small dead animals

Brokaw Broken

NBC's Tom Brokaw interviews new Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi;

Brokaw: I know that you and others like you are grateful for the liberation of Iraq. But can't you understand why many Americans feel that so many young men and women have died here for purposes other than protecting the United States?

Allawi: We know that this is an extension to what has happened in New York. And the war have been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists. Saddam was a potential friend and partner and natural ally of terrorism.

Brokaw: Prime minister, I'm surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. The 9/11 commission in America says there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and those terrorists of al-Qaida.

Allawi: No. I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al-Qaida. And these relations started in Sudan. We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism. Now, whether he is directly connected to the September atrocities or not, I can't vouch for this. But definitely I know he has connections with extremism and terrorists.

Donald Sensing - "Lay aside the breathtaking arrogance of an American newsreader trying to tell a head of state what he should think about one of the most important issues facing the prime minister's country. The fact is that Brokaw was flat wrong about what the 9/11 Commission said."

He has more thoughts on media bias. And lots of examples of outright misrepresentation.

hat tip - OTB

Uberjeopardy

After painting Subway signs all day, I decided to go upstairs and eat supper. Jeopardy was on.

Holy cow.

The Un-showdown He Asked For [updated]

Paul Martin's exploitation of Alberta's promised health reforms was the singularly most divisive tactic the Liberals used in the campaign. From the Toronto Star coverage;

The Prime Minister has been daring Klein to make his plans public and has accused the Conservative Alberta premier of cloaking his medicare-threat proposal in a bid to help his "silent partner," Conservative Leader Stephen Harper. Martin has been saying it was ominous that Klein, whom the Liberals described last week as a "public health menace," was proposing to release his plan on June 30, just two days after the federal election.

Klein finally responded, his Health minster stating that the new proposals amounted to little more than increased spending. But it had put Harper on the defensive at a time when the attack ad campaign was in full swing.

Well, congratulations Mr. Martin. It worked. You won. And now you get to back up your challenge that Harper wouldn't defend the Canada Health Act, and you get to back it up by taking on Alberta, just two days after your victory, and with your words fresh in the minds of the electorate.

This morning Ralph Klein unveiled the Alberta health reforms. There are some pretty drastic changes, including a user pay scheme and a 50% cut to health spending growth.

He accused the federal Liberals of cutting the public system on one hand, while delivering empty promises on how to sustain it.

"They keep saying they'll save medicare but they don't say how," he said as he rolled his eyes."The bottom line is we still need substantive system reform, and we need to know where the federal government stands."

Klein says nothing will be implemented unti the fall, after Albertans have had the opportunity to give the input.

After making the sanctity of public health care front and center in his campaign, what bigger political landmine than to face parliament at war with Alberta over the Canada Health Act, but unable to directly engage Klein about it (consultation period, Mr. Martin) - with the BQ on the side of defending provincial rights to control of health delivery and the NDP demanding he put the hammer down?

Balls in your court, Martin. Let's see what you're made of.

You know, if this were the US, and these were Republicans I'd almost be thinking a Rove rope-a-dope here.

Update Well, considering the breathless reporting of this story when it hit the airwaves, I wondered why there was no scramble to get Paul Martin's take. And then, why such a bland response from the feds. I know that had these details been released prior to the election, they would have been agressively denounced. Today, there's not so much as a whimper and some snark from Roy Romanow.

Colby has more. And an interesting scenerio. Stephen Harper as premier of Alberta? I hope he's right.

Election Alienation

A commentor on the Shotgun;

Did my duty today and paid my $10 for my Separation Party of Alberta membership. I had to do it online b/c all of the phone lines to their headquarters were busy, busy all day. (whoo hoo)

Also, noticed on the Rutherford show this morning Separatist calls outnumbered confederation calls 17:1

What do they say? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me; fool me thrice, I'm really getting steamed; fool me a fourth time, I'm not taking it anymore.

Sure, people are blowing off steam. But today a provincial Tory backbencher defected to the separatist Alberta Alliance Party after accusing Premier Ralph Klein of ruining Stephen Harper's federal election chances.
In and of itself, not earthshattering. The defector was already critical of Klein and facing the dissolution of his seat through boundary changes.

But, it's not going to go away. I once asked a friend in Calgary - a 70'ish grandmother, not particularly politically motivated - what it would take for her to support separatism. Her answer - "A ballot"

Stay tuned. I think Paul Martin has a big, big problem on his hands. The things he must do demonstrate he is serious about western alienation - pull out from Kyoto, kill the gun registry, mend fences with the US - are precisely those things that are going to trigger the NDP and his own left-wingers to pull the plug on his government. If Martin is going to diffuse Western anger, he's going to have to broker a serious deal with the Conservatives - not the NDP.

Taking Back The Language

The defining moment for me during last night's election results was this one: Newly elected Liberal MP in Kings-Hants (NS), Scott Brison:

"There's not a lot of room for Red Tories in a party with a lot of red necks."

This morning, I'm wondering where the outrage is.

There is none, of course, because it's acceptable in the media to use cultural slurs against Western Canadians.

And sadly, it's been acceptable to us for too long. Or it never occurs to us that the slur is serious, intentionally dehumanizing and directly aimed at core conservative values and belief systems integral to our heritage and western history. A couple of weeks ago I took a swipe at the CBC's Michael Enright for "criticizing the media for assuming" that the conservative Fraser Institute was the Droolers and Knuckledraggers Association. He never did "get" it. He was incapable of recognizing that his use of those terms, in and of themselves, to describe conservative thought was dehumanizing, whether or not he was defending the Fraser Institute in this instance. He wasn't criticizing the marginalization of conservatives by the media, he was criticizing them for automatically dismissing the Fraser Institute as part of that "drooler" crowd.

The biased conduct by the national media during this campaign has been brazen. From day one, a blatant double standard has been applied to the Conservative party members who dared open their mouths and express personal conservative values. Social conservates in the Liberal Party enjoyed a free pass, their "gaffes" unreported, the contraversial backgrounds of Liberal advisors unexamined.

The media drove the agenda, hijacked the campaign and framed every discussion on so-called "social issues" as an "us vs them-who-would-kill-gays and enslave women". Stephen Harper was branded as "scary" . Apparently, Liberal corruption at the senior civil service isn't "scary", but invoking the constitutionally entrenched notwithstanding clause is the chainsaw massacre of Canadian Politics.

The same thing happened to health care. No rational debate of private vs public ever occured. It was good vs evil, right vs wrong, Canadian vs the evil baby-killing American system. During the Klein health care frenzy nobody turned a camera east to the blatant Canada Health Act violator - Quebec.

The Conservative campaign has to take some blame for that. They shied away from those direct comparisons. In the well-predicted hindsight of a zero seat performance, it was an opportunity squandered to put Paul Martin's challenge under a public microscope and pound home the message of "double standard". They didn't, and why they didn't I will never know.

If Canadian conservatives, both big C and small c, are ever to find a voice in this country and rescue it from it's headlong collapse into international disintegration - we must begin at both the top political echelons of the party, and the grassroots, by reclaiming the language and demanding our own share of protection under political correctness guidelines. It is not a silly "get even" suggestion. It is critical, if we are to remove this tool from the hands of the opposition.

The most obvious first target is to eliminate the use of the word "redneck" as an acceptable tactic to stifle debate before it occurs. Make the use of the word "redneck" as unacceptable as "redskin", "raghead" and "frog". Then we can go to work on "hillybilly", "cowby" and all the other sniggering cultural insults as they surface. It's an easy one to attack because it's so common and used so casually. Tackling "redneck" would seed doubt in the minds of moderate Canadians that maybe - just maybe - it is not appropriate to marginalize conservatives with cheap namecalling tactics.

This week Conservative party officials should hold a news conference. That news conference should have a sole purpose - to demand a public apology from MP Scott Brison for his derogatory cultural slur against Western Canadians.

Get this namecalling issue on the table. Stop allowing the left to write the Encyclopedia of Political Correctness. Point out just what terms like this are intended to do, and that their use is a cheap device to avoid debate. Until that happens, western Canada will remain vulnerable to being political dismissiveness as uneducated, unintelligent, unsophisticated, and untrustworthy. And so long as we permit it, we have no one but ourselves to blame.

It's time to demand respect, and to settle for nothing less than 100% compliance in the language of both the left and the media.

Post Mortem

Mark Steyn; So it's corruption plus socialism. That's great news, isn't it?"

Class victory speech of the evening - openly gay Conservative - turned - Liberal Scott Brison : "There's not a lot of room for Red Tories in a party with a lot of red necks."

We have a minority government with a "tie" potential. The Liberals and NDP, who are expected to work in concert, will have 154 votes in parliament, less the appointed speaker.

The Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois have 154 seats, plus Chuck Cadman, who was a Conservative MP who won his seat as an Independant after losing the local nomination.

No word yet on whether the newly enfranchisedCanadian Convicted Felon community influenced any of the outcomes.

Cosh has a synopsis

Saskatchewan anhilated the NDP - a Conservative sweep of 13 of 14 seats, with the exception of Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, who has respect across all party lines. (Plus, he's good insurance - smart strategic voting there). Premier Lorne Calvert's shaky majority is more vulnerable than ever - this is a message to the provincial NDP as much as it is the feds.

With this Anti-American, left wing alliance and David Pratt gone - the only decent Liberal defense minister in the past decade - things look desperate for the military. Short of an attack on Canadian soil, nothing substantive will be done with the NDP holding the hammer. And hopes for early BSE-border resolution just evaporated.

I said on the Shotgun last night - the unofficial slogan of Western Canada, The West Wants In may be on the cusp of changing to The West Wants Out.

Busy Day

I've been running around town all day, tying up loose ends on shipping a dog to Australia, getting my insurance claim for a generator I had stolen in Montana, etc. etc.

Plus, it's a bit difficult typing with your fingers crossed. The polls close here at 7:30 pm - simultaniously from Quebec to Alberta. We will get the results of Newfoundland and the Maritimes before polls close here. The old election blackout on information on results was finally lifted due to a BC court challenge. We have freedom of speech. Just not during elections.

One interesting story brewing. Not sure of what will come of it, but a small community in the province had their town hall rented by Elections Canada, for polling station use, as has been the tradition - only to be later informed they were to vote on the nearby Indian reserve. The first question is the legality of this location - reserves may not qualify as public land. (I'm no legal expert there, can honestly say I don't know if that's an issue or not.)

But, there is a First Nations candidate running for the Liberals. And questions about why those phoning, trying to get to the bottom of the last minute change, are being told it's up to the returning officer, who is in turn, blaming it on directions coming down from "Ottawa".

I just hope they have a bucketful of scrutineers. First Nations administrators haven't got a stellar record of keeping track of polling stations in their own elections.

The Shotgun posse will be blogging election results from Stephen Harper's headquarters at the Calgary Stampede Grounds tonight.

and in other tidbits....

A couple of interesting links from James Joyner and Instapundit - Bush's cowboy unilateralism in the Sudan (where Canadian - French owned oil company TotalFinaElf is again, at the profitable end of their governments' blind eye to genocide.

Perhaps it is unfair to suggest that business interests might be tipping the balance against France's taking a stand on human rights in Sudan. Jemera Rone of Human Rights Watch explains that TotalFinaElf has oil concessions in southern Sudan that it cannot touch until the peace deal between Khartoum and the south sticks. The French are wary of giving the regime in Khartoum a hard time about its ongoing ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in Darfur, in case it walks away from the southern peace deal, thus imperilling Total's prospects.

Which reminds me - is "PetroKaz" Chretien in Iran yet?

OTB also tips us off to this gem from Lileks. Scroll down to the Parable of the Stairs. Perfect way to commemorate Tax Freedom Day in Canada.

I Spy

I spy with my little eye....
Something that is yellow.
Cake.
In.
Niger.

Louise Joy Sarin

Weapons of mass destruction are like test tube babies.

Nobody cares about the second one.

Winds Of Change

Andrew Coyne has a must read column for those interested in Canadian politics and tomorrow's election. That includes you Americans, by the way. You cannot understand Canada and our schizophrenic foreign policy without a cursory understanding of the political system and regional idiosyncracies that have allowed a single political machine to install itself in virtual perpetuity.

Andrew argues that this machine is on the verge of finding itself dismantled.

