small dead animals

A Friendly Reminder For Stephane Dion

In all your garble about "alternative" energy technology coming to Saskatchewan on the gentle green wings of Liberal faeries, it appears you've fallen victim to an embarrassing oversight.

So if you would, Mr. Dion - copy this down and post it to your caucus Energy Star fridge door;

1. Saskatchewan floats upon lakes of oil.
2. The beaches of those lakes are comprised of endless glistening dunes of coal.
3. Wafting over the scene are massive cumulous clouds of natural gas.
4. We have a population density of well under 2 persons per square km.

You see, Saskatchewan doesn't need no stinking giant fans. We don't need no stinking giant mirrors. We don't need no stinking puny hybrids. (We don't need no stinking nuclear power, for that matter, though we're positively glowing with that, too.)

In short, Saskatchewan is not in danger of "running out" of conventional energy. Not many Liberals seem to know this. I believe they may have us mistaken for Ontario.

We have enough conventional energy in Saskatchewan to power every electrical grid, fill every SUV, and idle in every drive through in the province until long after the remainder of the world has ground to a halt. (In fact, we should probably make drive-through's mandatory just to burn off the stuff that bubbles up from the ground on its own.)

So you won't be taking our money to build over-priced, underperforming "alternative energy" crap we don't need. You can use your money to build over-priced, underperforming crap we don't need.

I hope this has helped clarify matters.

Thank you.

One more thing - if we're the ones doing all the polluting...

...then how come Toronto has all of the smog?

Posted by Kate at 5:47 PM | Comments (74)

Breaking: JTF 2 doesn't answer to the CBC!

Brian Stewart and CBC News decided to question the accountability of JTF 2 the other night on The National. So I decided to look into what was really knotting their knickers:

Stewart and Mansbridge ask a lot of questions, but don't provide many good answers. But that certainly doesn't stop them from making insinuations and giving inaccurate impressions to their viewers.

For starters, look at Mansbridge's introduction to the segment:

Canadians are told their soldiers are rebuilding Afghanistan, fighting to defend the lives of the Afghan people. But elite Canadian soldiers are also carrying out secret military raids, raids which have resulted in the deaths of Afghan civilians. The United Nations is demanding answers. But the Canadian military is neither talking nor offering any accountability...

There's so much spin packed into so few words, it's going to take some effort to unpack it. Stay with me, here...

I'd like to think the whole thing is worth reading, since I'm the one who wrote it. But if you're interested in what happens when clueless, self-important journalists bump up against real OPSEC issues affecting the lives of those serving overseas and the success of a mission, this is a great example of the petulance that ensues.

P.S. Given what Labatt is doing for the CF this Canada Day, I'd encourage you to go buy some Blue for Canada Day tomorrow.

Heads Up For Sask Bikers

Just a quick service announcement for the handful of motorcyclists who didn't already know how bad the road is;

The Saskatchewan government is warning motorcyclists heading down to a big annual rally in South Dakota to avoid a potentially hazardous stretch of highway.

Each year, the Sturgis, S.D. motorcycle rally — the largest of its kind in the world — attracts thousands of visitors from Saskatchewan and other parts of Canada. Sturgis is about 863 kilometres south of Regina.

Many of the Canadian visitors have traditionally taken Highway 35, which runs due south from Weyburn.

However, this year the province is telling riders to take a different route.

The problem is a two-kilometre section of highway near the Saskatchewan-North Dakota border, which is being rebuilt.

Actually, I've always thought Highways should install "motorcycle caution" signs at major intersections leading to highways with degraded pavement, gravel stretches, or significant construction as a matter of policy.

Tony Blair's Britain

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch, and today from the Ministry of Naughty Holes;

Officers collected information from businesses, obtained samples of fish and chips, measured salt content and ‘carried out experiments to determine how the problem of excessive salt being dispensed could be overcome by design’.

They decided that the five-hole pots would reduce the amount of salt being used by more than 60 per cent yet give a ‘visually acceptable sprinkling’ that would satisfy the customer.

The council commissioned Drywite Ltd – a catering equipment company based in the West Midlands – to make five-hole shakers and bought 1,000 of them at a cost of £2,000, giving them away to fast-food outlets in their areas.

Drywite confirms that it has since received orders for the shakers from at least five other councils, including Rochdale Borough in Greater Manchester.

Mobilizing The Base

Is there nothing that Obama can't do?

Shaft Math

A reader who prefers anonymity writes;

I have attached a brief math exercise of what I think may be the impact of the green shift tax. While I fully expect people to dispute the numbers that I used, i.e. the mark up percentages, I think that the basic logic is sound to support my calculations. I do not know what the real impact of the carbon tax will be but I do know that $15 billion of tax will pull a lot more money out of the economy than the initial $15 Billion, it seems that no one has analyzed this tax from a business model perspective.

"FF_Canuck" examines the gas tax angle;

As you know, Dion's new Green $haft includes a direct tax on diesel, but not gasoline. This is obviously going to have a disparate effect on Saskatchewan and Alberta, where we use more diesel in proportion to total fuel consumption, but I wanted some hard numbers, so I went to the Natural Resources Canada website here: (See Table 2.2)

Turns out that Alberta and Saskatchewan are responsible for 20.7% of total automotive fuel consumption, and 27.7% of national diesel consumption. OTOH, Ontario and Quebec are responsible for 58.1% of total automative fuel consumption, but only 55.5% of national diesel consumption.

So, thanks to Dion's cynical exemption of gasoline, we pay tax on 133% of our total fuel consumption, while Ontario and Quebec pay for 95% of theirs.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Bunny Berigan, Fats Waller, and Tommy Dorsey performing Honeysuckle Rose (1937, 3:19, audio).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Tony Blair's Britain

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and another silly little blowup between Muslims and Islamophobes;

POLICE sniffer dogs trained to spot terrorists at railway stations may no longer come into contact with Muslim passengers – after complaints that it is against the suspects’ religion.

