Reader Tips

Recommended: Daniel Greenfield's A Party of Trolls.

Excerpt:

There is no precedent for a country facing two major crises, an economic depression and a war at the same time, holding an election that is somehow about race....

Also, entirely related to the above, Michael Ledeen's The Death of the Left.

Hope!

Is Michael Ledeen right? I sure do not see much evidence of that in the polls in the US and in the various elections here in Canada. In Quebec and in BC it appears that the more radical left is about to take power and wreak more of their havoc.

Sad to say, but history is not with Randy Travis. Please tell me I am wrong.

Ken (Kulak), 11:43p.m. --

I'm not so sure about the decline of the left, either. Rather, I think that the right has gained considerable strategic advantage in three or four ways in the last century or so that has allowed it to outflank the left in many ways, if falling somewhat short of elipsing the left completely at all times, to wit:

1. Conservatism oddly enough has proven more evolutionary and more responsive to circumstances than have leftist ideologies. Check out Michael Oakeshott's essay, "On Being Conservative", 1956; he's thinks it's more dispositional and attitudinal than programmatic).

2. Conservatism tends to recognize the inherent self-interest of individuals more than the left does, which focusses more on group-think and group outcomes. I think that has proven a great advantage.

3. Leftism always founders on financial reality and the incompetence of government (the latter of which is effected, I think, by motivation -- including the the lack of fear of the consequences of failure -- which relates to point 2). I think financial reality and government incompetence become hugely limiting factors in the success of the left.

4. I think that journalism in the last fifty years has made a huge strategic error -- rather than sticking with relatively objective communication of facts and taking full advantage of communication technology advances, it allowed the introduction of bias and became indifferent about its communication platforms. The right, on the other hand, has proven more interested in objectivity and has grasped the opportunity for disseminating and acquiring objective information that communication technology advances have provided.

Ah Twitter: #OverheardAtDNC2012 Loved the Tribute to Ted Kennedy Exhibit. I still can't figure out how they got that Oldsmobile in the water fountain.

Re: Jo-El Sonnier, Evangeline.

Thanks a million EBD, That is genuine home spun Cajun music + performance.

I have a friend named Hadley Castille, a champion fiddler from Baton Rouge, La. He travels to Winnipeg every year or so, here is a sample of his music. Enjoy!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wxFM6Ymh4m4

"The mystery surrounding how the 'Jumah at the DNC' event sponsored by the Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs, an obscure Islamist organization, became part of the officially sanctioned DNC/Charlotte in 2012 pre-convention program has begun to unravel."

INDIGENOUS? Whaaaat?

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/08/29/DNC-Reached-Out-and-Invited-Radical-Indigenous-Muslim-Group-to-Convention

Where can I find a reliable poll on Quebec election??

Globe and Mail, Saturday, Sep. 1. Where's our life of leisure?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/wheres-our-life-of-leisure/article4514045/

"In their new book, How Much is Enough?: The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life, the British father-and-son team of Robert (political economist) and Edward (philosopher) Skidelsky cite the famous prediction made by John Maynard Keynes in 1930: Assuming that productivity levels would continue to rise, Keynes said, his grandchildren and great grandchildren would likely have to work only 15 hours a week. The rest would be leisure."

"It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Although Western societies have continued to be more productive and working hours have declined, we aren’t even close to enjoying the bounty of leisure promised by Keynes."

"What went wrong? ..."

"According to the Skidelskys, the free-market economy is the villain. It allows employers to dictate terms of work and 'inflames our innate tendency toward competitive, status-driven consumption.' Keynes failed to see that 'the evils of capitalism … might become permanently entrenched, obscuring the very ideal they were initially intended to serve.'"

Absolutely FALSE. Increases in productivity are the result of new technologies, as well as workers learning more skills. But national productivity has been slowing over the past two or three decades, and the reason is government wasting tax dollars by redistributing them to the unproductive or to the less productive. The latter includes business subsidies. The former includes unemployment insurance and welfare, which expand because of interference in the labour market that drives wages above their free market level.

Governments have been too quick to believe the charlatan Keynes when he claimed, ridiculously, that paying labourers to dig ditches and fill them in again was a boon to the economy. Nothing is produced from this activity, yet resources have been expended; therefore it is a drain on the economy.

Human beings do not have an "innate tendency toward competitive, status-driven consumption". We live in a material world and require material consumption in order to survive. Excess concern with "status symbols" is not rational, and individuals fall victim to this at different rates - some a great deal, others not at all.