For the country's sake, I hope he's right. The tentacles of government have been increasingly rewoven under the Liberals to entrench that power. Majority governments hand 95% of the decision making power of parliament to the office of the Prime Minister, and challenges to the constitutionality of legislation are adjuciated by a Supreme Court - also appointed by the Prime Minister. New campaign finance laws shovel out taxpayer cash to parties on the basis of the votes they garnered during the previous election - and forbid corporations and unions from contributing at all, giving the governing party a financial edge. Private interest groups and individuals are gagged by strict spending limits in elections, effectively muzzling all but the political parties and the media. That media that includes a government funded CBC with it's own self interest in conflict with the prospect of Liberal party defeat.

Short of reform from within - highly unlikely - the only hope for cutting those tentacles permanently is from the outside, and I will argue, like Andrew - the outside represented by the more inately democratic political mindset of western Canada.

Whatever the precise result on Monday, and whoever forms a government, one thing should by now be clear: the political landscape of Canada is on the verge of historic change -- radical, permanent, and mostly for the the better. Eight decades of Liberal dominance, punctuated by occasional Tory interludes, are about to come crashing to an end. This isn't 1984. It isn't 1979. It isn't even 1957. It's something completely new.

We shall see. Go read it all.

Why Must I do This?

Why isn't it being reported on by our taxpayer funded media, and their competitors?

Via Instapundit

Amir Taher has been touring Iraq. .

Iraq today is no bed of roses, I know. I have just come back from a tour of the country. But I don't recognise the place I have just visited as the war zone depicted by the Arab and western media.

[...]

Despite the continuing terrorist violence Iraq has attracted more than 7m foreign visitors, mostly Shi'ites making the pilgrimage to Najaf and Karbala where (despite sporadic fighting) a building boom is under way. This year Iraq has had a bumper harvest with record crops, notably in wheat. It could become agriculturally self-sufficient for the first time in 30 years.

"Iraq has always had everything that is needed to build a successful economy," says Heydar al-Ayyari, an Iraqi politician. "We have water and fertile land. We have oil and a hardworking people. What we lacked was freedom. Now that we have freedom we can surge ahead."

Nor should one believe the claims of self-styled experts that the Iraqis are not ready for freedom. During the past 10 months elections have been held in 37 municipalities. In each case victory went to the moderate, liberal and secular candidates. The former Ba'athists, appearing under fresh labels, failed to win a single seat. Hardline Islamist groups collected 1% to 3% of the vote.

What is wrong with our media? What great dysfunction has set in, that I must go to the internet, to private sources, to find these reports for myself?

Surely there are reporters and editors who surf through here. I see it in my logs- "cbc.ca", "abc.com".

I want to hear from you. You covered every anti-war demonstration. You quoted every naysaying Canadian politician. You gave a closeup to every half-wit Hollywood actor who could move their lips. You covered UN deliberations. You've dissected every hoped for disaster, from the "massive humanitarian disaster" to the "quagmire" of the stretched supply lines, to the "failure" to catch Saddam, to the "uprising of the Arab street", to the "Vietnam" of El Sadr's militia, dancing to the rhythm of every RPG to be tossed into the Green Zone. You even reported on the ones that "caused no casualties". So, it's not like you didn't have the time and space.

Are you intentionally trying to mislead and misinform the Canadian public by reporting out a tiny window facing in a single direction?

Pro-democracy voices dominate the new privately owned Iraqi press which, with more than 200 dailies, weeklies and periodicals, represents a breath of fresh air in the state-controlled Arab media.

Preparations for self-rule have been under way for months. All but four of the 26 government departments set up after liberation are now under exclusive Iraqi control. The provisional government headed by Iyad Allawi, the prime minister, has been sworn in ahead of the formal transfer of power at the end of the month.

I want to hear from my politicians. The ones who echoed the false predictions and doomsday scenerios like trained parrots. You, whose job it is to represent our interests and direct an intelligent, informed foreign policy. Why aren't you talking about the progress? Setting the record straight? You're sending our tax dollars to this country. Why aren't you talking about the achievements of the Iraqis?

I want to hear your explanation for denying the Canadian public information as important as this. We are paying for it. We are paying your salaries.

You surely cannot say you don't know, can you? Are you that lazy?

Or do you have so much invested in your smug Canadian superiority and faith in the UN that you cannot bring yourself to display any information that contradicts your fondest failed predictions of the past year?

If lives are to be saved in the region, both Western and Arab, if the threat of Islamism is to be defeated without the use of thermonuclear devices, these people, these fledgling democracies, need to be celebrated and supported. To do anything else is to aid and abet the enemy.

It does not mean we do not need to know the bad news. But it's dishonest to ignore the good in order to preserve your "told you so" as long as humanly possible.

It's not about you. It's about them. It's about us.

Posted by Kate at 8:55 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

The Lessons Of Chechnya

Wretchard explains why, "Despite the importation of fighters from all over the world and the use of weapons in numbers orders of magnitude greater than those directed at the Russian Maikiop brigade, the Jihadis have been unable to keep the inept Americans from creeping to within a hairsbreadth of installing a new government in the heart of Arabia."

He reminds us of the tactics that led to the Chechnya massacre.

The first unit to penetrate to the city center was the 1st battalion of the 131st "Maikop" Brigade, the latter composed of some 1,000 soldiers (120 armored vehicles and 26 tanks) ... Russian forces initially met no resistance when they entered the city at noon on 31 December. They drove their vehicles straight to the city center, dismounted, and took up positions inside the train station. Other elements remained parked along a side street as a reserve force.

Sixty hours later, the unit had been wiped out. "By 3 January 1995, the brigade had lost nearly 800 men, 20 of 26 tanks, and 102 of 120 armored vehicles." It had been surrounded and despite urgent pleas for relief, been utterly destroyed.

[...]

What looked like a Shi'ite- Sunni deal to drive the US out of Iraq in April turned out to be a deal, all right, but not the kind the Al Qaeda had bargained for. An enraged Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's vowed to kill Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, murdered 100 Iraqis in a single day and probably engineered an attack on Shi'ite political party headquarters.  Allawi responded by announcing a plan for checkpoints, a curfew, a ban on demonstrations and even hinted at declaring martial law. The man who had pleaded with America to lift the siege on Fallujah was all smiles at the news of the latest American precision strike.

Zarqawi's woes were compounded by Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani whose response to his offensive was pretty nearly blood-curdling.

Go read it all.

Atkins Diet

I'm going to give it a try. I have good kidneys, am in good health, so why not? I've signed up for the Atkins diet. Last night's menu:

Dinner:
Two Superstore No-Name [tm] all beef hot dogs, boiled, wrapped in a slice of white bread, with canola margarine and mustard.

7 Presidents Choice [tm] Decadent Chocolate Chunk Cookies.

(Not necessarily in that order)

Snack:
Tomato sandwich. (White bread, canola margarine.)

Actually, I've been on a diets that resemble this, on and off, for most of my life. (I went through a regime of Gatorade and Frosted Mini Wheats once.) Indeed, I'm polishing off three more cookies this morning as I write this.

Yum.

Dear Mr.Nader,

Dear Mr. Nader,

I would like to thank you for your input on the Canadian federal election. Considering that you managed to receive 2882955 votes from a population of a third of a billion, while a bunch of God-fearing, capital-loving, deregulating conservatives in the Canadian Alliance managed to garner 3277037 votes from a population approximately a tenth of your country's, I can only imagine how valuable your comments are to us.

Sincerely,
Kelvin Chan

Full Retraction

Michelle Malkin is sympathetic, but unhappy about Vice President Dick Cheney's suggestion to Patrick Leahy in the Senate.

I am still have nightmares about the dangling heads of Nick Berg and Paul Johnson and Kim Sun-Il, and all the mainstream media will be prattling on about today is Dick Cheney's use of the F word.

She's asking for more creative suggestions. "Feel free to leave the profanity-free putdown you would have used on Leahy."

Unfortunately, the damage is done. The only befitting action now for Cheney is a full, unequivocal retraction:

"I was out of line, Mr. Leahy. I take it back. "

"Unfuck yourself."

It's The Idiots Stress

The Canadian Kennel Club is a self-important, politically infected, management-heavy little non-profit organization with delusions of grandeur, completely reflective of the incestuous nature of the Canadian dog show otherworld.

The organization is currently in political crisis and flirting with financial collapse.

With an annual gross income of around $6 million (CDN), half paid out in "human resources", last year they lost about a quarter million dollars - the third straight year of loss.

The CEO is reportedly paid in the neighborhood of $600 dollars a day - with non-performance related bonuses. It's hard to be sure - it's a self-renewing contract with a "confidentiality clause" that meant for years, board members could not get access to details of that contract, including how much he was being paid.

The last time I wrote something about him, he called the Ontario Provincial Police to charge me with issuing a "threat". Funny little man.

Anyhow, none of this flood of red ink seems to have any effect on encouraging business efficiency. Today, on an email list, someone noted the following;

"This is not CKC bashing.....just facts. Yesterday I received a large brown envelope from the CKC...it said 'DO NOT FOLD OR BEND" across the face of it. Postage was .98 cents.
Upon opening, it revealed a letter saying enclosed was a new form. The new form was an "invoice/record of transaction which was informing me of the cost of transferring a dog to the new owner."

I replied;

I wondered about that - a full sized business envelope, covering letter and full colour invoice. I got one too, just yesterday. I thought it was a freak mistake. Apparently not.

Idiots.

That's not CKC bashing, mind you. Idiots.

And, it wasn't actually directed at anyone idiots in particular.

It wasn't idiots even intentional.

I have idiots the typing variation of tourette's syndrome  .

It's a struggle idiots to control the problem, whenever I'm subjected to the stress of dealing with idiots the CKC.

It's completely involuntary.

Idiots.

Like I said, I wouldn't want idiots anyone to feel threatened or bashed.

Idiots.

Black Fly In Our Chardonnay

Today is officially Tax Freedom Day in Saskatchewan. That means that the average taxpayer has finished working for the governments of various levels, and may now earn their first penny of true family income.

Tax Freedom Day for Canada as a whole falls on June 28th. Monday, the 28th of June, happens to be the date of the federal election.

Isn't it ironic?

Half the year, we work to pay taxes. But, don't be bogged down by negativity. Be positive. The glass isn't half empty, as they say. It's half full.

"Glass half full."

Say it over and over until you can visualize it. Then, on Monday, go down to the voting booths, and remember which two parties are actively campaigning that it's un-Canadian to lower taxes.

You should know what to do with that glass.

Sweet Grapes

I remember seeing Beckie Scott interviewed just moments after she made Olympic history in Salt Lake City - the first North American to capture an Olympic medal in cross country skiing. It was a bronze.

She was angry. She said some intemperate things about the two Russians who had bested her.

Textbook sour grapes. I hear it all the time in my own sport - subject to subjectivity and political alliances and feuds, complaining about dirty tricks is commonplace, but neatly deflected by the "sore loser" accusation.

Maybe Beckie has something to teach us about the difference between sore losers and undeserving winners and standing your ground in the face of contraversy.

Today, it's a gold. Congratulations, Beckie!

The New York Inquirer

Actually, that's unfair. In recent years, the National Inquirer has cleaned up its act. They actually fact check their stories.

The New York Times simply buries the ones that don't slide neatly into the intended bias. The fiasco of last week, in which the 9/11 Commission allegedly declared "No Ties Between Saddam And Al Queda" has properly been debunked throughout the blogosphere, and disavowed by the commission members themselves.

Until now, the media was given the benefit of the doubt - if you can call it that. They were characterized as sloppy or conveneintly obtuse. It turns out, that it's been a little more complicated than that.

The New York Times reports an Iraqi document -- one that it obtained several weeks ago, but that the 9/11 Commission seems somehow to have overlooked -- outlining collaboration between Saddam and Osama back in the 1990s. This is, of course, consistent with these media reports of such contacts from 1999.

That's right. They were sitting on evidence that refuted their own reporting.

Go read Glenn Reynolds round up of links, including this timeline.

Jeff Goldstein;

New York Times: "Okay, so there is a document proving ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but the document doesn't really prove prove those ties -- or rather, it does prove prove ties...

...but it doesn't exactly prove prove that Bin Laden and Saddam ordered a single milkshake and two spoons, if you catch our drift."

