80 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. Shamrock:
    The mission in Afghanistan doesn’t have to be a confidence issue. This was Harper’s decision, not the opposition’s. I have no problem with confidence votes. He could have just saved the confidence vote for the budget. If we go to an election on this issue then Harper has put us in the same position that Spain was in. Do you get the point now?
    ET:
    You are playing wordgames (again) and trying to be cheeky. (If the troops pull out, there will be no troops to kill…haha.)
    If this wasn’t a hobby war, it would be over by now, don’t you think? Very soon this particular war will be longer than WW2. Whatever the stated goals are for the militarily powerful West, they seem to be having a tough time accomplishing them in the face of resistance from lightly armed tribesmen. But it sure makes our chickenshit politicians look brave by going to a safe place in a war zone and having their pictures taken wearing a helmet and flak jacket.
    I suppose that as long as you’re not being renditioned off to Syria, or prevented from flying on a plane because your name comes up on a computer, or you don’t mind having your personal information being sent to a foreign country, etc., your rights are not being infringed.
    And for pete’s sake, I didn’t write that Harper is hoping for horrific casualties. Please take the time to read things properly.

  3. lberia, no I don’t get your point, mainly because you haven’t made one – you’ve just stated your opinion, without justification or context. You can say the same thing about my opinion – I doubt either us will change the other’s mind. So be it.
    Whatever, so we don’t agree. Debates are not necessarily about agreement anyway; sometimes people just disagree – that is the case here. Your comment about chickenshit politicians is ridiculous and prejudiced.
    There are too many politicians to name who went to Afghanistan with flak jackets and helmets, including Mr Dion (and good for him for doing so). I wish Mr Layton would do the same thing.
    And, lberia read the news – Dion has backed off already from his position. I suspect Ignatieff got to him and convinced him that the Grits should at least try to reach consensus with Harper, by suggesting amendments to the Tory position. IOW, Harper is prevailing for one of two reasons – Liberals have decided to actually enter some kind of meaningful debate, or are so afraid of an election they felt they had to get agreement with the government.

  4. According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86 % of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man.
    This contradiction is rendered more acute by the fact that there has been no significant global warming for the last ten years. Modelers defend this situation by arguing that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming, and that models adequately account for natural unforced internal variability. However, a recent paper (Ramanathan, 2007) points out that aerosols can warm as well as cool, while scientists at the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research recently noted that their model did not appropriately deal with natural internal variability thus demolishing the basis for the IPCC’s iconic attribution. Interestingly (though not unexpectedly), the British paper did not stress this. Rather, they speculated that natural internal variability might step aside in 2009, allowing warming to resume. Resume? Thus, the fact that warming has ceased for the past decade is acknowledged.
    A Case Against Climate Alarmism
    Richard Lindzen

  6. I wouldn’t call it a “hobby war” but you have to admit that the accomplishments over the same time frame as WW2 when Nazism, Fascism and Shintoism were totally, brutally, unequivocally destroyed.
    And recall that we didn’t instal Shinto-based, or Nazi-based, or Fascism-based constiutions. We installed western style liberal democracy by brute force, no ands, ifs, or buts.
    By WW2 standards, the utter destruction of the Taliban would be like using a fly swatter. A cakewalk.
    Let’s face it, the West has been engaged in a phony war — pussyfooting around. AND playing “social worker” [hearts and minds: bridges, schools, and aren’t we just wonderful] instead of destroyer. In WW2 we did “hearts and minds” but only after we utterly destroyed their systems and ideologies and made them regret ever signing on to to them.
    But Iberia, would you favour the all-out-no-holds barred brutality of WW2? I suspect not. Nor would ET, I’m sure.
    That will eventually be found to be necessary. Sadly, brutality deferred will be worse and the body count way way higher. Oh well.

  7. Errata:
    you have to admit that the accomplishments over the same time frame as WW2 — when Nazism, Fascism and Shintoism were totally, brutally, unequivocally destroyed– are pretty marginal.

  8. Wow! It looks like they’re going to have to get even more drastic when it comes to the drastic action needed to combat climate change!
    http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080209/biofuel_crops_080209/20080209?hub=TopStories
    My guess is that it’ll only take another five years or so before they start asking for retro-active abortion volunteers. After all, it is becoming clear that too many humans are their real root cause of this supposed problem.