A report for the Transport Department has raised the prospect that the animals should only touch passengers’ luggage because it is considered “more acceptable”.

In the Muslim faith, dogs are deemed to be spiritually “unclean”. But banning them from touching passengers would severely restrict their ability to do their job.

The report follows trials of station security measures in the wake of the 2005 London suicide bomb attacks. In one trial, some female Muslims said the use of a body scanner was also unacceptable because it was tantamount to being forced to strip.

British Transport Police last night insisted it would still use sniffer dogs – which are trained to detect explosives – with any passengers regardless of faith, but handlers would remain aware of “cultural sensitivities”.

"It will give you sunny day every day. No."

h/t to Glenn.

Every Time the Riders Score a TD, a Polar Bear Dies

There's nothing like polluting the atmosphere after a Rider TD ...

I predict that Rider TD's will account for as much as 20% of Saskatchewan's greenhouse gas emissions this year. And hopefully most of that will be against Eastern Division teams.

Put THAT in your Green Shift plan, Stephane!

Riders 34-13 over the Esks, June 28th/2008

h/t Stan

In Other News, Henry Morgentaler To Receive Order Of Canada

Friendly tips from the Alberta Human Rights Commission help desk;

Ask the church to get a signed consent form from everyone, parents and children, everyone, stating that they are not forced to attend and are there of their own free will. Later he added that this consent should be drawn up by a lawyer who is familiar with the Human Rights Laws.

The church needs to contact the police to make sure they do not view the program as bordering on criminal activity—need to show them the curriculum so they know what is going on and do not arrive on the scene.

Y2Kyoto: The Monster Begins To Consume Itself

I hope they find snail darters*;

The US government is putting a hold on new solar energy projects on public land for two years so it can study the environmental impact of sun-driven plants.

The Bureau of Land Management says the moratorium on solar proposals is needed to determine how a new generation of large-scale projects could affect plants and wildlife on the land it manages.

By that time, the earth will be largely cleansed of them, most by starvation, some by suicide. The plowshare-armed stragglers, we can just shoot.

Frankly, My Dear

Uncle Tom And Little Eva

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is Vladimir Horowitz (ולדימיר הורוביץ, Володимир Горовиць) performing the first movement of Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto #3 in D minor, op. 30, with the New York Philharmonic orchestra, Zubin Mehta conducting (~1989, 17:31). Interestingly, perhaps, Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto #3 in D minor was the work Mr. Horowitz performed at his graduation from the Kiev Conservatory, in 1919.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

This is interesting. The overwhelming majority of the comments pursuant to this CBC article on the CHRC decision in respect of the Maclean's complaint are strongly in favour of the decision as rendered. For those who have not yet had the opportunity to peruse the full decision, the four-page PDF is available; I think it's quite good.

This is more good news. It may very well be that pace all the details and the bureaucratic shysters, the significant majority of Canadians, and the highest levels of our leadership, do understand the danger of state control of speech. Coupled with the SCC decision on defamation jurisprudence, 9/0 unanimous, it occurs to me that we may be starting to see a chill put on the chill on freedom of speech.

Of course, as John Stuart Mill said, "The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the cause of half their errors". So I don't think we should do that. I'm just wondering. And, I've been wrong before.

Calling The SDA Nation

A poll that needs your vote to go horribly right.

(I like "Hansen should be fired by NASA for overstepping his bounds", but your milage may vary.)

"Bad news for censors, everywhere."

Today's decision by the Supreme Court of Canada about defamation law has shifted the balance from plaintiffs to defendants -- in other words, towards greater free speech. The court calls it a modernization, which it is -- phenomena like talk radio shows, partisan TV panels and the Internet were not around when defamation law was developing (it actually goes back 400 years). It also brings us more in synch with the U.S. approach to free speech, and breaks away from the European model of soft censorship.

Not Waiting For The Asteroid

"Holy s**t! That's basically half of the newsroom/second floor! How in the hell are they going to continue daily operations?"

Y2Kyoto: Every Time I Start My Truck A Polar Bear Dies

(June 26/08 near Delisle)

You should see what happens when I get stuck in a drive-through.

Another here and here.

Quote Of The Week

"Ralph's* going to get mauled like a puppy in a bear cage." - John Gormley

He actually said that.

And that the Liberal Green Shift was necessary to submit to demands of US Congress and an incoming President Obama for "clean" oil.

He actually said that, too.

If the Harper Conservatives don't use those quotes to hang a sign around the neck of the Liberals reading 'Made in Washington' Energy Policy, their political braintrust should be hauled out to Kandahar and thrown to the jihadis.

(You can pick up today's show On Demand.)

Update: John Murney has more on Dion's sputtering, and don't miss Goodale Watch.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, in our continuing Friday night crime detective old time radio feature, here is Brian Donlevey in the role of Steve Mitchell in the International Blackmail episode of the Dangerous Assignment radio show (1950, 29:35).

By the way, have you ever seen a 500 kilo-volt air-break switch arc? (MPEG, 1.5MB, 10s)

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Am.Can.Ch. Benalta Batman ROM

I needed the day off, anyway.

June 27, 1995 - June 27, 2008

It was a long trip to the vet this morning.

Leading Keith Olbermann Into The Light

Is there nothing that Obama can't do?

On an almost nightly basis, Olbermann mocks Congressional Democrats as being weak and complicit for failing to stand up to Bush lawbreaking; now that Obama does it, it's proof that Obama won't "cower." Grave warning on Olbermann's show that telecom amnesty and FISA revisions were hallmarks of Bush Fascism instantaneously transformed into a celebration that Obama, by supporting the same things, was leading a courageous, centrist crusade in defense of our Constitution.