Another 15 Minutes

I'm supposed to be a member of the Murray Wood show's "people's panel" on 650 CKOM this afternoon. We'll be talking about the election, of course. Show starts at around 1:30, they tell me. (I believe the station is at 980 in the south.)

All day yesterday, I practiced talking out loud about the LIberals without the use of interspecies reproduction analogies.

It's harder than I thought it was. I hope they have a 6 second delay.

update
We were on for nearly an hour and a half.

Overall conclusion?

I want my own radio talk show.

And I Was Named After Mary-"Kate" Olsen

Silent Running: noticed this timeline discrepency in Bill Clinton's book.

In his recently released book "I'm a Democrat so the rules don't apply to me" Bill told us that his wife was named after Sir Edmund Hillary making Ed his "second favorite Hillary".

Ohhhh, isn't that just so sweet.

The question is why did her parents name her after a little known New Zealand bee keeper who's most notable activities to date had been to hunt crocs while he was serving in the air force in the Pacific during WWII.

Of course when little Hillary was six years old Ed became a tad more well known when he got to the top of world.

McGruff The Crime Poodle

Canadian Crime Safety Tips:

Tip #5 : Safety in numbers - to protect oneself from risk, always travel in groups.

Whip Vs Whip

Dominatrix and Marijuana Party candidate Carole Taylor is running in the riding of Ottawa-Vanier, against Liberal MP Mauril Belanger. Belanger is chief government whip.

I couldn't make this stuff up.

hat tip - Ghost Of A Flea

The Lesser Challenge

Mark Ames has a challenge for Ann Coulter.

"So here is my public challenge to Ann Coulter: I propose that you and I spend a night together in a four-star hotel. We will wine together, we will dine together, we will harden each other's nipples with erotic pillow talk about Sen. Joe McCarthy, and yes, Ann, we will fuck. Ann, here's the dare: I am betting that no matter how much you try, no matter what prostate-massaging tricks a John Birch Prom Queen like you possesses, you, Ann Coulter, cannot make me come."

Ahem.

Mr. Ames - a real man would challenge the woman not to come.

Unregistered Dog Saves Innocent From Registered Guns

Globe And Mail

TORONTO -- A man with five guns and more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition set himself up beside a Beaches water plant yesterday planning to commit mass homicide. But a dog's affection apparently persuaded him not to go through with his plan.

The man started to ready his weapons in the early afternoon sunshine outside the grounds of the R.C. Harris filtration plant at Victoria Park Avenue and Queen Street. He later told police that he planned to shoot people in the park and then drive around the city killing whomever he could to ensure he would get life in jail.

[...]

The man had several rifles and telescopic lenses, a camouflage balaclava, as well as a .357 magnum and a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, a machete and other knives.

He had loaded his pistols and was readying the rifles, police said. They were in his car's trunk along with the ammunition; he had removed the safeties and trigger locks.

He changed his mind when a dog on a walk in the park would not leave him alone.

"He happens to be a pet lover, and he decided that if there was such a nice dog in the area the people were too nice and he wasn't going to carry out his plan," Det. Ashley said.

He was not known to police, and all his guns were registered.

I'm sure someone at Animal Control is checking into leash law violations, though.

Sexual Orientation

CBC Watch has a story about the vagueness of the term "sexual orientation" in legal application.

Citizen's Research Institute (CRI) press release :

CRI notes that on December 18, 2003, Judge Romilly of the British Columbia Youth Court in his reasons for sentence in the R. v. J.S. (para 50 -pg 36) case, opened the door when he stated the following concerning the term "sexual orientation" under section 718 of the Criminal Code:

"I am of the opinion that this crime was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on a factor similar to sexual orientation and is covered by this section of the Criminal Code. It strikes me that this section contemplates hatred against 'peeping toms' and/or 'voyeurs' as being within its purview, since in my opinion such activity represents a sexual lifestyle which some may consider deviant, but is a sexual lifestyle all the same."

I've been arguing for a long time that this slippery slope is going to become very steep when research into molecular genetics discovers that there exists a genetic basis for some of these behaviors. Coupled with fuzzy thinking such as this on the part of liberal judges, things could get very interesting in years to come.

Partridge Wisdom

I always wanted a big psychedelic school bus, too.

Farenheit 9/11 Out Takes

I haven't watched any of these because I hate them enough for one lifetime already. And think long and hard before you do.

The murder video of South Korean Kim Sun-il is now available. And, not widely reported - the body was boobytrapped.

And via Stephen Green a documentary of Iraq, under Saddam. You know - before the days of BushHitler and the horrors of Abu Ghraib.

I sent "movie reviewer" Rex Reed the link by email. Subject line: Farenheit 9/11 Out Takes

The Moonbat Hunters

Jeff Goldstein is involved. With Peter Fonda. In a manner of speaking. Thus, the expected language warnings.

Special Needs Reporting

Via Drudge, this survey of Canadian business media. Some gems in answer to: What mistakes do company spokespeople make most often in dealing with the media?

"They don't have much of a sense of what is news that would interest the general public."

Translation: News is Entertainment.

"Not understanding our target readers and failing to understand that editorial must be geared toward what readers need, not what they want to sell."

Translation: Wake up! We're the Sellers here, not you.

"Avoiding questions. It seems many executives are under the assumption the reporter is out to get them. In reality most of us are only trying to understand the story better and to cover all the angles.":

Translation: We're really out to get you. Gotcha !

"Refusing to provide comment on competitive issues and developments surrounding rivals."

Translation: Just as war reporters know nothing about military strategy, we know nothing about business strategy.

"Getting hostile when journalists ask tough but necessary questions. Accusing media of bias when it's their obligation to report the news, favorable or not."

Translation: We really prefer the unfavourable stuff, actually. See Entertainment. See Selling. See Gotcha.

Crossposted at the Shotgun

And, added to the Traffic Jam

Clinton Book Phenomenon?

Matt Drudge is so funny. From his current "headlines";

Clinton's Book Signings Draw Adoring Throngs in NYC...

CNN: 'My Life' sets records; 90,000 to 100,000 unit single-day expectation..

PUBLISHER CLAIMS: 400,000 copies bought in U.S. in one day!

BUT... Sales slow in Florida...
Stacks Left Untouched on Maryland Shore...
SAN FRAN YAWN...
Clinton book sales quiet in Arizona...
Memoirs not on Houston's best seller list...
Tome slow out of gate in Cincinnati...
Not flying off shelves in Hudson Valley...
Mixed reaction in Manitowoc...
Mixed book sales in N.E. Georgia...
Creates little hoopla in San Antonio...
Not Selling in Shenandoah Valley...
Book not so magical in Wichita Falls...
Hoosiers react quietly to memoir...
Just hype? asks Gainesville...
Sales can't measure up to Harry or Hillary in suburban Chicago...
Memoirs don't stir Saginaw...
Memoir is no 1st-day best-seller in Ft. Wayne...
Not selling in VA Beach...
No best seller in Billings...
Slow in Sacramento...

A little mental exercise, now if you will.

If there had been no Monica Lewinsky in the White House, what would the buzz be around "My Life"? today...

think.

hard.

....

Can't think of anything, eh?

So, why would anyone other than the usual suspects run out and buy a book, when they can get their curiosity satisfied for free on 60 minutes?

Anti-Alberta Bigotry

I'm not the only one who's noticed this.

Cabinet ministers are going to fall. There is a new desperation in the Liberal campaign -- a whole generation of Liberal MPs and organizers have never felt what it's like to lose. They don't like that feeling, and it shows.

They're angry. And so they're telling Martin to be angry -- to do something, anything. And so Martin is getting angry at the easy scapegoat, the traditional Liberal whipping boy: Alberta. He really ought to be angry at Ontarians, who are rejecting him for the Conservatives, according to recent polls, by a 10- point margin, or at Quebecers, who are rejecting him by even more.

They used to vote Liberal, and aren't. But Alberta makes a much more gratifying target.

So last week, Martin blasted Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, calling Klein's health-care reform package un- Canadian. "Unlike Stephen Harper, I will look Ralph Klein in the eye and I will say 'no.'," ranted Martin. From Ontario, of course -- not over the phone to Klein privately, not in a memo, but at an election event, using federal-provincial relations as a desperate partisan weapon. "Unlike Stephen Harper, I will defend medicare," he said -- defending it against Klein, the new Liberal demon.

Although nearly every province has private health-care facilities, Martin chose to attack only Alberta.

He did not criticize Ontario and Quebec, with their burgeoning private hospitals. Ontario and Quebec are run by Liberal governments.

The government of Alberta has kept Martin briefed about their proposed changes for months. Martin has never raised an objection, and Anne McLellan, the deputy prime minister, has repeatedly approved of such changes.

So there was no reason to criticize Klein's plans at all -- at least until they provided a scapegoat for the Liberals. And if Klein's plans provide a scapegoat, so do all the other provinces.

This is not coincidence. This is what the left would call "systemic bias" -- an anti-Alberta bigotry.

This hypocrisy needs to be targeted hard by the media. Instead, they're lining up behind the Liberal canard, awaiting the Klein "bombshell" that Paul Martin is predicting.

Funny how he doesn't apply the same standards to his own doctor.

hat tipDebbye

Martin: Clueless About The Military

A Canadian soldier lets loose on Paul Martin's military bashing campaign ads.

"I voluntarily became a soldier knowing that it might one day mean me losing my life for Canada. Can Martin say that? When did he ever serve? He's a fat cat billionaire without a clue about what it means to be a soldier. What he said was an insult to every man and woman in this country in uniform. All of them better Canadians than him. But what's he care? Our military size has been so shrunk he figures the Liberals don't need their votes to win."

The soldier was reacting to a front-page newspaper story he read on the weekend in which Martin, during an interview, attacked Conservative leader Stephen Harper's plans for the Canadian military. Martin, according to the article, saying Harper would impose a warlike "ready aye ready" philosophy that is out of vogue in today's Canadian society.

This is the same Paul Martin currently flogging the canard that Stephen Harper wants to buy aircraft carriers. Considering our media is listening with ears perked for any gaffe, real or imagined, to pounce on the Conservatives, you'd think they'd be all over this big, fat lie like white on rice...

You'd think wrong, of course.

Strategic Voting Lottery

Why I'm voting Conservative and not NDP in Ottawa Centre :

3. $1.75
My vote is a $1.75 donation to a political party - I don't want it to go to the NDP.

The "enemy of my enemy is my friend" voters might keep that in mind.

No More

Prior to [9/11], Conservatives, however distasteful, were inchoate; they had tacitly acknowledged the intellectual leadership of the Liberal project. No more. Now Liberals were confronted with people who didn't want to read the New York Times, were unimpressed by celebrity and didn't want to go to Harvard. Many liberals didn't recognize "their" familiar country any more. James Lileks described the intensity of the revulsion at the barbarians at the gates; not Osama Bin Laden, but rather someone else.

I ask my Democrat friends what they'd rather see happen -- Bush reelected and bin Laden caught, or Bush defeated and bin Laden still in the wind. They're all honest: they'd rather see Bush defeated.

[...]

Through the long summer of 1990s, the wounds festered as the infection deepened. It was masked by the ineffectual cologne of NGO projects, corrupt aid delivery, United Nations peacekeeping public relations projects, by selective media coverage and by the jangling of fund raising concerts at which a Secretary General appeared, like some secular pope, to give his blessing, until the boil burst over Manhattan on that bright autumn day. As the debris showered on New York it obscured the fact that a new post-post-colonial ideology was ready to push the Liberal edifice aside and take up the challenge of Islamic terrorism; underneath the War for Terror there was now a War for the West.

James Lilek's friends must know that electing John Kerry to the White House will not restore the antebellum world. Things have gone too far for that. The Third World in general and the Islamic World in particular have burst their bounds; they can no longer be herded into the decrepit and threadbare tent of the United Nations; the Kyoto climate agreement; the International Criminal Court or any of Potemkin treaties woven by the European Union. Islamic fundamentalists are openly attacking Russia; besetting India; seizing British naval vessels; threatening to interdict the Straits of Malacca; menacing the House of Saud; renewing hostilities in Kosovo; bombing trains in Spain; raging through the Sudan and building nuclear enrichment plants. No Clintonian ceremony in the Rose Garden can replace the planets in their old orbits. All John Kerry can do if he must pay the price of restoring the Liberal dream is to withdraw, like Prince Prospero, into the artificial gaieties of last Bal Masque while the Red Death stalks without.