Exactly who is supposed to "dictate the terms of work", if not the employer? If the worker doesn't like it, he can quit and go elsewhere. There is no political system under which employers do not dictate the terms of work.

There are no "evils of capitalism". An economy is based on voluntary trade for mutual benefit, and under capitalism, producers can enter any market they desire, giving consumers choice. That way, the best products are successful and the worst ones are not. If only that principle were extended to, say, the education system.

Socialism's natural end result: McGuinty's horsemeat.
...-

"13,000 horses could be destroyed in 2013 if Ontario horse racing industry collapses"

"Dead race horses. Thousands of them. Not good for business if your business is horse racing.

In Ontario, a rising death knell for the financially gutted industry — facing track closures and withering purses in a best-case scenario — also peels for the beautiful four-legged creatures who carry jockeys and pull sulkies around 17 racing ovals.

A government panel assembled in June to study the sport’s dim future has forecast a mass slaughter of up to 13,000 thoroughbreds, standardbreds and quarter horses by early next year should the industry collapse completely. Already, it’s expected two-thirds of Ontario tracks will close, there will be fewer racing days, less money in the prize pot and therefore, less reason for owners and breeders to maintain expensive animals who may not have a place to run.

Against this horrific assessment, the finest 387 Ontario-bred thoroughbred babies go up for auction beginning Monday at Woodbine Racetrack. Horse people are worried, says thoroughbred owner and trainer Ian Howard of Vaughan."

http://www.thestar.com/sports/horseracing/article/1250221--13-000-horses-could-be-destroyed-in-2013-if-ontario-horse-racing-industry-collapses

Mao Stlong* Lepolt: Wu?

You wan meet "another man named Wu"?
...-

"Counterfeit Chinese art on display all over Canada according to experts"

"For now, the counterfeits are ending up in the living rooms of people like another man named Wu, who asked his full name not be used because he is ashamed."

"Earlier this summer, a spokesman for Maynards auctions and appraisals in Vancouver said about 30 per cent of Chinese artwork brought to him on any given day was fake.

He said the problem has become worse in recent years."

http://www.globalregina.com/canada/counterfeit+chinese+art+on+display+all+over+canada+according+to+experts/6442707195/story.html

*Ex-Liberal leader Rae's uncle, c/o Red China.

40 Clint Eastwood Quotes Illustrating the Obama Years

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHEHhcVIOdY&feature=player_embedded

"nobody, I mean nobody puts ketchup on a hot dog"

Clint Eastwood: As an 81-year-old man, I found it interesting to study a man from his youth to his old age, to see how he declined despite the best of intentions. His life is a story of absolute power corrupting absolutely. The decline of the man from such great heights intrigued me.

Read more: http://ca.askmen.com/celebs/interview_600/648_clint-eastwood-interview.html#ixzz25J5h1xNh

Doesn't sound like a man in the throes of dementia, the man is still an actor.

nv53 - most obviously we are not all enjoying 39 hours and 45 minutes of leisure a week because if you only work for 15 minutes a week you only get paid of 15 minutes of work a week. It doesn't leave a lot on money in the leisure activity budget.

Plainzdrifter, 2:31a.m. --

Check out www.threehundredeight.com. I don't understand his projection methodologies, which don't appear to be disclosed, but he normally has all or most of the published polling data -- for both federal and provincial polls.

Plainzdrifter: Where can I find a reliable poll on Quebec election??

You'll have to wait until Sept 5/12 but you'll get a 100% reliable result.

If Marois wins a majority, it will be fun to watch her present her "demands" to PMSH. It will be even more fun watching him say "non."

Finally, what the Vostok Ice Core data always showed, what was blindingly obvious to anyone with a knowledge of basic science and what every anesthesia resident needs to know in order to avoid being kicked out of the OR by his preceptor i.e. Henry's Law:

The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658
Cue alarmist ad hominems directed at those evil Norwegian scientists in . . .

Ken (11:43), the title of Ledeen's post - "The Death of the Left" -- is misleading (overstated, not reflective of the content of the article) by virtue of being (necessarily) brief; the article was really about current American politics, and the dearth, bordering on absence, of any substance to the Dem's 'arguments'.