We're Back

My apologies for the site outage and comments malfunction today - Hosting Matters tried to move us to a cleaner server, as a result of one of the long wait times we've been experiencing... and it didn't go well. I've posted a couple of successful test comments, so things appear to back to their usual MT bugginess.

As you were.

The Kangaroo Blinks

Press release;

Maclean's magazine is pleased that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed the complaint brought against it by the Canadian Islamic Congress. The decision is in keeping with our long-standing position that the article in question, "The Future Belongs to Islam," an excerpt from Mark Steyn's best-selling book America Alone, was a worthy piece of commentary on important geopolitical issues, entirely within the bounds of normal journalistic practice.

Though gratified by the decision, Maclean's continues to assert that no human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation's media. And we continue to have grave concerns about a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same complainants, subjecting it to costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the inconvenience. We enthusiastically support those parliamentarians who are calling for legislative review of the commissions with regard to speech issues.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Men at Work performing Who Can It Be Now?, live in Dortmund (1983, 4:33).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Update: Revnant Dream notes, in the comments, that Claude Castonguay, father of the Canadian socialized single-payer and single-provider health care system, has now disowned it, calling for a mixed system including multiple private payers and providers.

A Man Finger His Pulse Of A Nation

Dion details the Liberal Green Shaft;

"I'm confident we will have significant reductions. I'm not telling you specific numbers because you would not trust me,"

For the record, we were notified by the Liberal Party the evening before they launched their campaign. They presented it to us in a fashion that implied that we should be happy by all of the extra traffic that we would receive as a result. We immediately notified them that we would take action to protect the name and the integrity that we have associated with it, and that we were not interested in receiving misdirected traffic. We began by politely asking. After receiving calls from the media, we contacted the Liberal party to ask again that they please stop using a name that we have clearly associated with our environmental program, to prevent confusion. Only after they refused to stop, did we decide to send a legal notice. We never did call the media – we simply received a flood of calls, thanked all of the concerned businesses/individuals/institutions etc., and gave honest answers to any media that reached us with questions.

I Remember The Good Old Days

When our* best talent moved to the US....

Anybody who believes the current Supreme Court looks like America needs to take a few more trips on a Greyhound bus. All the judges are white and/or old; most are both.

h/t Brutally Honest

Seven Year American Recession Watch Remains On High Alert

SubPar! Better, but still subpar!

A Tale Of Two Courts

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday;

... that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

Nine people complained that Pankiw made discriminatory comments about aboriginals in the pamphlet and the Canadian Human Rights Commission referred the matter to the tribunal.

The tribunal ruled it had the right to hear the case and the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal both dismissed Pankiw's appeals.

The Speaker of the House of Commons sided with Pankiw's argument that disagreements over political matters should be settled through the ballot box, not a rights tribunal.

Bill Whittle On Charles Adler

One of my favourite essayist bloggers will be a guest on the Charles Adler show today, scheduled for about 12:30 Saskatchewan time. (You can listen live at the link.) If you're unfamiliar with Bill's work, head over to Eject! Eject! Eject! for a taste of his writing.

There's no pretentiousness about Bill's prose, no self-indulgent vocabulary revving. He simply walks the reader down a path, pointing things out in the language of the average man, as he delivers solid whacks upside the head employing a giant paddle some might call "common sense".

To be Politically Correct these days, you must accept the collectivist belief that words are like weapons, endowed with their own internal, innate power, and this power, like that of a chambered bullet, cannot be trusted to be used responsibly and so must be outlawed and banished from the community.

PC advocates have strict rules for what they call Hate Speech, and using such speech essentially makes you a criminal.

So much for the First Amendment. But the Bill of Rights never meant much to these people; indeed, they see it as an impediment to human progress.

Implicit in this belief is that I have the power to harm you by my use of language. Notice that all the responsibility falls on the speaker; the listener, the subject, is completely powerless, and has achieved the highest status with the group: victim. Note also that this worshipping of the victim, is in essence, the elevation of the most powerless and the least responsible to divine status. It is a very basic sleight of hand, that allows the controlling elites to maintain that they are only trying to help the poor and downtrodden, when in reality their actions are clearly nothing more than a naked grab for power that would shame the most ruthless corporate CEO.

Who decides what is hate speech? The group decides. If one person in the group seriously finds something offensive, then that term or phrase or entire concept is added to the list or proscribed terms, and this is how we get to office memo's being critical of the term "brainstorming" as being offensive to epileptic co-workers.

If we buy into this idea of Political Correctness, we do several things, all ruinous: we give other people the power to demean us, we remove any chance at reasoned debate on any issue, and most importantly, in a group of 300 million professionally offended people, we come to a vocabulary of perhaps twenty or thirty words that have been so bleached of potential offensiveness and meaning that language itself becomes worthless.

[...]

How much better, how much stronger and healthier are we, when we dare anyone to use whatever terms they choose, and rather than sitting as powerless victims, rise in angry and righteous indignation to fight the human filth that use words like nigger, spick, gook, mick, kike, dago, and all the rest? How much more secure, how much more inoculated, are we when we can hear these words knowing that those who use them are discredited and terrified infants so out of ideas and argument that they must resort to such childish tactics to reassure themselves? What words can hurt us when we refuse to be hurt by words? What simple and powerful wisdom is bound up in Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me?

(h/t to reader Martin B. whose suggestion was noted in the comments. SDA gets results!)

Joke's On You

Whiskey For My Men, Rotella-T For My Horses

Is there nothing that Obama can't do?

"... each and every year, we become more, not less, addicted to oil — a 19th-century fossil fuel.”

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Lionel Hampton and his orchestra performing A Small Jam Session (2:31).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

In The Jason Cherniak Style!

Canadians Against Suicide Bombing. And don't miss the theme song!