Go read it all.

He Speaks The Language

Typically, the Iranian kidnapping of British servicemen and patrol boats is being given less coverage than the Olsen twin anorexia story.

Wretchard, at the Belmont Club has useful insights, as usual.

If there's any doubt that the enemy full-court press has begun, the seizure of three RN smallcraft by Iran and the attack on 4 US Marines in Ramadi, probably by Ba'athist special forces, should erase any doubt. Fighting with the Ba'athists began again after the US killed two dozen foreign terrorists in Fallujah. It was only a matter of time before they struck back, as they do in Lebanon, where many of the Syrian-backed fighters train with Hezbollah. That was expected. But the seizure of the Royal Navy patrol vessels is surprising because it represents a public and unilateral escalation by Iran. As a political statement, it must rank with Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, which was calculatingly delivered against a weak Jimmy Carter. It is an indication of how politically emasculated the Mullahs think the Coalition is, that they should have attempted this at all. Shortly after the conclusion of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Mullahs were practically trembling on their thrones. But now they smile; the BBC has done its work well.

Though, speaking of underreported stories on Iran.... perhaps the little guy from Shawinigan can make use of his new Iranian oil connections can negotiate a quiet little deal. You know, dictator to dictator.....

crossposted at the Shotgun

Media Sanitizing

The Aboriginal justice commission was formed in response to the freezing deaths of Indian men on the outskirts of Saskatoon - in locations that coincided with an incident in which Saskatoon police dropped an intoxicated Darrell Night to walk back to the city, in the dead of winter. Yesterday the commission released its final report.

The Federation Of Saskatchewan Indian Nations did not attend the news conference, but responded today. Early broadcasts of comments of Vice-chief Lawrence Joseph had some particularly descriptive criticism of chair Willie Littlechild's report (which included emphasis on the need for Indian and Metis communities to take responsibility for their own future)... now, lets see who wants to include it in their print coverage.

Looking for the money quote: Globe and Mail ? not here.... the CBC ...nope. ... FSIN news release ? eh... no.

So far, I can't find the statement in any coverage at all.

Ok, so this is from memory, from a local 650 CKOM radio clip this morning (it's been dropped from later reports). FSIN Vice-chief Lawrence Joseph;

" they want to train Indian leadership to be good little white leaders."

That may not be the exact wording, but it's damned close. If anyone has the actual transcript, please send it along.

(update, June 24 - revised to actual quote.)

Paydirt

From today's Star Diamond Project news release;

A total of 3,355 commercial sized diamonds (greater than 1.18 millimetre square mesh screen), collectively weighing 338 carats, has been recovered from the treatment of 4,913 dry tonnes of kimberlite. Thirty-three diamonds greater than one carat have been recovered and the three largest stones are: 3.50, 3.31 and 3.19 carats, respectively. In addition, 352 diamonds (6 carats) were recovered down to 0.85 millimetre square mesh. The colour of over 80 percent of these diamonds has been classified as white, with a further 12 percent classified as off-white.

Like I said a couple of months ago, anticipate diamond prices to drop to $3 a bushel.

Ripping Moore A New One

Christopher Hitchens reviews Farenheit 9/11.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

It should be noted that Michael Moore has assembled an attack team of lawyers to sue anyone who insults him or his film. Hitchens goes on to deconstruct the contradictions and outright fictions at length in the so-called "documentary".

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

"The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States "

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

(By way of comparison, the approving pap from a clueless Roger Ebert.)

hat tip - QandO

Well, It's About Time

Former NDP member of parliament Svend Robinson has finally been charged with theft of a diamond ring to impress his boyfriend with. That was two months ago.

NDP leader Jack Layton was sympathetic at the time.

"Now Svend's inner strength must be applied to a very personal inner challenge," Layton said. "I have every confidence that my friend Svend will overcome."

It took a special prosecutor to figure out that grabbing 50K of someone else's stuff and leaving the premises is like, illegal. Robinson's snap impulse had been preceeded by casing the joint a shopping trip to the store two days earlier.

NDP Lorne Nystrom, who incidentally, also had a personal shoplifting crisis a few years ago;

"It is a personal tragedy," ... "All of us, under certain circumstances, crack and do something that's really strange and weird."

Strange how that happens. They always "crack" in the presence of something expensive. You don't hear of people succumbing to stress and say.... making off with the neighbor's garbage.

Equally forgiving, was Prime Minister Paul Martin, " who called Robinson a dedicated parliamentarian who's clearly under a lot of stress."

Well, you can't say he's inconsistent on the issue of being holding thieves accountable. Though, at least Svend gave back the ring.

More Media Incompetence

William Safire's NYT column on the fiasco last week in which the world press uniformly reported:

"Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" went the Times headline. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words "Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . ." This understandably caused my editorial- page colleagues to draw the conclusion that "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . ."

All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.

"Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?" Kean asked himself. "Yes . . . no question." Hamilton joined in: "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don't disagree with that" - just "no credible evidence" of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack.

Jeff Jarvis weighs in.

update- This isn't incompetence. It's outright deliberate misrepresentation by the LA Times.

Cross Your Fingers

That this leads to a full fledged confrontation with Iran. The timing may not be ideal, but with nukes coming online, better now than later.

View From The Eye Of The Storm

Via Stephen Den Beste, this piece that effectively capsulizes the problems in the Middle East and the nature of the threat the west faces. The source can't be confirmed. Exerpts;

Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is.
- The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel.
- The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel.
- The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel.
- Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel.
- Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of Israel.
- Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel.
- The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel.
- The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel

...

- The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large as the EU before its expansion.
- They have a land area larger than either the US or all of Europe.
- These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgiumand equal to half of the GDP of California alone.

...

There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many people realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It was Joseph Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors.

Required reading.

Alienation

I cannot look at this man without visualizing the tail of a white mouse dangling from the corner of his lips. I know this is cruel, because now, the same thing is going to happen when you look at him.

New Hope For Jealous Wives

FAB: Endorsing Paul Martin

Fab Magazine's Editor-In-Chief Mitchel Raphael:

"Paul Martin is your only hope if you do not want to see Stephen Harper become prime minister. Under the Liberals, we have seen gay rights move forward a touch beyond what most Canadians are comfortable with. The Conservatives will roll back our rights. I say, bring it on: boost the NDP, infiltrate the Conservative Party and make them change. But if you want to avoid a big battle, vote red."

From his interview of the chosen candidate:

How do you think your personal views on homosexuality have changed over time? And why?

No comment supplied.

In the last session of Parliament your government introduced Bill C-12, which would remove the artistic merit defence in current child-porn laws. How can gay youth be protected from prosecution for expressing their sexuality through art?

No comment supplied.

The new Assisted Human Reproduction Act makes home insemination illegal. This is a big hurdle for gay men and lesbians trying to conceive. Does the state have the right to be in the bedrooms of the nation if a gay man decides to inseminate a lesbian with a turkey-baster?

No comment supplied.

Will you be attending Pride Day in Toronto on June 27, the day before the election?

No comment supplied.

I smell a Pulitzer.

Roads To Nowhere

It's a poorly kept secret that the left-wing, labour oriented New Democrats governing Saskatchewan are hostile to the United States.

They parrot the "friends and most important trading partner" line, but they really don't believe it. The NDP are socialists to the core - suspicious and antagonistic towards the US. Nor are they afraid to sacrifice the economic interests of residents of border constituencies to make their point. After all, it's not like the southern rural areas are NDP strongholds.

What evidence is there for this? As I do nearly every year, over the past few weeks I've made road trips to North Dakota and Montana. Despite the fact that these border states are as sparsely populated as our own province, particularly near the Canada-US border, the American roads are well maintained - this is typical.

It must come as a shock to American residents when they cross into Canada.

This is what the last 50 miles looks like on those highways on the Saskatchewan side of the border leading to the ports of Northgate, Monchy and Climax. With broken pavement, huge potholes (never ignore a red hiway surface warning marker in this province) and eroding shoulders, these highways are in dangerous condition. According to border agents, there are American tourists who turn around after a few miles. Who can blame them?

What they don't know is that all of these highways improve dramatically, for no identifiable reason, around 50 miles into the province.

Bent Over Billboards

CBC Watch:

With copy slogans like "He came inside me," "I came inside him" and "He likes it Raw," Health Canada and a handful of AIDS groups are running a new national HIV ad campaign targeting gay men under the catch phrase "Think Again"(a phrase already used by Health Canada for a campaign to target smokers).

CBC Watch has a followup on the reaction of the People's Network to Jim Pattison's refusal to run the images on Pattison Group billboards. Short version: "bad conservative billionaire!".

I like Kathy Shaidle's take.

A couple of years ago, a friend who works with Sask Health mentioned that they were worried that a new needle exchange program was going to anger diabetics, who had to pay for their own. I told her, "And rightfully so."

"But," she protested, "AIDS is a public health issue."

"and diabetes isn't?"

"A lot of people don't know that you can catch HIV through intravenous drug usage. They don't know...."

"What.. ? Did they miss the day in Grade 6 where we learned shooting drugs into your veins with a needle is bad for you???

Big Sky Country

Just some pics along hway 3 from Billings to Great Falls. Full size versions at this directory

Life Is A Highway

Posting from beautiful Billings, Montana...

Things are going to be light here for a few days. I have the laptop with me, but precious little energy for blogging after a day in the sun and wind.

Check out the Shotgun (on the sidebar) for their take on the federal election leaders debate. Doesn't sound like I missed much.

Positive Vs Negative Rights

Professor Bainbridge has a piece on the difference between positive rights and negative rights. For Canadians, a worthwhile reminder that governments that purport to protect one's "right" to employment, to health care, for example, provide them at a great cost to negative rights and personal liberty.

If the majority thinks all employees should be paid a living wage, the freedom of individual employees to take a lower wage and of individual employers to offer a lower wage is circumscribed. Again, we often see the same sort of disregard for private property and freedom of contract in nominal democracies as in totalitarian regimes.

Saskatchewan provides a recent example of the danger of postive rights governments - withdrawel of government "guaranteed" rights to health care in rural Saskatchewan.

In forcing a "right to health care", the state has prohibited private providers from operating in the system. So, when the state decides that it cannot or will not provide service to a segment of the population, those citizens suddenly find that instead of having a "right" - their access to health care has been effectively prohibited by the same government that claims to guarantee it.

SubLiberal Advertising

In the latest Harper attack ad, the Liberals use a series of "negative" images - among them the barrel of a gun, pointed directly at the viewer, ostensibly to illustrate the dangers we face if the gun registry is revoked.... but that isn't all there is in the ad.

Free Dominion;

I downloaded the Liberal attack ad off their own website and converted it to quicktime to have some fun editing it. I didn't expect to find what I found though.

...

The location of the flash matches up with the gun and it CLEARLY is a subliminal message that the gun has been fired at the viewer. It seems to be the only subliminal message in the ad. If that commercial gave you a creepy, uneasy feeling you couldn't explain, that is why.

Go check out the images for yourself.

hat tip - Shotgun

Rarer Than Anyone Knew

Via my my favorite blog in the world this little story on environmental protection run amuck...

[T]he LeSatzes aren't able to build their own riding arena. The only decent site on their property in southeastern Wyoming lies within 300 feet of Chugwater Creek, and building there is far too expensive because of Endangered Species Act restrictions intended to protect the Preble's meadow jumping mouse.

"The mouse that doesn't exist," Amy LeSatz noted drily.

After six years of regulations and restrictions that have cost builders, local governments and landowners on the western fringe of the Great Plains as much as $100 million by some estimates, new research suggests the Preble's mouse in fact never existed. It instead seems to be genetically identical to one of its cousins, the Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse, which is considered common enough not to need protection.

Flashback Saskatchewan Highways fined for fishless habitat destruction.

Super Size Good Sense

Something tells me Sean is going to win this battle, if attitude counts for anything.

I Get Butterflies

Someone else has managed to turn the normal into the diseased to carve out yet another psychology employment niche.

CTV; Child psychologist Steven Feldgaier is using a program called "Friends" -- a child program started in Australian schools -- to teach kids how to walk through their problems, tackle life's stresses in small steps -- and relax.

For example, "you can go to a quiet room and relax where no one can bug you," he told one class.

The Friends program is slowly making its way through schools in Winnipeg, as well as a school in Vancouver.