He wrote that if you're a leftist,

…unable to sort out how the world works nowadays and unable to win an honest debate with your political and intellectual opponents, it makes you very angry, and you lash out at them with a violence that often surprises observers who are less engaged in the political or intellectual wars. The left has died as an intellectual force worth taking seriously…It is reduced to fighting for political power alone, and its weapons are what we recently called “the politics of personal destruction.” It’s the only way they can hope to win.

(emph. mine)

Conservative pundits, and Conservative politicians like Paul Ryan, focus on -- hammer on -- the real-world problems of Obama's presidency: his insane, suicidal spending, his approach to illegal immigration, the insane "green" money pit, etc. etc., and the real-world consequences of these things. The Democrats and the MSM's Obama-supporters like "Tingles" Mathews can't intellectually defend Obama's record (albeit they pay noisy lip-service to doing so) so they redirect the discussion away from the real world consequences of his (non)performance by averring noisily and angrily that anyone who criticizes Obama's policies is obviously racist and sexist and evil. Hence, "the left has died as an intellectual force worth taking seriously."

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting more & more optimistic about the GOP's chances in November. However, I don't want to get too optimistic and have another "Alberta" occur before our eyes.

EBD, thank you for the clarification. Unfortunately those who are accustomed to government entitlements and want even more have no interest in discovering or knowing this, and the Marxists would see this as a temporary setback in their ultimate aims. The corpse of Marx's dream still shows remarkable signs of life.

Here's a shocker: This guy is a Democrat.

You think the Dems aren't running scared of Obama's America?!

BBC News UK issued a hasty reaction to Desmond Tutu's call for war crimes trials against GWB and Blair. Tutu actually meant climate crimes; sorry about that (sarc off):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19454562

Well, obviously, don't try the 90% of world leaders who actually commit "immoral" acts, like executions, for instance, but yes fire up the Hague for those two because, well, they just should have known better and it wasn't right.

Tutu has truly and irreversely lost it. What a shame, he played a big part in preventing a SA bloodbath years ago.

Steyn on upscale and "frighteningly white" American liberals who seem even crazier than usual in their more-anti-racist-than-thou obsessions

Well, Ted's right, Obama's got this thing locked up:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-election/obama-lampoons-gop-as-throwback-to-last-century-no-new-ideas/article4514696/

Here's a couple of choice quotes from Obama:

Republicans “will take us backwards,” Mr. Obama said, to the age of “trickle-down, you’re on your own”

Well clearly, socialist economics and relentless borrowing, which has failed in every single place it's ever been tried except for Iceland (well not really), is so avant garde. There's nothing like the politics of failure to stir up a crowd.

And continuing ... "economics that begin with tax cuts for the rich but tax increases for the middle class."

Actually if that's true, then the GOP deserves to lose because that's nearly impossible to do. Though they pay disproportionately less than the evil rich, the middle class is still the key driver of tax revenues, so tax cuts or increases overwhelmingly affect them, and the treasury - good or bad. I sense a meme, an old tired one at that.

Plus - Mr. Obama, pointing to successes, declared, “I said we’d take out bin Laden and we did.”

That's a stretch and everybody knows it. Alexander Haig could have taken out OBL. Whatever. The Globe/AP didn't forget to mention even the Republicans thought he did well there. Of course, the compusory shot, as required in MSM protocol, is fired:

Yet Mr. Romney has yet to produce a budget for public inspection. Nor did he mention that, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan wrote a plan projecting the deficit would decline each year from 2013 through 2017 but then begin an inexorable rise again. Additionally, the federal debt is projected to rise each year, from a current level of nearly $16-trillion to an estimated $25-trillion at the end of 2022.

That's right, massive growth in entitlement spending by the Dems is Romney's failure, because of Bain Capital, obviously. Yeah, but didn't Ryan vote for our stupidity, the Dems asked ... no wait a minute. Umm, they're racist.

That can't be the best they can do; if it is, they're doomed.

"until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union."

...-

"CNews | IRS targets Yanks in Canada"

"With his pockets empty and a $16-trillion debt looming, Uncle Sam is using the threat of huge fines and jail to make Americans living in Canada prove they aren’t hiding anything from the IRS."

http://www.jacksnewswatch.com/

...-

"We should tune in to the Romney and Ryan show"

"The myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished"

" Whatever the outcome of the American presidential election, one thing is certain: the fighting of it will be the most significant political event of the decade. Last week’s Republican national convention sharpened what had been until then only a vague, inchoate theme: this campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.

What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.