Presumed Hateful Until Proven Guilty

Edward Michael George;

Each of the authors rejects the authority of government to censor speech. Each condemns the Human Rights Commissions as illegitimate--as, essentially, kangaroo courts ... But each, also, accepts that the accused in the given cases (i.e. Mark Steyn and Stephen Boissoin) have said something "hateful".

Now, don't get me wrong: this would be just fine ... except that none of these columnists--as per journalistic convention--spends so much as a sentence demonstrating what, exactly, makes the opinions in question hateful! They are united in their easy posturing to the effect that assholes should be allowed to spout nonsense, but they do not so much as dare to doubt that Steyn and Boissoin are assholes and that theirs is nonsense.

What should concern us is not the political toadying at work here, but the trend of journalistic incompetence.

Oh, wait....

I, For One, Welcome This New Can Of Worms

"It's time for a new batch of letters - this time asking the MPs how much they would appreciate having their communications monitored by an HRC bureaucrat with an unknown and undisclosed political bias. How comfortable would they feel, knowing that it's not just the potentially hateful comments of their constituents they need to worry about, but the potential that their responses will be monitored - and potentially - available to their opposing members."

Tell Us How You Really Feel

Because there's precious little evidence of "think".

Maz2 notes the "Deluge of Propaganda", via National Newswatch headlines this morning;

"Canadians want TV debate on Liberals' carbon tax, poll finds"
"Can `green shift' alter Quebec climate?"
"Dion's carbon tax the fairest option for Canada"
"Canada deserves green debate"
OK, Alberta oil producers, start thinking carbon taxes"
"Dion's green anti-poverty plan"
"Canada can lead on greener path"
"The Green Shift is good for Canada"
"Green Dion: refreshing but flawed"
"Timely warning on climate change"
"Liberals stand fast on shift to green"

The blue square represents the atmosphere. The red/black line represents the total percentage (about 380 ppm) of C02 in the atmosphere. The black portion represents C02 said to result from human activities* (clarification - meaning, burning of fossil fuels).

The yellow square represents the total anthropogenic C02 produced each year by Canadians.

I hope this helps.

(updated - the first version had lines that were much too bold. This version is still about twice as thick as it should be, but you get the drift. thanks, Ural).

Y2Kyoto: The Dungeon Masters

If James Hansen is beginning to sound like he's coming unhinged...

James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer. Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the “perfect storm” of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable

(Graphic by Joe D'Aleo.)

And where, oh where have we heard this before? "He urged today’s youth to speak out against politicians complicit in climate change, even suggesting they look for a legal way to throw our current political leaders in jail for ignoring science – drawing rounds of cheering and applause. Suzuki said that politicians, who never see beyond the next election, are committing a criminal act by ignoring science." Yeah, that's where.

More, including audio, here

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Roy Orbison & Bob Dylan, and their and his colleagues, performing Oh, Pretty Woman (5:55).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Update: apparently my original attribution was incorrect,
the correct details are being worked out in the comments.

Nota Bene: reader Cosmos asks in the comments whether Reader Tips comments should be considered restricted to the SDA LNR show. The short answer is: no, just the opposite. The LNR show is just a seed Reader Tip.

According to Thomas North, below, tonight's SDA LNR Show is from A Black and White Night, 1988, with Roy Orbison, Bruce Springsteen, T-Bone Burnett, James Burton, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, Steven Soles, k.d. lang, Jennifer Warnes, and Bonnie Raitt. Sorry for any confusion my misatribution may have caused.

What Would We Do Without Experts?

Today's lead story in News of the Blatantly Obvious;

In the mobility category, consumption patterns were notably pronounced, with the footprint of top earners measuring almost nine times the size of the lowest-income households. The report said richer households relied more on private cars, vans, trucks and passenger air travel.

"At the low end of the income scale, motor vehicles are either not needed, not affordable or used sparingly," the report said. "At the high end of the income spectrum, there are not only more motor vehicles per capita, but also more expensive vehicles that require a larger footprint to produce, maintain and operate."

In terms of housing, the report noted richer households tend to have a higher footprint because they purchase larger, detached homes that consume substantial amounts of energy for heating, cooling and lighting.

h/t to John L, (in the comments) and Charles Adler who apparently did not hear me screaming "You mean, like Al Gore?" into the truck radio.

Featured Comment

See, when you put it this way...

Muslim woman are not shake hand with men.There are so many people have the same culture and they do not shake hand such as Buddhism Chinese only show respect by shake head or Hindu Indian only put hand together and put head down the similar mentality and culture. If you do not shake hand it keep you more healthy not to touch hand who may has germs, culturally is not correct to continue wrong idea of only show respect by touch other person hand, why men should touch woman's hand still hand is part of woman body is not permitted and not morally right to continue wrong west culture to touch hand or even men in West kiss face of woman in French culture mostly, Muslim does not like shake hand with woman as west do not like so many Muslim culture if you think about it is not correct or not necessary to shake hand this is my simple answer. Period. That is reason woman in Islam do not shake hand with men.

Calling All Cameras!

Robert Jago is offering a reward!

NDP leader Jack Layton will be taking part in this year’s St. Jean Baptiste Day parade in Montreal. If you’ve never been to the parade, you might not know that it is dotted with hundreds of terrorist flags - pictured above. These flags are of an anti-semitic party that advocates political violence. You can’t go 20 metres at that parade without seeing that flag.

If you are at the parade - you MUST get a picture of Layton with that flag. It’s almost impossible not to. Now is the time for all good Tories (Greens? Liberals?) to come to the aid of the party, and get that picture.