In today's hectic, fast-paced world, more and more people are feeling overwhelmed. But experts say stress is no longer just an adult problem, but one affecting children as well.

Children as young as five years old are falling victim to stress.

I have an idea - let's make this program self-supporting, through the taxation of children's allowances. Then, Steven Feldgaier can explain to them how it's all for their own good. Let him convince them to go to a quiet room to think about it.

I'd buy a ticket to that.

Ghost Of Boredom

You know, when I find a topic "boring", I don't link to the subject on other blogs. Or criticize the interest of others or suggest that opposing views constitutes "hatred". If I don't care about a debate, I don't demand that new arguments must be found, because previous ones have exceeded their entertainment value half-life.

Nor am I likely to make multiple entries in my comments section to stress how little I care. before shutting it down to replies.

I just don't write about it. Easy? Easy.

But that's just me.

Tax Revolt

Three percent of Saskatchewan's taxpayers pay 28% of education taxes.

They are getting tired of it.

Trudeau Was A Clueless Idiot

Not that this is a startling revelation. But, in contrast to the timeless wisdom we are reminded of in the wake of Reagan's passing, Jaeger has some quotes to remind us just how clueless our former prime minister was.

"We have a great deal to learn from the Soviet Union . . . a country from which we have a great deal to benefit."

Harper Support Continues To Rise

As the media and political adversaries begin to spew charges of "intolerance" towards the Conservatives - "intolerance" towards abortion, "intolerance" of homosexuality, and yesterday, "intolerance" of the Metis - I predict that during this coming week, they'll be reviving the anti-Reform rhetoric charging out and out racism.

And through it all, momentum continues to build. Canwest is reporting that the Conservatives may be within striking distance of a majority government, if poll trends prove accurate.

Paul Martin's Liberals would do well to consider that the majority of Canadians oppose gay marriage and aren't nearly as supportive of our no-holds barred abortion policy (Canada has no laws at all governing abortion) as left wing activists would have you believe. Being profiled as an "extremist, intolerant bigot" isn't likely to convince the majority of Canadians who have quite reasonable objections to abortion and gay marriage to vote for you.

Small Masticated Animals

Via Drudgereport;

Two Australian men may be prosecuted after they chewed live mice and bit off their tails as part of a pub competition to win a holiday.

The RSPCA called the incident "outrageous" and said it would seek the maximum penalty against the men.

RSPCA chief inspector Byron Hall said they could face two years in prison and fines of A$75,000 (US$52,050).

Mr. Hall added that the RSPCA is also tracking down unconfirmed reports of mouse-chewing involving cats.

Berkeley Intifada

Michael Totten, at Tech Central Station;

It's bad enough that the torchbearers of Political Correctness compromised their honorable anti-racist principles with expediency and hypocrisy. But what's left of Political Correctness is worse even than that. There's also something implicitly racist about it. White Christians are held to the highest possible standard. They're expected not to have a racist thought in their heads and are called out for the slightest infraction. Culprits who really are racist (and who aren't merely guilty of checking the "wrong" box on their voter registration) deserve all the shellacking they get. Meanwhile, however, ethnic and religious minorities are allowed to behave like skinheads. It looks as though the activist set expects hatemongering anti-social behavior from Muslim immigrants just as they expect a dog to pee on the rug. It's the "soft bigotry of low expectations" with a racial twist.

Read the "Berkeley Intifada".

You Don't Say

A story you won't find on the CBC.
UN inspectors: Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

An obvious explanation that is conveniently avoided by sophmoric critics of the Iraq war and "absence" of weapons of mass destruction. (Not that weapons and precursor materials haven't been found - more sophmoric denial there). The months long "rush to war" didn't exactly deprive him of advance warning.

And of course, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was "Mother Of All Exterminators" Again - far, far too many dots to connect for mere media consumers to digest, so it's been ignored by the press "analysts".

update - some have expressed speculation that this is the only source.The New York Times also reported on this story on the 9th.

UNITED NATIONS, June 9 - Equipment and material that could have been used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been emptied from Iraqi sites since the war and shipped abroad, the head of the United Nations inspectors office told the Security Council today.

Demetrius Perricos, deputy to the former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and now the acting executive chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, told a closed- door session of the council that many of the items bear tags placed by United Nations inspectors as suspect "dual use" ones having capabilities for creating harmless consumer products as well as unconventional weapons.

Mr. Perricos accompanied his briefing with a report showing satellite photos of a fully built-up missile site near Baghdad in May 2003 and the same site denuded in February 2004.

Putin Smackdown

Putin is blunt about Democrat hypocrisy at the G8 summit

Russian President Vladimir Putin stepped into the U.S. political campaign on Thursday, saying the Democrats had "no moral right" to criticize President Bush over Iraq.

The Kremlin leader, answering a reporter's question in Sea Island, Georgia, suggested that the Democrats were two-faced in criticizing Bush on Iraq since it had been the Clinton administration that authorized the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia by U.S. and NATO forces.

The reporter had asked Putin to respond to U.S. press articles questioning Russia's place at the G8 feast of leading industrial countries.

Putin brushed these off, saying such articles were part of an internal U.S. political debate.

He went on: "I am deeply convinced that President Bush's political adversaries have no moral right to attack him over Iraq because they did exactly the same.

"It suffices to recall Yugoslavia. Now look at them. They don't like what President Bush is doing in Iraq.

hat tip - The Commisar

Taylor & Company

Welcome Chris Taylor to the ever growing Canadian blogosphere.

Good stuff, Chris. Now, link me, bitch.

The Myth Of Peacekeeping

Via Pol:Spy - General Lewis MacKenzie (RET) has some things to say;

Ottawa's general ignorance regarding the state of our Armed Forces is reflected in the current election campaign.

Consider, for instance, the partisan hype surrounding the Conservatives' announcement that a Stephen Harper-led government would purchase new "hybrid carriers" to transport Canadian troops and their equipment to overseas mission areas in the future. For the past year, a number of distinguished senior retired officers (most of them were my bosses at one time or the other) have been working on a proposal that would recommend just such a purchase. We don't care which political party implements the purchase as long as it's done as soon as practical, thereby enhancing Canada's ability to project force abroad.

You can imagine our disappointment when the Prime Minister recently denounced the Conservative plan to purchase "aircraft carriers" -- an erroneous charge suggesting a Cold War-type military spending spree that threatens support for social programs. A hybrid carrier is about as similar to an aircraft carrier as my Honda scooter is to a Kenmore 18-wheeler, and the cost relationship is also about the same.

And on the ingnorance behind a persistant Canadian mythology;

As we improve our military's ability to project force abroad, we should dispense with the all-too Canadian conceit that what the world needs is "peacekeepers." Peacekeeping in the classic, Pearsonian sense -- whereby our troops occupy a piece of territory at the request of local belligerents -- is no longer in much demand. What is needed now are peacemakers with the weapons and mandate necessary to kill belligerents who don't want us there.

Go read it all. Read Ray's comments too

Big Media Misses The Point

The recent Pew study on trust levels in the media has been generating some discussion. Typically, the media who is shown to be overwhelmingly distrusted, doesn't even notice. CNN's Matthew Furman rejoices.

""We're obviously pleased -- once again we've been voted the most trusted news organization in America."

Will Collier has a pithy response;

Memo to Matthew Furman: When 68% of your potential audience doesn't trust you, you don't have any reason to brag.

As one of the commenters says - give America credit.

Frankie

14 years ago this month, I spent a very long, tiring day and night tending to the birth of a litter of puppies. When it was finally finished, I had a male and female puppy to show for my efforts - efforts, as it turned out, that were just beginning.

The mother was an older dog, one I had leased at considerable expense from a breeder in New York. Things started out well enough, but after a few days it was clear something was wrong. The puppies refused to gain weight. Her milk had turned toxic and they had to be removed and raised on a bottle.

Bottle feeding newborns is round the clock work. Every two hours they require feeding, then burping and cleaning. Night and day. It means guarding their temperature carefully - they cannot control it on their own. It means packing them in a little beer cooler to take to work with you. And usually, it means some will not survive despite your best efforts. The male died when he was a week old.

The remaining female was thus plunged into the perfect storm of dog psychology - a hand raised "singleton". No competition from littermates. No discipline from an experienced mother. No rough and tumble games to learn the rules of bite inhibition. A surefire recipe for creating a canine sociopath with no fear.

And, it goes without saying, absolutely no gratitude.

By the time she was 6 weeks old, "Frankie" was a beady eyed package of self-centered malevolence - utterly without respect or remorse, demanding instant gratification. A cuddle was as likely to draw teeth as it was a "kiss". Attempting to discipline her into submission could send one to the emergency room for digit reattachment.

This was my type of dog. And she was beautiful.

She became officially known as Am/Can Champion Minuteman I Eat Tigers.

Frankie had a pretty respectable show career, ending up top female in the country in 1992. She was bred and had two top producing champion sons - she has descendants all over the world now. But, unlike most of my other show dogs, she was never placed in a retirement home, and has been the bane of my existence ever since.

She's become especially baneful as of late.

A few days short of 14, she has long ago lost her springy step, her keen sense of hearing and her teeth. She sleeps 23 hours a day, waking only to eat and pee on my floor and occasionally, wander aimlessly about. On her bad days, I am the personal servant of a four legged ill tempered boa constrictor. On her good days, I am the personal servant of a four legged ill tempered boa constrictor - the only difference being the intensity with which her gums snap together in the air as she whirls around to strike.

In the fleeting moments that she is awake, she travels in stiff-legged, drunken, random bounds that do not always direct her in a meaningful direction. She gets stuck in corners, having completely lost reverse gear. She has become known as the "pinball pogo-stick dog".

And she has forgotten how to get home.

Yesterday, I put her outside to enjoy a bit of sun in a warm part of the yard. The gate was closed, but the yard is not secure. I brought her in a little while later.

Or I thought I had. The hours rolled by into late afternoon, and it was time to feed the dogs. As I mixed bowls, I reached for Frankie's and as I did, realized that I had not seen her for some time. Did I bring her in? I honestly couldn't remember. A check of the yard revealed no old dog standing around in a daze, and two surveys of the dog run area confirmed I hadn't put her out there.

Perhaps she had gone around the end of the garden and wandered down the sidewalk. It's happened before.

I walked out to trace her usual path - she always wanders to the light pole at the corner to check out the smells, then heads north with the down slope of the street. Path of least resistance. How far north depends upon how long she's left to wander. She's not a fast mover. And if she encounters something solid, she will usually just stop and lean against it.

I searched up the street and the neighbor's yard. No Frankie. No point in calling her name, as she either can't hear, or doesn't care to. Time for the bicycle.

I rode up and down the streets for at least an hour, down all the back alleys, along the golf course behind my house - slowly, checking in yards, under hedges, stopping to ask people on the street. Nobody had seen a thing. Finally, I decided that it was time to check back at the house in the improbable hope that she had turned back around and headed south to come in for dinner.

No Frankie. Time to get the truck out and have a proper look. As I walked through the kitchen to get my truck keys, something caught the corner of my eye.

Like I said, she has no reverse.

Frankie isn't going to be with me for very much longer. She has an aggressive mammary tumour and it's grown to a size that can no longer be ignored, and that will soon become painful , so we are taking things day by day. Today was supposed to be the day, but I changed my mind.

Again.

I just thought I'd share her with you.

Military Coverage In The Media

Inspired by Reasons Chris Bray, Joe Katzman at Winds of Change discusses the ineptness of the media when reporting on matters military. Great round up of links to illustrate how bad it can get.

It seems like a simple problem that could be cured by some basic diligence, research; and professional standards that demand real subject expertise to the same level as, say, sports journalism. But that doesn't seem to be happening, which leads one to wonder why not.

With examples like this it's hard to argue.

"One of the things you learn quickly in the military is to never, ever rile an Army Ranger, as foes have learned the hard way from Normandy to the Middle East," wrote Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Kilian, with near-audible grunts and chest blows. How tough are the Army's elite infantrymen? So tough, Kilian explained, that Rangers brag about parachuting into Alabama -- and walking all the way back to Fort Benning, Georgia.

It's worth pointing out that Fort Benning, Georgia, sits on the Alabama border. In fact, part of Fort Benning sits inside Alabama, including the part with the parachute drop.