  9. MND wrote @ 5:53 p.m., “I had two 3-year e-mail correspondences with two old friends who have been converted into ex-friends. [What a concise way to say that!] My shocking epiphany was that their views were ‘fact proof’. I kept thinking, well this batch of facts will make a difference. Never.
    “Like you [ET]—only you’re a lot more skilled—I’m a sucker for believing that my ideological adversaries can be persuaded by facts and good logic. I have since learned that it’s a gigantic waste of time.”
    Silly me: I so identify with you! I have a number of lefty friends (and even conservative head-in-the-sand friends) and a whole lot of lefty ex-friends. In the case of those who are still friends of the lefty variety, in order to maintain the “friendship”, it’s usually necessary to avoid any discussion of politics—very difficult when nearly everything has been politicized in our society. Talk about diversity and tolerance.
    For example, two of my very privileged lefty friends have lately opined that because “the majority of Canadians are now visible minority [sic], we should realize we have to [sic] accommodate them”. (Even Toronto is approximately 67% White and only 5% Black, Statistics Canada, 2001 Census. The large Chinese population doesn’t provide the same “difficult” profile that certain other groups do.) The other friend doesn’t want to discuss that the UN is an altogether discredited organization, where thug states now command a majority: “The UN was such a fine idea, I’m not willing to give up on it.” Facts? Don’t bother. There was no response to my kudos to the Conservatives for refusing to go to the Anti-Racism (sic) 2 Conference in Durban.
    Of course, MND, I’m weighing the cost—avoiding discussing the truth—of continuing some of these friendships. It’s very painful to consider losing the company and shared good times of a person one cares for, but the energy to maintain a kind of fiction is very large. The integrity cost also figures in. (I apologize for offending—not for what I’ve said. Apologies from lefties? Are you kidding? This kind of courtesy always seems to be a one way street.)
    Like you—used to—I often find myself all set to send off a batch of convincing argument/data. Sadly, like you, I’ve found “that it’s a gigantic waste of time.”
    So, here we are, besieged by more than a few enemies, with a large segment of the population in the thrall of invincible ignorance. Quite aside from the sadness of personal loss, I find this very scary.

  14. The Archbishop of Canterbury hits bottom and keeps digging:
    Melanie Phillips, Dhimmi — or just dim?
    The man doesn’t even have the courage of his lack of convictions. Far from defending what he actually said about sharia law, the Archbishop of Canterbury is fighting to save his job by frantically back-tracking and claiming he has been misunderstood…
    [H]e has done great harm to his church and is a danger to his country (although through this furore he has also, unwittingly and ironically, set back the agenda of Islamisation by stealth which had been making such headway; hence the very carefully modulated support for him by such Islamist strategists as the Muslim Council of Britain). He should stand down and the courageous and sharp Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali — a man whose life is now in danger for having spoken the truth about Islam in a Britain whose religious and cultural identity he actually defends, but about whom Dr Williams has said not one word in support — should take his place.

  15. Minister warns of ‘inbred’ Muslims
    A government minister has warned that inbreeding among immigrants is causing a surge in birth defects – comments likely to spark a new row over the place of Muslims in British society.
    Phil Woolas, an environment minister, said the culture of arranged marriages between first cousins was the “elephant in the room”. Woolas, a former race relations minister, said: “If you have a child with your cousin the likelihood is there’ll be a genetic problem.”