The Open Mind

Broadcast in New York City on WPIX, Channel 11
Sunday, December 7, 1975, 10:30 - 11:00 P.M.
Moderator/Host Richard D. Heffner
Guest: Milton Friedman, economist

FRIEDMAN: Let me give you a very simple example. Take the minimum wage law. Its well-meaning sponsors -- there are always in these cases two groups of sponsors. There are the well-meaning sponsors and there are the special interests who are using the well-meaning sponsors as front men. You almost always when you have bad programs have an unholy coalition of the do-gooders on the one hand and the special interests on the other. The minimum wage law is as clear a case as you could want. The special interests are, of course, the trade unions, the monopolistic craft trade unions in particular. The do-gooders believe that by passing a law saying that nobody shall get less than $2 an hour or $2.50 an hour, or whatever the minimum wage is, you are helping poor people who need the money. You are doing nothing of the kind. What you are doing is to assure that people whose skills are not sufficient to justify that kind of a wage will be unemployed.

Via Carpe Diem

A Susan Delacourt Blog Post

Goes horribly wrong.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is Sviatoslav Richter performing Johannes Brahms's Intermezzo in E minor, Op. 116, No. 5 (3:37).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Wikipedia says...

On March 19, 1934, Richter gave his first recital, at the Engineer Club of Odessa; but he did not formally start studying piano until three years later, when he decided to seek Heinrich Neuhaus, a famous pianist and piano teacher, at the Moscow Conservatory. During Richter's audition for Neuhaus, Neuhaus apparently whispered to a fellow student "this man's a genius". Although Neuhaus taught many great pianists, including Emil Gilels and Radu Lupu, it is said that he considered Richter to be "the genius pupil, for whom he had been waiting all his life", while acknowledging that he taught Richter almost "nothing".

Early in his career, Richter also tried his hand at composing, and it even appears that he played some of his compositions during his audition for Neuhaus. He gave up composition shortly after moving to Moscow. Years later, Richter explained this decision as follows: "Perhaps the best way I can put it is that I see no point in adding to all the bad music in the world".

Artur Rubinstein described his first exposure to Richter as follows: "It really wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Then at some point I noticed my eyes growing moist: tears began rolling down my cheeks".

On his preference for small venues for his performances, Sviatoslav said: "Put a small piano in a truck and drive out on country roads; take time to discover new scenery; stop in a pretty place where there is a good church; unload the piano and tell the residents; give a concert; offer flowers to the people who have been so kind as to attend; leave again."

Ass-Kicking Liberal Strategist And Self-Proclaimed Internet Guru A Victim Of A Hoax?

Why, that's hard to believe!

This is a man who opens penis enlargement spam and wonders "how did they find out?"

Update:
Falling for a cell phone hoax and tying it to a McGuinty? -Worth the price of admission
Trying to wipe it from your blog as though it never happened? - Worthless
Driving home the point with self-generated irony? Priceless

Remaking The Presidency In His Own Image

Is there nothing that Obama can't do?

h/t

Do You Tink It's IZzy To Make A Green Shift?

I continue to endorse Stephane Dion's carbony green tax grab plan.

Boy am I ever glad I’m not Stephane Dion today. [...]

“Just one moment please” said the polite woman who answered the phone, in response to my inquiry. Seconds later, another person picked up the phone. I repeated that I was inquiring about ‘the green shift’ and was asked “Are you calling about us or about the federal Liberal campaign?” I could tell this person was not happy.

[...]

The answer came just as I finished stating the purpose of my call. There was no relationship, and the person I was speaking with, while very polite, was absolutely furious that this has happened. It was suggested to me that Green Shift has lost both new business and existing clients since Thursday who have been frightened off at the perception of a relationship between them and the federal Liberal Party. You can’t blame businesses for not wanting to do business with anyone affiliated with a political party, but unfortunately, this is not the case with Green Shift are they are being unfairly punished as a result of the Liberal Party’s actions.

I was told that Green Shift has worked extremely hard for 10 years to become one of the most successful vendors of green services and products only to be faced with the reality that all this work may be wiped out in a matter of days. I was told that Green Shift did a brief interview with CTV late last week but tried to keep it low key as they had not yet decided upon what the official response be. It seems today that along with a press release, a Cease and Desist notice will be issued..

More on LIberal shiftiness from Stephen Taylor...

The Sound Of Settled Science

IPCC policies state:

"All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process and will be retained in an open archive in a location determined by the IPCC Secretariat on completion of the Report for a period of at least five years."

Despite this, IPCC Review Editor John Mitchell of the UK Met Office claimed to have destroyed all their working documents and correspondence pertaining to his duties as Review Editor and the Met Office also claims to have expunged all records.

That'll Teach Him For Backing Bob Rae

I hereby endorse Stephane Dion's carbony green tax grab plan.

Because it's about damned time that Ralph Goodale found himself a real job.

Update: "Doom for Canada, Doom for the planet"

Another One Bites The Dust

"Just keep telling yourself: some day all the hippies will be dead." *

Not Waiting For The Asteroid

"Newspaper advertising revenue growth slowed in Q1 2008 by the largest amount since the Newspaper Association of America began measuring ad results back in 1971."

I wonder if the liberal editorial community even paused to consider what consequences might await before they embarked on the negativity campaign against the US economy in their efforts to damage Bush? Did they really think they could pull that off without slitting their own advertising throats?

The answers are "no" and "yes", of course.

"Arm In Arm" With Bush, On iraq

Is there nothing that Obama can't do?

An intriguing article by Richard Fernandez;

Barack Obama’s position on Iraq has shifted significantly over the last six years. What is interesting is how his position on Iraq matches up with developments in Chicago. Specifically, there appears to be a direct correlation between the rising and falling prospects of his longtime friend and fundraiser Tony Rezko’s attempts to secure multi-million-dollar contracts to build and operate a power plant in Kurdish Iraq and the senator’s Iraq flip-flops.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Pete Fountain and the boys performing Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? (1992, 8:52).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Montana Pics

As you've likely noticed, I arrived home last night. The trip was an overall success - in addition to Lucy's win reported a couple of days ago, my male puppy Minuteman Dead Cat Bounce was Best of Breed from the classes for a 5 pt major on the final day, while his cousin (Kampfer's Tainted Sunshine) was winners and opposite over specials, for 5 pts of her own. Which means I won everything that day (and was overwhelmed by the well-wishers, as one might imagine!)