Actually, anyone who has ever been interviewed about a specialty field can probably relate similar stories. Even in my own little niche sport, they very nearly always get something completely wrong.

Even worse, they often get confused about what constitutes an expert source - such as when they consult a humane society spokesperson to flesh out a piece on purebred dogs. Rather like asking the concession guy at a Nascar race about engine specifications.

Zero Tier Health Care

A month ago, the NDP government in Saskatchewan announced another round of bed closures and service reductions in rural areas. In fact, this was a greatly scaled back version of what had been suggested. With the finance department still juggling budget figures as of May, the cuts proposed were dramatic. Fearing the political fallout, a smaller package of service cutbacks were decided on at, quite literally, the eleventh hour.

Rural hospitals are not well utilized - some serve as little more than expensive long term care for the elderly. Until, of course, a farm accident or heart attack occurs. My father, for example, went into the local hospital about 12 years ago for observation and suffered a heart attack while under a monitor and nursing care - and survived as a result of it. Forced to drive an hour that afternoon to seek medical advice when he wasn't feeling well, he may not have attempted - or completed - the trip.

That hospital was one of the ones reprieved in this last run of closures.

Closing beds in an urban center (in the city of Saskatoon, pop 200,000, there are three fully equipped hospitals) results in surgical delays and lengthened waiting lists. But 24 hour emergency and critical care services are not shut down.

Closing beds in rural communities forces rural families and ambulances to make increasingly lengthy trips to get treatment for critically ill or injured people - often over substandard, poorly maintained roads. The opportunity to stabilize a patient at a local facility is lost.

With the publicly funded hospital closed and private hospitals prohibited by law, large geographical areas are created where emergency medical care is effectively forbidden by the government.

In other words, zero-tier health care.

There may be a solution where these two problems - a shortage of advanced diagnostic services, and a shortage of rural emergency care - could be blended under a privately provided system. A government with imagination and courage could re-examine these small communities, and having satisfied themselves that hospital emergency services are not affordable under the fully funded public system, designate these areas as "free enterprise" health zones. In these zones only, investors would be allowed to set up private diagnostic facilities. Existing buildings would already be available for sale or lease.

There would be one provision - private servers would be required to provide basic 24 hour emergency services in the same facility. Residents who qualified to have their services covered under SaskHealth would still be covered in the usual manner, while those who wished to could purchase diagnostic services (or any other health service offered) privately or through different insurers.

The side benefit? Increased economic activity in smaller rural communities. Instead of farm families having to find expensive accomodations in the cities while awaiting diagnosis and treatment, urban residents would be travelling out of town to seek theirs - thereby, taking pressure off the existing MRI facilities in major centers while stimulating local rural economies.

Crossposted at the Shotgun

The Crowds Grow

The crowds lining up to pay respects to Reagan have exceeded all expectations.

The Newest Reality Show - The Marketplace

No point in arguing with sucess - brace for an upcoming season of wall-to-wall reality TV.

Victoria Riskin, president of the 8,500 strong Writers Guild of America, said: "Our members are concerned that the plethora of reality programming is impacting them in terms of job opportunities.

Malcolm in the Middle, Jane Kaczmarek - $150,000 per episode

"There is a fair amount of anxiety that these shows are cheap to make and developing new series is too expensive."

Will & Grace, Debra Messing and Eric McCormack - $250,000 per episode

Meanwhile, the Screen Actors Guild is not happy either.

The West Wing, Martin Sheen - $300,000 per episode

Its president, Melissa Gilbert, says: "It's a terrible trend. My concern is that once the networks get comfortable with a certain kind of programme, it becomes very tough to make a trend go away. "

The Friends cast - 1.2 million per episode

Stacie Lipp, who has written for Roseanne and Married with Children, went to pitch an idea to CBS the morning after the first Survivor finale.

Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray Romano - 1.8 million per episode

"Nobody listened," she recalled. "They were buzzing. It could have been the best sitcom ever and we were doomed."

The heart bleeds.

Watching a bunch of highschool and college dropouts learn the rules of supply and demand.

Priceless.

Bombing Israel Into A Palestinian Solution

Former NDP Ontario premier Bob Rae (another former Paul Desmarias employee) is the chair of the Canadian taxpayer funded Institute for Research on Public Policy. According to Kevin Libin at the Shotgun, the institute's publication Inroads features an editorial offering a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's a dandy.

In the absence of a bilateral solution, and after a short deadline, an international force should invade, force compliance with the commission's determinations, and leave troops behind to maintain compliance and ensure the security of both sides.

The imagination blooms with the possibilities....

AP - "Today Gerhardt Schroeder approved the deployment of German combat troops to join an international force policing Israeli territory ..."

Go read the rest of Kevin's comments.

Alan Blakeney Would Approve

News to warm the hearts of my socialist friends who wax nostalgic for the good ol'days of the nationalization of the potash industry and the Saskatchewan Land Bank.... (an idea that would have worked if they'd only gone the whole measure...).

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - In its latest crackdown on democratic freedoms, the government announced today that all farmland will be nationalized and private land ownership abolished.

All land, including more than 5,000 former white-owned farms handed over to blacks, will become state-owned and subject to state-issued leases, Land Reform Minister John Nkomo said.

Title deeds of farm properties will be scrapped and replaced by 99-year leases with rent payable to government the state Herald newspaper reported. "There shall be no such thing as private land," Nkomo said.

Since the farm seizures began in 2000, about 200,000 black families have been allocated former white-owned land. About a quarter were given larger properties for commercial rather than small scale farming. Hundreds of black farmers also bought commercial farms on the property market that will now be nationalized.

hat tip - Bob Tarantino, for the Shotgun

"We Win And They Lose"

Pejman Yousefzadeh on the millionth Bloomingdale's customer.

Farenheit Heating Up

Predictably, Ebert and Roper gave "two thumbs up" on Michael Moore's Farenheit 911.

[Is it just me, or is there something very creepy lately about Roger Ebert's face? There's a Men In Black thing happening under there....]

Well, Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 has a different opinion.

"Michael Moore is a screwed asshole, that is what I think about that case."

Asked about the Palme d'Or;

So what? I have won prizes in different places and they are mostly meaningless. The people there hate us, which is why they gave him the d'Or. It's a meaningless prize.

hat tip - Flea

Everything Old Is New Again

As legislation expands here and across North America to ban smoking of tobacco products in public places, the anti-smoking crusaders (whose bandwagon I jumped off a couple of years ago) are claiming victory.

More recently, Nanny State has been treating us (at taxpayer expense) to brown eyed toddlers telling us how they "smoke a cigarette" on the way to school, on the way to grandma's house. - through the noxious fumes they inhale in mommy's car. I suspect the family sedan is next.

While the progressive forces of leftist "we know what's good for you and if you don't believe us, it's jail for you!" clan marches forward with their zero tolerance agenda, their brothers-in-arms are busy campaigning - and succeeding - for the decriminilazation and normalization of marijuana Which, last I checked, one rolls into cigarettes and inhales into their lungs.

Despite any scientific evidence to support their claims, (Pfizer should have it so good), marijuana is now being grown and sanctioned for medicinal purposes, courtesy of Health Canada.

And everything old is new again.

A Bright Light On Past Pundits

Steven Taylor has an amusing collection of past punditry about Reagan from the 80's this morning.

Voiceless

On days like yesterday and today, I really have come to appreciate my blog.

I have larengitis. I cannot speak at all above a whisper, and I avoid it, because it makes me cough. The dogs are sort of weirded out over it all - nobody has yelled at them in over 48 hours. Luckily, I've had only a couple of phone calls to deal with and some quiet work here at home. But if my posting frequency increases, that's why. It's the only communication I'm capable of at the moment.

Kurt Leavins' Extremely Difficult Radio Quiz Show

650 CKOM's news director is a decidedly left-leaning Bush critic. Leavins has an afternoon show in which he interviews different newsmakers and shares his opinions. Those opinions are typically hinged upon Michael Moore-ish cherry picking of fact, and bolstered by ignorance of historical chronology and context.

But it would be unfair to leave an impression that Mr. Leavins is all gloom and "tsk tsk" anti-Americanism. He is on throughout the day doing general announcer duty, and much of it is lighter fare. This morning featured a prize on offer for the caller with the right answer to the following timely question: "How many beer can fit in the bowl of the Stanley Cup"

As each person called in and guessed incorrectly, he hung up to allow the next one to try. This is a paraphrase of how the contest progressed. Read carefully.

Leavins: How many beer fit inside the Stanley Cup?
Caller: 43!
Leavens: Nope. Too high, next caller..
Caller: 40.
Leavens: Too high.
Caller: 25?
Leavens: Still too high. Caller, how may beer?
Caller: 20.
Leavens: Still too high...
Caller: 10?
Leavins: Oh, that's close! But too low.
Caller: 12?
Leavens: Oh ! ... too high!
Caller: 11!!!!!
Leavens: Too low!
Caller: eh... 13?
Leavens: Too high! Oh, everyone is so close!
Caller: 11 1/2?
Leavens: No, too low! It's between 13 and 15!
Caller: 14.
Leavins: right!

So, now, I think I have little better insight about how he comes up with op-eds like this one.

The New Iraq

Via Jeff Jarvis this commentary from an Iraqi blogger;

The beginning for the new Iraq has started and the people of Iraq finally got a government they should be proud of. I was so happy this morning watching the new Iraqi government and the names of those ministers and of course the new president. There was one moment during the whole ceremony that equated to the moment when they announced the capture of Saddam and that is when they announced the new president of Iraq, to me that was a dream comes true. I believe most of us young Iraqis when we hear the phrase president of Iraq, we think of Saddam and only Saddam. Well, history was made today Saddam and his clans have no chance of getting the power or any position in the new Iraq. Iraq is changing and I believe it is changing toward a free and democratic Iraq. I spoke with my family in Baghdad twice today and they are so excited about the new government, my brother was telling me that we all are praying for these guys and Inshallaha god will be with them. I think this is a new era for us and for the Middle East as a whole. Listening to all the names that were announced today, you can not, but think that this new government is the most educated individuals among all the governments in the Middle East. Most of them have a doctorate in their fields of expertise not to mention a lot of them have lived and gained there experience in the west. With the help of the US and the rest of the world, I believe these guys will definitely get Iraq out of this mess.

Don't sit up late tonight watching for this on Canadian network TV.

Political Animals React To Lincoln's Death

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Comments

I'm not going to participate in the whitewash. Laurak Posted by: laurak on April 16, 1865 at 3:16 PM | PERMALINK The idolatry exhibited on even the supposedly objective rags should put paid to the idea of a "liberal" media. It won't, but it should. Posted by: Linkmeister on April 16, 1865, at 3:19 PM | PERMALINK Are they seriously trying to complain that there was praise and admiration, but not quite enough praise and admiration? I'd say the grief was making them irrational, but they make idiotic arguments like that on regular days too. Posted by: Gordon on April 16, 1865, at 3:24 PM | PERMALINK lincoln was controversial and did things good and bad we still feel today. republicans need to lighten up and accept the sum of this important man especially now in his passing. geez, who's the whiny party now? Posted by: travy on April 16, 1865, at 3:29 PM | PERMALINK Nobody has mentioned the irony of Mr. Lincoln's getting shot with a revolver. During his presidency, Mr. Lincoln sent many men to their graves with the bullets of war. Posted by: W, The Great Prevaricator on June 6, 2004 at 3:36 PM | PERMALINK Let's take the high road and insist that Dred Scott not be mentioned when Buchanan dies :) Think we can hold them to it? Posted by: dude on April 16, 1865, at 3:43 PM | PERMALINK And in the words of Moms Mabley (about her husband): "They say you should only speak good of the dead. "He's dead. "Good." Posted by: hexatron on April 16, 1865, at 4:23 PM | PERMALINK Now is not the time to remain silent, not while the wingnuts rewrite history. Now is the time to set the record straight. Abraham Lincoln as America's Sun King Posted by: Alice Marshall on April 16, 1865 at 4:43 PM | PERMALINK I've had about enough of Aby worshipping for one weekend. I doubt chimpy will get much of a boost from this, and not a lasting one either. As bad as lincoln was, he looks like a towering genius next to johnson. Why is it that chimpy is always either smirking or looking constipated? Or is it chronic gas? Posted by: fourlegsgood on April 16, 1865 at 4:48 PM | PERMALINK I just hope there are no political statements in any eulogies. Those who were so outraged by the Taylor funeral surely wouldn't be hypocritical enough to condone such behavior. Posted by: KCinDC on JApril 16, 1865, at 3:52 PM | PERMALINK I, too, remember why I looked down my elitist nose at Lincoln: he was a useful idiot. Posted by: Hedley Lamarr on April 16, 1865 at 6:18 PM | PERMALINK Ding-dong the witch is dead, the wicked with, the wicked witch. Maybe now the evil spell will be lifted which fell across America ... Posted by: The Fool on June 6, 2004 at 7:13 PM | PERMALINK

Trading Seats?