  16. No, lberia, you cannot define a war as ‘real’ vs ‘hobby’ by its length. You are ignoring quite a few realities.
    WWI and II were wars between legitimate states. The Afghan ‘war’ is not between Afghanistan and any legitimate state but between a democratically elected gov’t and tribal terrorists who wish to overthrow that state – and who are funded by non-state forces in other countries. That’s a completely different scenario.
    It took years for communist insurgencies to collapse in various parts of the globe, because these weren’t wars between states but between ‘communist rebels’ and states.
    You wrote: “All we have now is a hobby war where the government can use scare tactics to justify taking our rights away, and where there are some unfortunate casualties, but not so horrific that it prevents a good photo op for leaders like Harper.”
    Our rights haven’t been removed. Because Arar was returned to the US and Syria doesn’t mean that all of us will share the same fate. Remember he’s a citizen of Syria (and I still don’t believe his story of torture). As for personal information being sent around – this is the age of the information network and it’s already being done. My rights aren’t involved.
    You linked Harper to ‘casualties’? You are saying that ‘there are some casualties’…and link this to ‘a good photo-op for Harper’. Why are you making this connection? Do you seriously think that warfare, the military and being a soldier must be without risk and without any chance of casualties? I’ve never heard of such a definition of a military force. Therefore, why do you link Harper with ‘casualties’?

  17. lookout:
    nearly everything has been politicized in our society
    NOW, see, there’s the thing eh? Said to my wife over dinner the other night, “everything’s poltical now … even the purchase of a chocolate bar”. She said, “Wow, yeah, just yesterday I went into a fine chocolate shop and was immediately asked if ‘fair trade’ was a concern and I told her, ‘no I’m only concerned with the quality of the chocolate'”.
    In business, I’ve learned the hard way (once lost a customer expressing a view of his MP, Svend Robinson!) not to discuss poltics. But only a couple days ago joked with a customer over the phone, “man, that global warming is really bad eh?” and it was immediately clear — from the pregnant pause the other end — that, er, I’d gotten into politics.
    One of my former friends is a rabid antisemite, of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion variety, and one day it hit me, “migawd, when I read Ahmadinejad transcripts, why that’s R”. And I pretty well made up my mind on the spot, “nah, I’m done with R”.
    But I will say truthfully, if you’ll excuse the schoolyardism, I didn’t start it. One started bashing Bush when I wasn’t in the mood for it, and the other, quite literally — at the end of a long dinner, too many martinis, too much wine, and oh yeah a 12-year old Scotch — INSISTED I give a view on “global warming”. So I did. The End.
    But I’m very comfortable in my skin and really enjoy my own company, so I’m fine with it. And I’ve never enjoyed walking on egg shells.

  19. Hobby War? You mean like Hobby LandMine?
    Better not mention your hobby term in a bar or restaurant. Someone with one leg or the father of a missing child could send you packing in an ambulance. = TG

  20. lberia
    I got your point quite clearly (ET and a few others missed it), and you would be rite ‘cept for one small point, the Tallibanners have already jacked up thier effort just to convince layton and dion to take thier present stance, so Arper’s tactic would make NO difference
    and as to dion’s position on this, he wuz part of the “governing” party that sent the troops on this mission, thus he is only politicing, and Harper is forcing to eat his words, smart move by Harper( also smart in having a liberal,manley, do the report on the mission)
    ET
    you taught LOGIC, and aren’t able to see a correlation between a country (geographic local) and a IQ curve shift,
    you have me shaking my head here:-))))))
    BTW; ET keep up the good posts

  21. Due to my take on ExxonMobile, some cry *Leftist* or *Eco-***. Makes me no less a conservative.
    No one questions Maggie Thatcher*s consrvatism, yet she was no *lockstep Lemming* either.
    National Post February 7/2008
    Extreme competition, but not extreme enough by Lawrence Solomon
    Since Maggie Thatcher broke up the United Kingdom’s dysfunctional energy monopolies two decades ago, costs plummeted, as did prices for consumers, as a wave of new entrants into the energy business led to a textbook example of the benefits of competition.
    Today, the typical household has several thousand options in purchasing power that come to it courtesy of six dozen different licensed merchants. Compare that to the choices your local power monopolist provides you.
    urban-renaissance.org/urbanren/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=18152
    ==============================
    The UK has a helluva lot more electric vehicles and PEV truck fleets options than we do too. = TG

  22. ET:
    You’re still playing games with words, so I think we’re done for the night.
    TG:
    “Hobby war” is not meant to deprecate the soldiers that fight in it. It’s the politicians that I’m deprecating.