I took a few photos on the trip to Montana, these two I thought worth sharing:

This Pronghorn stood and watched for a while before charging across the highway. Then he stopped and watched, again.

This one is for our resident meterologists. Taken from the RV parking area at Billings, MT on June 18th.

Large versions are here (antelope) and here (clouds).

Thanks for your patience with the site problems while I was away, and special thanks to our guest bloggers for keeping the place humming.

The Sound Of Settled Science

“You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling CO2”

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.

Y2Kyoto: I Don't See Anywhere In The US Constitution

"...that it gives the government the power to control the type of light bulbs used in Dime Box, Texas..."

h/t Wayne R.

Canadian Bloggers Exposed To Hatred And Contempt

National Post;

Both she and Ms. Eliadis had harsh words for the growing contingent of bloggers who lambaste the commissions, and have been invigorated by the prominence of the Maclean's complaints.

Ms. Eliadis singled out one in particular, blazingcatfur.blogspot.com, as "poisonous" for referring to her panel at the conference as a "Texas cage match."

She said it was evidence of the "appalling tone" that is "illustrative of how badly this debate has gone."

Frankly, My Dear

Loose In A Caboose

Screw you Dion

The words are flying. In juxtaposition to the sycophantic, pant-staining ejaculation emanating from many of the eastern media, we have Murray Mandryk of the Regina LeaderPost.

What's most maddening is how much of a slap it is to the principle that provinces like Saskatchewan own our natural resources. Dion is now telling us, "So what if the western provinces do own the oil and gas? The federal government can simply tax the end product and transfer the bulk of any benefit to those living in our electoral base in the east."

You really have to read the whole thing. It's almost blog-worth . . . but not quite enough vitriol.

This, MR. Dion, is your plan. This is your "legacy", your "remembrance". NEP II. I'll tell you right now that we won't take this. We won't take a second edition NEP. We won't allow our Provinces wealth being Shafted to the east. We will not tolerate a federal incursion into our jurisdiction. You can lament our 2% (Canadian GHG contribution) all you want, but it will not fly. It will not pass and you will not win.

I know my neighbours. I know the people in my Province. We will not allow another Easterner to kill us at the moment of our prosperity . . . again.

Try, MR. Dion, try. As I'm writing this, what comes up on the play-list? "I have decided to leave you forever, I have decided to start fresh today." Daffodil Lament, Cranberrries, No Need to Argue

Go help John Murney, a Saskatchewan (not Federal) Liberal try and convince his blog-roll of the folly of Dipsticks plan.

Cheers,
lance

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

I wonder, could one get hauled up in front of an HRC for calling an identifiable group stupid?

Allow me to begin by stating for the record that I realize how politically incorrect it is to single out a specific group of people and acknowledge their overtly foolish behaviors. But it seems we have reached a moment of insanity, when enough really should be enough!

It seems I need to give a speech to Democrats, which I have given to my children on several similar occasions. As Forest Gump learned from his Momma, “stupid is as stupid does.” People, who persist in doing stupid things, must sooner or later be referred to as “stupid!” We have reached that point with the average Democrat voter I’m afraid…

The one thing in the world Democrat politicians might be right about is the need for their voters to be saved from themselves…

As I have explained to my children, ignorance is the absence of knowledge, but stupidity is the possession of knowledge and the refusal to use it intelligently. As we are talking about obvious fundamental truths here, not nuclear physics, an absence of knowledge is not the problem.

*****

A Little Known Fact

Few people know (or care), that in the early part of the last century, Czechoslovakia was one of the most libertarian democracies of the era ... and now, it would seem that the Czech spirit is still alive and well. While news of the Irish "No" has made all the news, EU watchers would be wise to look to the Czech Republic:

Few people in North America know much about Czech democratic traditions. I suppose it's because the Iron Curtain effectively slammed shut the Czech experiment, which, prior to WW2 made Czechoslovakia what may best be described as the world leader in libertarian democracy.

To give you an example of how truly "progressive" the Czechs were ... not to be confused with post-modern "progressives", let me share with you my family's story.

More, from a pouty BBC.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Yello (Dieter Meier & Boris Blank) performing Desire, from their Stella album (1985, 4:20, play it loud). It occurs to me that this may not be considered safe for work in some contexts (though I do think it is tasteful), viewer discretion is advised.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Tonight's Reader Tips entry has been set up as a scheduled post because I will be at a symposium at the regularly scheduled time, and may not be able to get to an Internet terminal to launch it. In some cases scheduled posts don't allow comments after they appear, so if that happens here, please be patient and I'll try to rebuild the entry as soon as I can. Thanks.

The Return on Investment of a Vasectomy

48,177% rate of return? Not bad.

Crimethink

George Jonas has been practicing crimethink against the Human Rights Commissions since their inception. He addresses the topic again:

To borrow Orwell’s language, anyone retained by Canada’s thinkpol should be a goodthinker, fluent in newspeak. He ought to bring to his task a bellyfeel about crimethinkers and the correct way of dealing with them. He should have a capacity for doublethink and recognize the importance of keeping anything malreported out of the public discourse, especially away from such prolefeed as the Internet.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, in our continuing Friday night crime detective old time radio feature, here is Ellery Queen performing Number 31 (1947, 29:28). Brought to you by Anacin, made like a doctor's prescription.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

9/11 Conspiracy Theorist Begins Post As UN Expert On Palestine

And dislikes the question asked by Hillel Neuer of UN Watch;

'63 Race Vette

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned I was painting a race 'vette. A few of you asked for photos - here's one. My portion of the work (I came in after the black base coat was completed by Lazer Auto Body of Saskatoon) was in painting the molded "bumpers" and "grill" to resemble chrome. It turned out pretty well, by all accounts.