Secret plot by the Tories and Liberals to rig key ridings in 2000 election?

Just when it seemed federal politics couldn't get any sleazier, Sun Media has learned that a group of powerful Tory and Liberal backroom operatives secretly conspired to bolster the Grit national campaign and skew the results in a number of ridings in the last federal election. Two weeks before Jean Chretien called the country to the polls in October 2000, reliable sources say, a small group of top Tory officials cut a secret deal to help Chretien's ultimately successful national campaign for a third majority government.

In return, the Liberals agreed to throw the vote in the Calgary Centre riding of then Tory leader Joe Clark.

In what may have been a series of similar deals, sources say the Tories also agreed to "stand down" to help Liberal Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan hang on to her Edmonton seat, which she won by only 733 votes.

...

Clark had entered the campaign with abysmal polling numbers pointing to an almost certain defeat.
Instead, the former Tory leader won by 4,304 votes after a bizarre campaign in which a group called "Liberals for Clark" suddenly popped up from nowhere to back him.

It might help explain that "devil we know" endorsement of Martin by Clark a few weeks ago.

hat tip - An American in TO

Bittersweet

Watching the ceremonies today on Juno Beach, I wonder how many of us were uncomfortable with the juxtaposition of commemorations being led by Liberal politicians whose policies have been responsible for the evisceration of the Canadian military over the past 30 years.

Nicholas Packwood says it best."Bring back this Canada."

Bagpipes played their eerie sound as the Royal Highland Regiment left the harbour in England. They played the pipes on the transports as they rocked up the shore. They bagpipes howled as the Black Watch hit Juno Beach. The bagpipes gave a simple message to the Germans defending Juno beach: we are crazy, we are coming, and you are going to die.

Mr. Martin - I hope you and your Liberal government members and your social engineering, leftist career beaurocrats looked long and hard into the faces of those elderly veterans today.

For every one of them is twice the man of the lot of you combined.

Milestone

Looking at my sitemeter and current traffic levels, there's a good chance SDA will see the 50,000 visit sometime today.

Due, in no small part to "Flames Girls".

I suppose this means I should mark the event by flashing a little skin of my own.

On the other hand, I do want people to come back.

El Sadr Is Finished. So Is The Story.

The Command Post covers this NYT story, that will remain virtually unreported in Canada.

Shiite leaders and American officials said the armed followers of Mr. Sadr, known as the Mahdi Army, had cleared out of many parts of Najaf, and seemed to be getting ready to leave altogether. The Shiite leaders said American forces, who encircled the city in recent weeks, had also cleared out of the city center and areas near the Imam Ali Shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam.

[. . .]

"The people of Najaf are walking the streets, the cars are moving on every avenue and the Iraqi police have moved back in," said Adnan Ali, a senior official with the Dawa Party, whose leaders took part in the negotiations. "This is a good step forward."

Iraq's new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, declared in an interview that the fighting was over. "The armed presence in Najaf and Kufa has ended," he told Associated Press Television News.

[. . .]

A coalition official said American forces had pulled out of the center of town but were running joint patrols with Iraqi forces within the city.

A senior Iraqi official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, suggested that Mr. Sadr had grown demoralized in the face of political isolation and relentless military pressure. American commanders claim to have killed hundreds of Mr. Sadr's fighters in the past weeks.

"There is every indication that the man is in a deplorable state of affairs," said the senior Iraqi official. "He feels very weak. The Mahdi Army has suffered big losses."

Not news for anyone who has been following reports on the fighting on the blogosphere. But it will never be news for Canadians who depend upon the mainstream media here. The El Sadr story has always been reported as being - at best - a "stalemate" between the American troops and his militia. Now that they are all but anhilated, there will be no further comment at all.

One can't leave the impression that American troops are capable or successful.

"Freedom Is The Victor"

"In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind--too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Rest In Peace, Mr. Reagan. And thankyou.

Outside The Beltway has a roundup of photos and links.

Dean Esmay;
"I hated him when he was President.
Now I'm a 38 year-old man who can't stop crying.
And that's the truth."

Kathy Shaidle remembers when she stopped hating him, too. "It's too late to say I'm sorry, but not to say that he was right about a lot of things and I was wrong."

Wretchard, at the Belmont Club;
"The man who won Cold War died today. He couldn't take it with him, but left his legacy to billions of human beings. He was characterized as an idiot, an automaton and charlatan by many of his critics. Yet none of his detractors, however polished and poised, have changed the world so profoundly as this one man."

The European Folly

I've lifted this in its entirety from the New Zealand blog, Silent Running.

Rumors circulating in London talk of an impending major operation. Britain, which has been transformed into an armed camp, has been eerily quiet, due in large part to the wide spread cancellation of leaves and passes for practically all military personnel. Speculation about an imminent assault on 'Fortress Europe' abound, often mentioning 'the butcher of Sicily', Gen George S. Patton. There are numerous unconfirmed reports however, of rubber airplanes and tanks in the areas believed to be garrisoning Patton's men. These men, mere boys for the most part, would be going up against well prepared defenses, referred to by the German High Command as "The Atlantic Wall". The available information on the preparations in the area of Calais appear to indicate that any such attempt would certainly be tantamount to suicide under the best circumstances, but with a phantom army? Some critics question if the proper equipment for the job is really on hand. Does SHAEF really have a plan? SHAEF spokespeople refuse to make a comment on the record, and are unusually tight-lipped on background, as well. They do claim, however, that their plan is more than to simply to send thousands of young men to certain death in a Hail Mary attempt to get through the insurmounable German defensive works. Critics wonder if the Americans aren't being driven to do something against their better judgement, even that of the notoriously extreme British Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, who has to date exhibited absolutely no remorse concerning the massive casualties sustained so far. Prime Minister Churchill and the British High Command have reportedly argued against an invasion of Northern Europe directly for months - preferring the 'soft underbelly of Europe' via Italy. Soft underbelly, indeed! So far it has been a colossall quagmire mired in the Italian mud - a miscalculation bordering on incompetence which has already cost tens of thousands of Allied casualties in a bitter slog up the Italian boot. And that was against a dispirited mix of Italians and Germans. Casualty rates are sure to be astronomical if we go head to head with the German's best, led by their most capable leader - Irwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, who is rumored to be in command of the nightmare tangle of concrete and steel that anyone foolish enough to attempt a direct landing anywhere from Bordeaux to Jutland would have to overcome. However, the Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, ostensibly with the backing of American Chief of Staff Marshall, and US President Roosevelt, have telegraphed for months that such an ill considered assault on the shores of the Continent is their goal. Who will be first to wake from this madness and implement a saner policy, one which puts the lives of our boys first?

Part of a continuing series of media blasts from the WWII past.

Big Day For Underdogs

Go, Flames !
	Go, Smarty !

update. blah. bad day for underdogs.

Requesting Toby Keith

Just about every time I drive into the US, I hear Toby Keith's post 9/11 song "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue". And I quite like it.

I don't imagine the song has ever been played here in the frozen north, [disclaimer - I don't listen to country] - outside perhaps a furrowed-brow analysis of Canadian moral superiority over warmongering America cultural differences between our country and the US, on CBC Radio.

Hey Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list,
And the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist.
And the eagle will fly,
And there's gonna be Hell,
When you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell!
It's gonna feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you...
Brought to you courtesy of the Red, White and Blue!

Which got me to thinking. On occassion, local CBC radio has a phone-in song request show.

Heh.

Peaktalk

British Columbia blog, "Peaktalk", is back.

Juno Beach

Canadians moving inland, says first news dispatch from beach head
By Ross Munro

WITH CANADIAN FORCES LANDING IN FRANCE, June 6, 1944 (CP Cable) - In two hours and 45 minutes of fighting on the beaches here, the Canadian invasion force won its beach-head and shoved on inland.

At 10:45 this morning the Canadian commander (Gen. Keller) sent this message to Gen. Crerar, G.O.C. 1st Canadian Army: "Beach head taken. Well on way to intermediate objective."

The strip of coast won by the Canadians in this initial assault was quite narrow, but it gave them the beaches and provided a base for further penetration.

There was some stiff street fighting in the little coast towns and the Canadians also met considerable enemy fire on the beaches and as they worked their way into the defences. They had to overcome numerous steel and wooden obstacles which were placed out on the tidal part of the beach and which were covered at high tide to trap landing craft. However, the assault went in at 7:15 a.m. just as the tide began to rise and many of these obstacles were cleared away by engineers before the water covered them, thus enabling followup craft to beach and unload.

Some casualties were suffered in the assault by the Canadians from enemy machine-guns, mortars and artillery fire.

By 10:00 a.m. the Canadians were about 1,000 yards inland and going strong, meeting only small pockets of Germans. The first prisoners were taken and identified as belonging to a coastal unit.
On other parts of the front near us the operation is moving along. Canadian and British airborne troops did a good job when they dropped and came in by gliders at 3:30 this morning. They captured several bridges and held them.

Cruisers provided very effective support to the Canadians and one cruiser knocked out a troublesome battery about a mile and a half from the coast with six direct hits.

Enemy tanks are reported about 10 to 15 miles south of the beach-head and some enemy transport is also moving.

Up to noon the German air force has not shown up. It is estimated to have 2,350 aircraft in western Europe but it looks as if the air attack will come tonight.

The French coast is still wreathed in smoke driving far down the Channel. In some of the bombarded towns, fires are burning ....

So far the operation seems to have gone as well as could be expected. Destroyers and gunboats are cruising up and down the coastline banging away at last coastal points of resistance on our beach. Now the rest of the assault troops are going in. I am going ashore with them.

The rest is here.

(Ross Munro, war correspondent for The Canadian Press, died in Toronto in 1990 at the age of 76. Why can't our war reporting of today be as clear and unobstructed by bias as this?)

Hat tip - Rick Hiebert

Burning Diesel, Greening Grass

I recieved this from dad a farmer who wishes to remain anonymous. It's an interesting theory.

As a result of fifty years of farming in Saskatchewan I have come to the conclusion, as a result of observation and deduction, that the production of crops in the prairie provinces and particularly, Saskatchewan, absolutely depends on the emission of carbon dioxide gas from burning fossil fuels.

Every year about October the farmers of Saskatchewan put away their combines and tractors except for a few chore tractors and either go curling or to Texas or Arizona. There is no green grass growing in November or December. Nor, in January, February or March.

In April,as it is tax time and the curling is over,the farmers return to their farms, get out their tractors and begin to prepare the land and sow the crops.

In May, the tractors really start to roll and the crops, grass and trees start to green up at a phenomenal rate as a direct result of the plentiful emissions of CO2 produced by preparing the land and sowing the crops. The CO2  from the sprayers and haying machines adds to the total and the country is soon lush and green.

In July the seeding and haying machines are put away. As a result, CO2 levels begin to drop. By the end of August the crops start to turn brown, (some more dependent on CO2 earlier), and the farmers, in an effort to salvage the browning crops and replenish the CO2, get out their combines and go to work. But, it is too little to late and by the end of September - early October the crops are salvaged, but the country slowly turns brown again. So the farmers put away their tractors and combines, head to Arizona for a few months and the cycle repeats itself.

As the opponents of CO2 emissions would say,"anyone who questions these conclusions are bordering imbeciles, entirely unobservant or both.

Bush - Kerry

A story I picked up while in Fargo - and realized it's not been mentioned elsewhere. The latest polls out in Minnesota (May 31), show Bush in a statistical dead heat with John Kerry in that state.

Minnesota hasn't voted Republican in 30 years.

"Extremist" Abortion Views

The media and pundits are leaning hot and hard on Harper in the past 24 hours, now that there seems to be more than a "good scare" looming for the preferred Liberals. The word "extremist" is getting thrown around, and breathless discussion of abortion law is swirling.

