributors" to his cult newsletter.

Theoretically, though, a news outlet is supposed to accept as a journalist anyone who shows up on the front step with a pencil and a notepad.

The fact is, we regulate pork, we regulate cheese, we regulate guns, we can certainly regulate words; we can eliminate whatever kind of talk we think demeans the public discourse in the same way we've eliminated spitting on the floor.  When journos tell you you shouldn't regulate them discount what they say and get to the root, in the same way you would if you were listening to a herring fisherman bitching about new regs on the herring fishery.  "As the herring fishery goes, so goes the nation!  If you destroy the herring fishery, then you will be the ones who suffer!!!"  And etc.

And the thing with the MSM and Ezra, they're not defending him because its a free speech thing. They defend him because accept him as being one of the family, the slow cousin in the basement that they can feel superior too and occasionally decide he's really got a dabble of wisdom in him in his own thuggish way, even if they've seen him eating live baby squirrels or running naked through the woods at night.

Or maybe its like they've been stuck with him so long they've all got a version of Stockholm's Syndrome.

And about this journosplaining nonsense.  Please, journalists, when arguing this issue don't whip out the few lines your remember from On Liberty, or Mencken, or that book by John Milton with the name that sounds like a piece of gym equipment, as though folks on the other side of the issue didn't read them in college 30 years ago and weren't impressed.  D'you know that Mill's arguments for absolute Freedom of Speech rely on the purest form of truth relativism?  We can't deny Ezra's droolers whatever because, who knows, we can't know they're wrong about the ROMA being sub-human.

Or do you (journalists) spout these lines like you're dropping little semantics turds that sound nice but which  you don't know the meaning of.  In either case, it is insulting.  Stop it.

Breakfast At Longos

This morning their store on 7 near Woodbine had a wonderful sample spread.  The highlight was surely their pulled pork floating on delicious smoked Oka cheese set atop Nachos.  Runner up was a yummy smooth avocado spread, also on Nachos.  And they were serving "popcorn chips", which I shied away from, having already given myself salt poisoning once this week.  (It's a long story, but you really can eat too much Italian sausage).  And for dessert they had Jelly donuts.  My only complaints are that their awesome prosciutto pizza had been pulled from the menu, they weren't giving out chunks of artisanal bread, and the cake was a little dry.

So a very solid 7 of 10.

Energy East, Once Again

DeSmog Blog has a guest post on the Energy East pipeline.  I am a huge fan of DeSmog, but I think this post is wrong-headed and ultimately counterproductive.  Because it is, at bottom, an a priori rejection of the project before it even goes through a newly revamped ie toughened NEB process that now explicitly considers "upstream emissions".  My view is if it goes through the process successfully then, in the absence of legal action by the First Nations along its route, it should be given federal approval.

You have to think of this as the first step in a process.  Carbon is priced in Phase 1, and then in phases 2, 3, 4, and so on, that price is gradually ratcheted up.  Alberta has been told that, if it cleans up its act and gets with Phase 1, it will be given a chance to send its oil to the larger world market, where it might fetch a better price.  And so, at some political cost to the ruling government and economic cost to the province itself, it has attempted to do right.

So how do you then get a buy-in on phase 2, 3 and etc. if this good behaviour is not rewarded somehow?  If  no action the province takes will be rewarded why bother doing anything in future? So do we achieve our ultimate goal (hitting our announced carbon reduction targets) more quickly through cooperating or trying to steam-roll a whole industry out of business?

Life In Scarborough: Goodbye, Old Car!

So I finally pulled the plug on my '97 Cavalier yesterday afternoon.   I feel OK about it.  I'd put a new engine in last February and hoped this would squeeze a few more years out of the thing.  But it was like sewing a shiny fresh metal heart to a bunch of rusty old organs.  It shook them to bits with its vigor.  Everything ancillary has failed over the past six months.  I finally told Crappy Tire to pull the plug at noon on Sunday. and an hour later when I was driving by in my emergency rental I saw a tow-truck hauling it off to automobile heaven.  Bye bye old car!  I won't miss a CD -player where you had to open the trunk to change CDs.  I won't miss the pain in my guts from thinking that this drive might be the one where the car failed somewhere in the 905 area code, where rural primitives allegedly still raise "pigs" and "cows", and occasionally eat city folks whose cars have stalled.  My one regret is that I never managed to have sex in the car while it was being pulled through one of those automated car-washes.  I could have managed the timing (about two minutes), but the interior was too cramped to really get set up.  And it would have been better to have someone in the car with me.  But otherwise onward and upward!  A new previously owned vehicle is in my future!  This one may even have an MP3 player, or at least a working air-conditioner.

Give Alberta Energy East

Sure they're loud-mouthed cowboys.  Sure their cities are crap-holes where the streets all go one-way... to nowhere.  Sure their hockey teams have done fuck all for the nation over the last couple of decades.  Sure they boast about all the money they send East while at the same time grovelling for Ottawa infrastructure $s  because their tar-mines are all going TU.  Which indicates a distinct lack of couth.  Sure they  inflicted Ezra Levant on the county.  Sure they each own a spare gold-plated cowboy that they can melt down to pay the bills when times are tough.  