  24. Jeez lberia… I agree with you for once… “quick and decisive” YES! The one thing I do fault Bush for was violating one of the most fundamental principles of strategy. Maximizing his efforts at the centre of gravity of the enemy (schwerpunkt). Iraq was not the schwerpunkt and never was. Secular Baathism didn’t exactly resonate with Bin Laden.
    Had Bush concentrated the US effort on A’stan instead of diverting it to Iraq in 2003, the A’stan operations would be over by now – or damn near, and effort wouldn’t be divided as it is. If you want to blame Bush and Rumsfeld for one big, really stupid mistake, that one was it. Diverting your effort into secondary theatres really f**ks you up.

  25. from the Chronicle Herald(link to story at Bourque):Dion faces uphill battle explaining Lib.position
    At end of column,this gem: It is always difficult for the opposition leader to resist the frame of debate the gov’t has imposed.If Mr.Dion’s position is hard to explain,it’s tougher still.If he’s bad at explaining it,as Mr.Dion is,don’t bet any money on him succeeding.
    In QP on Wednesday,Dion’s old leadership rival inadvertently illustrated Dion’s weakness.
    PMSH was giving Ignatieff a little lecture on Canada’s responsibility in Afghan.”We do not think there is cause,if NATO is willing to give us what we need,to abandon our commitments to the Afghan people”
    Ignatieff seemed to forget himself.He jumped to his feet as if stung and stormed at PMSH.”As usual,the PM gets it more than wrong.” Then he stretched his long arm across the the floor toward the NDP.”The party over there wants to pull out of Afghan,NOT this party”
    Pandemonium broke out.The NDP applauded ironically.The Tories joined in,mocking Ignatieff,calling for,”More,more”
    Beside him Dion wore an unconvincing smile.
    “Look,” said a reporter in the press gallery.”Dion looks like he’s going to cry!”
    Almost makes me feel sorry for the poor sap..yet reminds me how incompetent and pathetic this man would be on the world stage representing Canada in a crisis.Would he cry?

  27. Right Sammy, Bob Rae… a politician, at least, should be appointed Dion*s front man.
    Rae has an ability to avoid making us look hopeless on the opposition side. Not my politics, but I do recognize his skilled velvet tongue.= TG

  28. Jan08 Northern Hemisphere snow cover: largest anomaly since 1966
    There have been a number of indications that January 2008 has been an exceptional month for winter weather in not only North America, but the entire Northern Hemisphere.
    We’ve had anecdotal evidence of odd weather in the form of wire reports from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and China where record setting cold and snow has been felt with intensity not seen for 30-100 years, depending on the region.
    From our remote sensing groups, we have reports of significant negative anomalies in both the RSS and UAH global satellite data for the lower troposphere. The there’s NOAA’s announcement that January 2008, was below 20th century averages, plus news that Arctic sea ice has quickly recovered from the record low extent of Summer 2007. Finally, there’s the massive La Nina said to be the driver of all this but may be a harbinger of a more permanent phase shift according to veteran forecaster Joe Bastardi.
    Now to add to this, we have images and reports from NOAA and Rutgers University of large anomalies of snow cover extent for the northern hemisphere in January 2008.
    First lets start with NOAA’s Snow and Ice chart for January 31st, 2008 …-
    http://tinyurl.com/2tqoga (wattsup)

  29. When Chretien was in edmonton I did not see Marc Lalond along side him.Strange to me , as he was the architect of the N.E.P. To come here and tell Albertans that the 12+ BILLION they contribute to the ROC, is not enough, F-off. Out of power for three years and still trying to rip off Alberta.
    Quebec makes huge $$$ off of Nfld’s Power. Granted Nfld signed there own deal which turned out badly for them and good for Quebec. LindaL has it right. Chretien would never slam Quebec.
    Beieve me when I say , Another Lib Majority and IMO Alberta would finally rally around the thought of secession. I am so sick of listening to Lizzy May, Layton spew baloney about Alberta’s energy sector. News flash, you socialist retards. There are NO smog alert days in Alberta… EVER. I dont think we can say that in the GTA. As for GHG’s 1% is a drop in the bucket, and not worth destroying our way of life for.

  30. Tewchip,
    If Alberta was to ever separate, it had better do it soon. I would imagine most of the new labourers moving there are not Conservatives.
    Success is a bit of a double edged sword.

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