We should be working hard to point out what is happening. Fiamma Nirenstein, former Communist, human rights activist and Italian journalist;

"when you call a person a right-winger, this is the first step toward his or her delegitimization."

The abortion debate is a classic example of the unresistable force of one person's right to choose coming against the immovable object of the other person's right to exist. There will never be an acceptable common ground for those on either side of the debate, so compromise is not possible.

Law has to choose one side or the other. In Canada, abortion is legal. But legality does not render a position "moderate". There is no halfway position between life and death. Those who oppose abortion, and want to change abortion law through democratic channels are no less moderate or legitimate than those who want to retain the status quo. Yet, this is how they are characterized in the press and by the pro-choice advocates.

So, while I'm personally pro-choice, I cringe when I hear the pro-life position being described as "right wing" or "extremist".

Jailing or stoning homosexuals is extremist. Executing people for having extra marital affairs is extremist. Flogging women because they do not cover their hair is extremist.

Being opposed to the taking of life for reasons of convenience is not extremist, nor is it right-wing. It is simply an opposing view, on an issue that has no middle ground.

When we hear the "extremist" meme in our media and from our politicians, we should be aware of what they are doing - it is an attempt to delegitimize that opposing view, so that they do not have to address the issue on its merits, or face the possibility that it is a majority viewpoint that may just prevail if subjected to the democratic process.

Baath Broadcasting Corporation

Via Instapundit this article in the Statesman about the suppression of stories by the BBC;

Just before the war against Iraq I began to receive strange calls from BBC journalists. Would I like information on how the leadership of the anti-war movement had been taken over by the Socialist Workers Party? Maybe, I replied. It was depressing that a totalitarian party was in the saddle, but that's where the SWP always tries to get. Why get excited?

Oh there are lots of reasons, said the BBC hacks. The anti-war movement wasn't a simple repetition of the old story of the politically naive being led by the nose by sly operators. The far left was becoming the far right. It had gone as close to supporting Ba'athist fascism as it dared and had formed a working alliance with the Muslim Association of Britain, which, along with the usual misogyny and homophobia of such organisations, also believed that Muslims who decided that there was no God deserved to die for the crime of free thought. In a few weeks hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, would allow themselves to be organised by the opponents of democracy and modernity and would march through the streets of London without a flicker of self-doubt. Wasn't this a story?

It's a great story, I cried. But why don't you broadcast it?

We can't, said the bitter hacks. Our editors won't let us.

The rest is here.

The Wonkette Interview

The Commissar interviews the blogosphere's one trick pony, Wonkette.

Mad Saskatoon Ban

In May, a food ingredient company in the UK, J.O.Sims joined with German supplier Dinter Trading, to begin promoting a variety of premium berry and fruit products. One of them was the saskatoon - the small berry that grows on shrubs here, for which the city of Saskatoon (25 miles down the road from here) is named.

Food Navigator- In February this year J.O. Sims launched a new Canadian produced berry - the Saskatoon - onto the market marking a fresh revenue source for the 100-year-old UK company.

With an almond-cherry taste profile, and a member of the apple family, saskatoon berries are available in the UK for the first time after 10 years on Canadian supermarket shelves.

"This is a big opportunity for the food industry, particularly those working in bakery and beverages, and those looking for novel ingredients," Jim McKee at the fruits ingredients company said to FoodNavigator.com.

The firm claims the almond-cherry flavour of the fruit gives manufacturers the advantage of providing a nutty flavour without having nuts in the factory.

A symbol of prairie culture and history, saskatoons are truly unique in flavour - the almond-cherry description is fairly accurate. They're canned, baked into pies and crisps, turned into preserves. They were important food source for native Indians for thousands of years, as well as early settlers and farm families. Today, domestic varieties have been developed (larger but less flavourful than the wild berry) and there are a number of commercial orchards in the province. The Saskatoon Berry Barn here is a popular local and tourist attraction, and specializes in dishes based on the berry.

Then, Prairie Lane Ltd. decided to ask for a permit to export the berries from Canada to the UK. The saskatoon berry went before the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes in May.

CBC- Following through on a threat, Britain is pulling products made with saskatoon berries off store shelves, and other European countries could follow.

Saskatoon berries Britain's Food Standards Agency says there's not enough evidence the wild berry is safe to eat.

And odd that the J.O. Sims use of the berry didn't spawn an investigation. Nor have they noticed the berries are now grown in Europe and are available in plant nurseries. Apparently, in the EU hysteria about genetically modified foods in Europe, the mere fact that the saskatoon is considered a "novel" food (anything not seen in Europe prior to 1997) has triggered the ban.

Bizarre.

Gagliano Dogs The Liberals

Former public works minister under Chretien, and former ambassador to "get him the hell out of here" Denmark Alfonso Gagliano has been implicated in another scandal alleging undocumented contract awards. This time it's the Canadian Space Agency with missing millions.

Last week, Gagliano did something most people wouldn't have expected - he filed a lawsuit for $4.5 million against Prime Minister Paul Martin and the Gov't of Canada, for damage to his reputation.

Hmmmmm.... I wonder what he's up to. Here's a scenerio to consider - imagine a crowded courtroom, Galiano on the stand, testifying to a "chain of Liberal command" in the Adscam affair.
Blowing it all wide open, and on his terms.

I suspect that might just send some scurrying to find ways to keep that from happening. An out of court settlement? I'm no lawyer, but something tells me that prosecuting a former minister on criminal charges would be very difficult if he already had a civil settlement in hand.

"It would be irresponsible to spend taxpayers dollars on a lengthy and unproductive trial."

And what better way to get even with Paul Martin, than to have that settlement in hand, or alternately, to bring a network of prominent Liberals down with him. Either way, the Martin Liberals lose. And if the gamble pays off, Gagliano might just walk away, giving Chretien his get out-of-Adscam-free card.

And revenge.

Canada's Most Trusted Corporation

The Royal Bank of Canada, the largest financial institution in the country, is currently experiencing a temporary downtime of its nationwide computer system. A simple glitch that occured during a program update, they said. "All fixed by tomorrow!".

That was 3 days ago.

So, I'm thinking I'll be rushing in the door of my bank in a few days and screaming, "Betty! What happened to that $10K deposit I made Wednesday????"

Linkfest

Pretty busy with work today. Plus, I mowed my lawn - again! Last year I mowed the lawn twice over the entire duration of the summer, due to the drought.

So a roundup of good links, from a variety of sources....

Bill Cosby and the Blogosphere - a good overview of how the media shuffled its feet and looked about nervously with hands in pockets, in response to Bill Cosby's pointed remarks at an NAACP gala, and how the blogosphere has helped to keep it alive.

In response to a NYT op-ed Dr. Joyner deconstructs, yet again, the myth that there were no ties to terrorism in Saddam's Iraq, and for a bonus, points out that the Saudis are slowly coming around to realize that they are in the white hot cross hairs of Al Qaeda.

New Jersey's Division on Civil Rights privdes compelling evidence that Einstein's theory of Stupidity was correct.

And if you only have time for one of these links, make it this one: America's "Irresponsible" President Is the "Chief Culprit of this War"

Throwing Water On Michael Moore

Roger Simon has a particularly good time with everyone's favorite schlockumentarist.

Ray Bradbury's original Fahrenheit 451, as we all know, was about book-burning. Maybe Moore's Fahrenheit 911 is actually about pants-burning, as in "Liar, Liar, pants on fire!"

As is widely known, but virtually unreported, the Moore accusation that Bush family ties were to blame for the permission given for a planeful of Saudis to leave the US right after the attacks in September of 2001, has been rebutted by none other than former terrorism "czar" Richard Clarke.

Yes, the same Clarke that testified before the 911 commission, where he blamed the FBI. Clarke gave the approval for the flight's departure and has confirmed that he was the highest ranking official involved.

Don't expect this fact to have much effect on the drooling hordes who will form lines to suck up Moore's mental pablum.

Politicians, Promises and Punishment

Andrew Coyne is back, but his blog doesn't seem to work that well in Opera and even worse in Mozilla. But he had something to say today about the backtracking of Liberals on promise making, and the non-consequences of promise breaking.

Mr. McGuinty responded by suggesting he was not banking on Mr. Martin's $9- billion health care plan -- the centrepiece in his platform -- as it was just "a campaign promise." Mr. Martin raised the ante, insisting that a politician should only promise what he can do, and "whatever you say you're going to do, do." Stung, Mr. McGuinty chose this week to announce that he would bring in a bill setting fixed election dates, so that "never again will a premier have the ability to set election dates when it is politically opportune for the government." Wait a minute: are you saying that Mr. Martin... ?

All hugely entertaining, as I say -- almost as good as the debate between Jean Lapierre and Jean Lapierre. But not so much fun for Mr. Martin. Things had deteriorated to such a point that by week's end the Prime Minister was forced to issue a new promise: that he would keep his promises. If he had not kept at least three of them within two years, he told reporters, he would resign. This raises all sorts of interesting epistemological questions. What does he do if he doesn't keep that promise? Kill himself?

Mr. Coyne goes on to ask " How do we hold politicians to their promises?", and tosses around ideas for a "Truth In Politics" law.

Unfortunately, that would require politicians pass such a law. Absent a coup by Preston Manning, that's unlikely in the extreme. But there is recall - which has the additional selling point of being flexible enough to remedy the incompetent and/or dishonest.

Or, failing that...

Support Our Troops

I was in North Dakota for Memorial Day weekend. The first thing that struck me upon pulling into the first good sized town (Jamestown) was the high percentage of vehicles sporting this "ribbon".

I thought of picking one up for my own truck, to make a statement about my support for the war in Iraq. Then I caught myself - after all, there are Canadians in Afghanistan.

Where are our ribbons?

Laci Peterson???

Hundreds of women are murdered every year in the USA by their spouses. A significant percentage of those will be pregnant.

So, please, someone explain to me - why does the Scott Peterson trial merit any attention whatsoever outside of the Modesto, CA area? What can possibly be in the minds of the editors and news directors who choose this schlock to feed us day in and day out, at the expense of real news items?

You'll notice, I have provided no link to any of the reports on the trial. It does not deserve one.

Media On Every Corner

I listened to Rush Limbaugh on the drive home Monday, and he received an lengthy call from a US soldier back in the states after nearly a year in Iraq. He had put about 200 prisoners in Abu Graihb, and recounted some of the crimes that they had committed. He confirmed that the vast majority of Iraq is at peace and reconstruction efforts are going well.

There's a brief transcript of part of the call up on his site. I don't have audio capabilities, but I suspect at least part of the call is available for download there.

"You could sit here and you say you support the soldiers, but if you're sitting here and saying you don't support the president, you don't support the administration, then I got news for you: you're not supporting us."

The caller echoed concerns about the media both in Iraq and at home - there are reporters on "every corner", which interferes with the ability of the military to conduct operations without interference or second guessing. And despite surviving two roadside bombs, scores of missions and firefights in Baghdad, the first time he was truly "scared" was upon returning home to discover that the Iraq being reported was totally unlike the one he served in - and was afraid that the mission there would be lost in the media.

Eve Of Destruction

On last night's stop-over at my parents' farm, I picked up Howard Blum's book on the Yom Kippur war, "The Eve Of Destruction" and read most of it on the last 5 hour leg of the trip. Just about finished, and it's a compelling read.

(Yes, I read while I drive. It's Saskatchewan.)

Wet, Cold, And Stupid

Just got home from a long weekend in Fargo, ND. I wish someone had told me the city was auditioning for the role of "Venice On The Red"

It started raining shortly after I arrived Friday night, and was still raining when I crossed the border back into Saskatchewan yesterday. I should have taken pictures, especially of the outdoor rings at the dog show. After two days, they were mud pits. So much so, that there were people showing in bare feet (shoes kept getting sucked off in the mud) and there was a hose available for people to wash the worst of the mud off before they came back into the arena (where, luckily, our little fluffy dogs were shown).

So, for Monday, the outdoor rings moved to the parking lot, and true to form, out they went in the pouring rain and wind to collect 12 cent ribbons, everyone soaked to the skin - 75 year old judges, included. I got sick just watching it. Seriously. I think I have consumption.

For this, we paid $20 per dog, per day. I think there may be a whole new field of psychoanalysis in there, somewhere.