But under Notley's NDP they have instituted a carbon tax. They're at least TRYING to act normal.  I say give 'em the one pipeline (which, after all, is there already and only in need of fiddling with to make the project work) and then tell 'em to go pound salt re the others and feel righteous about it. 

Charlie Hebdo: Martyrs For Crap, Part Duh

Disgusting cartoon in Charlie Hebdo ("what would've become of Aylan had he grown up? A groper") via @faizaz pic.twitter.com/iB4myFb1ke

— Sunny Hundal (@sunny_hundal) January 13, 2016

Part 1 here. 

O'Leary For CPoC Leader?

@Bigcitylib2 ding ding.

— Rosemary Barton (@RosieBarton) January 13, 2016

It actually makes sense if you think about it.  The rest of the field sure ain't making anyone's heart beat any faster.  This  may be the year of the crass rich guy, with strange/no hair.  And the funny thing is: it would make Rob Ford the most influential politician of the young millennium. Guys like Trump and (maybe eventual Prime Minister) O'Leary have surely studied him to see how far the limits could be stretched.  Rob Ford took the Overton Window and fucking ate it raw.  It's his world now; we just rent from him.

FPTP Or Not FPTP?

I don't mind the Cullen/Coyne option, where we adopt a new system, have one election under it to see how we like it, and then have a referendum, where going back to pure FPTP is one of the options.

Personally, I like better the idea of ratifying a newly chosen system via referendum before the next election, but where pure FPTP is not one of the options.  After all, the specific campaign promise was that the system would change from the status quo.  Into what was left open.

But thinking ahead a bit, I rather like the Scottish way,   Here some candidates are  elected via FPTP, with additional members chosen from lists compiled in advance by the parties.  Some, like Colby Cosh, find this undemocratic.  But regard the American example a moment; the POTUS can choose anyone for his cabinet; that's how he winds up with the best and brightest working for him.  Whereas in Canada whenever Conservatives in power you wind up with chiropractors running the Ministry of Science because they won a nomination in a safe riding.

So your "list" would be where you could keep your "star" candidates, the talented but not necessarily sociable.  There would be no reason anymore to parachute them into a hostile riding; no reason for them to pretend to like cod tongues or wear a cowboy hat at some stupid farm show.

Whether or not it has worked out like this in Scotland, I have no idea.  Finding out would require research.

Although I would note from this that some folk over there are still bitching.

Longos, At Night

I have written about Longos most permissive and excellent samples policy here.

The problem is they stop giving out samples sometime after 4 PM.  Yet people come in after 4 and there are NO SAMPLES and they are HUNGRY!!!  They might be walking around thinking HEY THAT LOOKS GOOD IF I JUST HAD A SAMPLE FOR VERIFICATION PURPOSES I JUST MIGHT buy IT!!!  Or they might be looking to stuff their faces.  But whatever.  THESE PEoPlle Are Hungary!!!!  So I think I've spotted a gap in Longo's business model.  So I'm going to tell them about it.  And in doing so I am NOT JUST MOOCHING!!  I am helping to perfect GLOBAL MOTHERFUCKING CAPITALISM!Of which whom among us does not love?

The Funniest Thing I Ever Said On The Internet

Apparently, according to the likes and re-tweets I got:

@RandPaul @CarlyFiorina @HillaryClinton @mtmdiamond Good line.  Guess you really schlonged her.

— Bigcitylib (@Bigcitylib2) December 23, 2015

It was supposed to be ironic, but even totally non-ironic Trump fans seem to dig it, for presumably the wrong reasons.

On PCPO Leader Patrick Brown: A Brief Note

If this whole "Premier of Ontario" gig fails to materialize he could do gay porn.  Because he's in bang-up shape, and this seems to matter far more in gay porn.  Whereas a lot of guys on the straight side of the biz show cellulite.

A Few Developments Re Wind Energy In Ontario

Now that's an exciting lede.

But  a couple of interesting things have happened lately. First up is the fact that the Settlers Landing Wind Park project has been curtailed by an appeal to the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal that went against the developer.  Here is a good summa. The reasoning behind the decision can be found here.  Essentially, several of the planned turbines were to go in a protected wood-lot, which would have entailed clearing some of the trees in the lot.  Given that everyone involved agreed that the site was environmentally "significant", the tribunal gave a thumbs down to these particular turbines:

One interesting argument arose during the hearing.  From the ERT transcripts:

[145] In a similar vein, the Tribunal rejects the approach of Dr. Kerlinger [who testified in favour of the development] to assessingthe legal definition of “serious harm” to animal life. The Tribunal finds that s.145.2.1(2)(b) of the EPA cannot be read such that a species-wide viability analysis is
the appropriate scale for the assessment of serious harm. Dr. Kerlinger’s analysis
would render the Environment Test almost meaningless at the scale of local impacts by
requiring the Appellant to prove that the Project has an impact that results in a material
change to the population of a species overall, before any modification to it could be
ordered. This is clearly not the intention of the EPA, which includes the purpose at s. 3
of “the protection and conservation of the natural environment”, and at s. 47.2 (the
Renewable Energy section of the Act) “to provide for the protection and conservation of
the environment.”