A front and rear view.

(Just found track pics of the Scatrat, which I painted many years ago for Bob of Lazer Auto Body, as well as the Froot Loop, which I think I did in '06.)

You Guys Weren't Kidding

I heard. I just never knew.

Canadian wait times.

Coming Full Circle

In a joint news conference that just finished, Prime Minister Harper announced $86M for the proposed South Bridge in Saskatoon. Premier Brad Wall matched the federal contribution and Mayor Atch announced that Saskatoon will be responsible for $70M.

Good. Driving from west to east in Saskatoon is a horror show at the moment. Completing Circle Drive will dramatically improve that.

Special thanks to MP Carol Skelton and MP Lynne Yelich for pushing the Gov't on this initiative that will finally allow Saskatoon and area to live up to it's possibilities.

Now we just have to make sure that NEP II doesn't happen.

Cheers,
lance

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is an excerpt from Yes Minister on the matter of the (then) European Economic Community (1987, 4:35).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Court Off the Rails

There's activist judges ... then there's the US Supreme Court:

But now, even aliens get special constitutional privileges merely for being caught on a battlefield trying to kill Americans. I think I prefer Canada's system of giving preference to non-citizens who have skills and assets.

First They Came for Bush

... then they came for Barry:

Oil Now at All Time Historical and Inflationary Adjusted High

Now paying the most we ever have for a gallon/litre of gas.

Excellent chartage and ht to WTRG Economics.

When you tinker with Risk and Return

Was going to write a book.

But then no traditional publishers would take it.

Then I realized, it would just feel good to expose all these scum bag banker types for what they are, and opted to write it anyway.

Slated for publication in 2-3 weeks, but here's an sample if you want a little sneak peak or just a good story on the shenanigans going on in banking at the time.

Revenue Reverse

When it comes to equal opportunity slagging regarding financial matters, Andrew Coyne is as non-partisan as it gets.

Coyne says:

Altogether, these actual, honest-to-goodness tax cuts sum to about $9-billion, the bulk of it focused on the bottom tax brackets, where it will do the least good — in terms of raising productivity, I mean. The rest of what the Liberals call “tax cuts” are mostly for tax credits, ie spending programs by another name: $465 million for an “Improved Working Income Tax Benefit,” $397-million for an “Improved Employment Credit and Refundable Disability Credit,” and fully $2.9-billion for an entirely new Universal Child Benefit, on top of all the existing child benefits.

It’s not remotely “revenue neutral,” in other words. The Liberals have used the carbon tax to fund their spending ambitions. The productivity agenda has once again been ignored.

As anyone with a brain had already concluded, it isn't about carbon, it's about Canadians paying for a Liberal election platform.

Cheers,
lance

Fat City

Regina, fat city. Fifty percent are overweight with 23% listed as obese.

Diller says obviously inactivity contributes to weight gain as well. So a mix of healthy eating and activity is essential to being fit.. which is hard in today's world of fast food chains, and hectic lifestyles.

Except it doesn't seem all that hard for the other half of the population.

When 50% of your sample is going against the environmental conditions for which you lay blame then maybe . . . just maybe, the environmental conditions aren't to blame.

Cheers,
lance

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are the Toots Thielemans Quartet performing C Jam Blues (5:37).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

The People Responsible For Your Childrens' Education

Toronto Sun;

The mother of an autistic girl says the public school board was "completely unprofessional" to formulate a theory that her daughter was being sexually abused based on a psychic's perception.

[...]

Leduc said they advised her that Victoria's educational assistant (EA) had visited a psychic, who said a youngster whose name started with "V" was being sexually abused by a man between 23 and 26 years old. Leduc was also handed a list of recent behaviours exhibited by her daughter.

The Planet Has A Fever

Along with a bad case of Nobel Gases;

In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

[...]

In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

From Beautiful Downtown Billings

It's been a productive trip so far. Second day in and my Can.Ch.Minuteman I Love Lucy scored a major, which brings her to within 3 points of her American Championship title.

I've tried to check on things when I can, but as you know, the site has been experiencing some outages, and it's affected my access as much as yours. Thanks for your patience. I don't receive any notifications from my hosting company, so I don't know why - but DOS attack is a possibility.

Oh well - this too shall pass.

Wish us luck, please don't engage the trolls, and thanks again to the guest bloggers who have been keeping the place together as best they can.

Master of everywhere they hide and cower

So to the idiots at the Globe & Mail: show me where exactly Canadian and Afghan troops can't go in Arghandab. Because the Taliban can't be said to control a damned thing otherwise...

...except maybe a Toronto newsroom.

Update: From comments at The Torch, by someone who's served in Kandahar:

I'd like to hear the source for the reports of 'hundreds of Taliban' in the area. I'd bet it's an Afghan source.

A good rule of thumb that I learned there: When an Afghan tells you a number of Taliban, dividing by 10 will be closer to the truth.

The Real Izzy Money

First, they fleeced us for billions with a gun registry that didn't save a single life ... and now they plan on fleecing us again with a new registry. Their plan may do wonders for the rare Canadian fruitfly, but it certianly won't save anything else:

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Today, I, Stephane Dion, am proud to unveil the Liberal plan to fight global warming and save Gaia.

To combat this scourge which kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world every year, I, Stephane Dion, and the Liberal party, today propose the creation of a National Climate Registry.

As we all know, people don't kill people, climates kill people.

And in a civilized country like Canada, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to be walking around our streets armed with an AK-47 Category 5 Hurricane or a Semi-Automatic Tsunami in their back pocket.

Canada is About to Become More Capitalist Than the US

It's true!

Came up with some surprising research and thought my friendly northern neighbors might like to know.