Or else democratically elected governments can be replaced by puppet austerity regimes which are free to ignore the protests of the populace when they are deprived of their promised entitlements."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/9513687/We-should-tune-in-to-the-Romney-and-Ryan-show.html

" You didn't brew that "

Obama is just a regular guy,makes his own home brew,golfs,and hmm,...I've got nothing else.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-election/white-house-releases-brew-details-after-repeated-public-inquiries/article4514393/

Fire at Roy Green's home :-(

David Southam, yes, I'd agree.

The conservative agenda is focused around the real life individual (not a mythic figure) and also, on current real world situations. As such, it interacts with a great deal of energy and information. It is networked in a complex manner. With this informational outreach and openness it is inherently adaptive and flexible and can thus constructively deal with real pressures from the world.

The socialist or left viewpoint is focused around ideology and mythic figures and a utopian world. It references current situations to that ideology and tends to ignore reality (or blame it on others). It thus rejects adaptation to reality in favour of an insistence on allegiance to a future utopian agenda.

You can see this in the GOP convention, with its diversity of speakers, its wealth of young vibrant political talent, and its risk-taking. It was a risk for Romney to select Ryan as VP and he did it; it was a risk to allow Eastwood to give his marvellous performance and they did it. Both Ryan and Eastwood dealt with real situations, real problems, and gave real answers (No, I won't shut up, ...WE are the government, and you are employed by US).

The Democrats? We'll see. So far, we have a crumbling sculpture of our Dear Leader, a beer recipe for the peasantry (and Obama didn't make that recipe); and a host of identity bloc speakers. And, a threat that if he wins and Congress is taken by the GOP, he'll ignore Congress, ie, the people, even more than he does now.

David Southam:

Re: www.threehundredeight.com.

Thanks--this person seems to have his math together, as sad as the results may seem for us in the rest of the real world.

plainzdrifter - note that the site also projected that Wild Rose would take 44 seats for a slim majority government.

With regard to the Quebec election, to which I must admit utter indifference, the Quebecois seem to vote less FOR something than AGAINST something.

How else can one explain their wholesale rejection of the Bloc and support for the NDP? Most of the NDP hadn't campaigned, some hadn't even visited their respective ridings even once, a few didn't even speak French. Yet they swept the province in the federal election and destroyed the Bloc.

If the PQ win as they probably will, it might be the best thing for Quebec. It might force them to confront reality rather than remain cocooned by Canada within their utopian socialist ideology.

If Marois attempts her various stringent isolationist rules against the ROC, against anglophones and even has her referendum, she'll see a rejection by vote and by the economy. Many will leave. And Harper won't give in to their blackmail; he'll let them implode on their own and come to their senses.

So, let it happen. Let Quebec confront its empty rhetoric with reality. I don't care.

Mao Stlong* Lepolt.

Wen who?

...-

"Chinese Stock Index Caps Longest Monthly Losing Streak Since ’04"

"China’s benchmark stock index fell, capping a fourth month of losses, after declining earnings at companies from Citic Securities Co. (600030) to Sany Heavy Industry Co. showed the impact of the nation’s economic slowdown."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-31/china-s-stock-futures-drop-as-citic-securities-earnings-decline.html

...-

"China Economy’s Deterioration Raises Risk of Wen Missing Target"

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-02/china-economy-s-deterioration-raises-risk-of-wen-missing-target.html

*Ex-Liberal leader Rae's uncle, c/o Red China.

Say Cheese. Si.

...-

"The Election of 2012"

"What happened? It all went swimmingly until the economic crisis showed the magic formula didn’t work any more. The almost innumerable crisis meetings among European leaders and the crazy gyrations of the American cultural elites have revealed a deep doubt. Now the world –like America — like Europe may have to make a hard choice: unlimited government cheese with very limited liberty or a greater liberty with limited government cheese. Which will it be?"

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/09/02/the-election-of-2012/#more-24068

...-

"Immigrants in Spain to lose right to public healthcare"

"Doctors say move will affect ordinary Spaniards' health, while NGOs accuse government of breaking international agreements"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/31/immigrants-spain-lose-public-healthcare

Google site:www.tester.senate.gov democrat -site:www.tester.senate.gov/Newsroom -site:www.tester.senate.gov/Legislation

'Democrat' is mentioned nowhere except for where he's mentioned in press releases ('www.tester.senate.gov/Newsroom') and legislation ('www.tester.senate.gov/Legislation'). He's truly scrubbed his entire website of the word.