I think this repeats an something I said re the project at Ostrander point:

"On the other hand, the most clearly stated MOE counter-argument (assuming this is an accurate account of it) strikes me as bizarre:

The proponents now say that the serious and irreversible harm test applies province wide and that it was the responsibility of PECFN [Prince Edward County Field Naturalists] to prove that the project would cause serious and irreversible harm to the turtle population province wide.

If the province's stock of endangered turtles is parceled out into discrete sub-populations, of which only one or two would be effected by a particular development, how could you stop any development?"

The ERT seems to have seen it the same way.

Finally, not many people have defended the Ontario government from last week's Auditor General's report, and admittedly the report contains evidence of alotta bad decision-making.  I am not as concerned about the criticisms directed against Ottawa's renewable energy push as some, however, mostly for reasons given here:

Ms.Lysyk gives extensive attention to the impact of new renewable energy sources on electricity costs, but completely ignores the single largest driver of the Global Adjustment to electricity costs - the refurbishment province's aging fleet of nuclear power plants. The enormous economic and technical risks associated with proposed refurbishments of the Bruce and Darlington nuclear facilities are also completely overlooked.

I also don't buy the notion that an energy surplus is a bad thing to have.  Presumably, expansion of the electrical supply is predicated on growth in the Ontario economy: more manufacturing jobs meaning more plants meaning more power needed for those plants.  Since 2008, the "more jobs" bit hasn't really panned out.  Hence the current surplus.  But if you were to work to eliminate the surplus, isn't that essentially betting on continued economic stagnation?

In Praise Of Longos

Or as I call it, Samples.

Today, for example, they were giving out Fuya Fruit*, Turkey Sausage, Kobasa, Blue Cheese, Prosciutto Pizza, and Gouda Cheese on a cracker.  Something from every food group!  I figure I sucked back about 2,400 absolutely free calories.

I do this trick where I walk in wearing my glasses and hit all the sample booths two or three times in the first ten minutes. Then when they start wondering what's with the guy with the glasses? I take them off and carry my coat over my arm.  The staff don't recognize me right away, and I can get in another circuit or two!

Because when you have a mortgage to pay every free cracker counts.

* Looks kind of like a small tomato but is a sugary delight.

The Alberta Climate Plan: Is Ezra Levant Right?

Not when he says the oil companies don't represent the oil companies, but in his generally negative attitude towards the whole thing?  Well, let's play Devil's advocate for a minute.  What does Alberta get from the rest of the planet for imposing on itself an economy-wide carbon tax?  We know what it wants: pipelines West and South so it can sell its oil to Asia.   Nobody really cares about Energy East.

But Keystone is dead.  So we're down to Northern Gateway and Transmountain.   Does the plan buy them either?  Well, the Trudeau government is going to formally ban oil tankers along B.C.'s North coast, so Northern Gateway is still dead.  What about Transmountain?  Well, a lot of the opposition to this line has nothing to with climate change, and of course there is a faction in the enviro community who would like the oil-sands shut down regardless of any commitments to better behavior the province and the oil companies might make.  They won't be swayed.  So maybe Transmountain goes through, or maybe not, but even if so it will be years down the line and billions spent along the proposed route to grease the skids before its open.  And who knows whether the market will need it by then.

And that's the only prize Alberta gets...potentially...from the whole endeavor.  So: good for the planet, good for Canada, but arguably not so great for Alberta.

On Adele: A Brief Note

Finally connected that singer called "Adele" with an actual tune, on a radio station I wouldn't normally listen to.  Gawd she sucks.  The Youth Of Today...The YOTS...The Millennials...listen to royally shitty music.  Its like they took every electric guitar that ever existed and buried them in a field somewhere and replaced them  with a lot of overproduced bloopy sounding synthesizer noises.

As a result I, as a near-senior, an old x-hippy from the 70s, am starting to feel less guilty about exploiting them, if they're going to listen to crap like this.  When I'm 90 and they're 50 I'll fly into McDs on my jewel encrusted walker with a jet-pack attached and demand my free coffee and throw dimes on the floor when they look at me sad-eyed for a tip.

I blame cell-phones for the YOT's dissolute nature.  They give off magnetic fields (the cell phones, not the YOTs, although maybe they do too), and kids carry them around in their pants all the time and irradiate their nads.

This kind of thing could cure them:

...but I doubt they'll listen.

No, Donald Trump Didn't Say Muslims Should Be Issued Special Badges.

What he said is he wouldn't rule out giving them some form of special identification that noted their religion.  This could be a badge, but it might also be a chip-card, or an arm-band, or maybe a tattoo.  Get it right, Liberal Media Party.