Lord of the Flies

If you give them the keys too soon ...

A while back I explored the notion that Islam and democracy are not compatible; that humanrights supporting institutions must supercede Islamic institutions if democracy is to survive where Muslims dominate. In fact, I suggested that Islam and democracy are an almost impossible fit and that as such, the Canadian mission in Afghanistan has a difficult task ...

[...]

Of all the cures commonly proposed for the many ailments afflicting the Middle East, there is one tonic nearly everyone seems to agree on: boosting moderate Islam.

[...]

But this belief is dead wrong. Not only is it impossible to agree on a working definition of the word “moderate,” but there is scant evidence that extremists really do moderate once they assume power.

... read more.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is the London Symphony Orchestra performing Sibelius' Symphony #3, Allegro Moderato, Anthony Collins conducting (1952, 9:30, audio).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

China Set to Exceed US Carbon Emissions in 2009

http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2008/06/no-seriously-will-we-blame-china.html

But will the socialists of the world turn their ire towards China or keep it on the big, bad US?

Technical Problems, Please do not adjust your set.

As most will have already noticed, there are some sever issues happening with SDA today. I don't know if it's a DOS attack, general internet issues or server issues.

Anyway, I'm sure the ISP will have emailed Kate about it, but as they won't email us, I guess we'll just have to live with it for a bit.

From what I've see, you can probably expect to time out when commenting, or timing out when loading SDA. I'd suggest copying your comment prior to posting just in case it times out. Then you can reload and repost if necessary.

Sorry for the inconvenience.
lance

Liberty Loving Conservatives? Not likely.

So the CPC tabled Bill C-61 for First Reading in Parliament. Boy, it sure looks similar to Sam Bulte's Bill from 2006.

I wrote to my MP, Carol Skelton in January, 2007. She replied and forwarded my note to Bernier. I never heard a word from that satyr. I doubt I'll hear from his replacement.

I use Linux. Due to the nature of Linux, licensing the Content Scrambling System to play DVD's is a non-starter. In order to enjoy my bought and paid for DVD's on Linux I must use the DeCSS libraries. This Bill makes my fair use illegal. Once again, a gov't is creating criminals.

I will be breaking this proposed law every time I play a DVD because, my application uses an un-licenced, independent library to unscramble the CSS used to encrypt the DVD.

I have no problem punishing thieves who distribute music in contravention of fair use. I vociferously deny that I am a criminal for playing a DVD on my free operating system.

I don't have any fear of not being able to watch my DVD's, HD's or Blue-Ray discs. The latter two have already been cracked and it won't be long before someone releases it into the wild.

What I do want to know though, is why are the "liberty loving" CPC emulating the "Gun Law" and making us regular Joe's criminals? From this end, it looks like it is because they were wined and dined by the Motion Picture Association, Recording Industry Association and their Canadian cohorts.

Go read Micheal Geist and see just what this Canadian DMCA makes illegal.

Soon after he arrives into the office on Monday morning, he is contacted by a researcher located in the field who asks him to track down an article and to email an electronic copy as soon as possible. Jim finds the article, scans and sends it via email. After work, he drops into the local HMV and purchases a DVD copy of the movie Juno. At home, he transfers a copy of the movie to his video iPod for viewing on an upcoming business trip.

If the Canadian DMCA becomes law, all of Jim's copying activities arguably violate the law.

Jim's in for a bad life if Microsoft or Disney decide to get nasty.

Given the lack of any concrete action regarding Section 13, given C-61's draconian anti-liberty statutes I will most likely be withholding, declining, or voiding my vote come the election. I'm really not interested in the CPC anymore. They have proven themselves to be nothing but the same as those they replaced.

In fact, I'd rather pay a carbon tax than abdicate any more of the liberties that I currently have.

Cheers,
lance

"You might as well believe that your image in a mirror can burn your face”

Hans Schreuder(PDF)

Based on UN IPCC dogma and according to this Australian website for children, the greenhouse effect is "caused by gases in our atmosphere (especially water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane). They trap energy from the sun's light and reflect it back to Earth, so we just keep on getting warmer."

As Alan Siddons points out: "You might as well believe that your image in a mirror can
burn your face”. It is palpably absurd, and yet it is an accurate depiction of the theory that the IPCC has foisted on the public - a theory that IPCC critics won't even attack because, presumably, they believe it too.

Moreover, the actual trapping of heat cannot raise an object's temperature in the first place. It only slows down heat loss. For instance, a polar bear is a living thermos bottle. Its internal body temperature is much the same as ours. But its surrounding fat and fur are such that - and this is remarkable - a polar bear is virtually invisible to a thermal camera.

Just like coffee in a thermos, you can't tell how hot the inside of a polar bear is by
looking at it from the outside. But neither does coffee in a thermos get hotter because its heat is trapped. It just retains its temperature for a longer time. Otherwise, both the polar bear and the thermos would self-ignite.

In short, the earth absorbs enough energy from the sun to reach a certain temperature. Since it radiates the same amount, its temperature obviously isn't raised by carbon dioxide absorbing some infrared - for CO2 simply releases that energy at the same pace, as satellites attest. But even if CO2 did trap thermal energy, as insulation does (creating an emission discrepancy that would be quite observable to satellites), the earth's temperature could go no higher than what it began with. To repeat, coffee doesn't get hotter in a thermos."

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Ace Brigode & his Fourteen Virginians performing Yes Sir, That's My Baby Now (1925, 3:06)

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

How Arabs deal with troublesome immigrants

Western countries aren't the only ones that have to confront crime in immigrant communities. It's interesting to see how an Arab country like Bahrain reacts to a brutal murder by a Bangladeshi immigrant:

Bahrain will not renew the work permits of thousands of Bangladeshis working in the Gulf state, in a ban expected to heavily impact the nation’s construction industry.
...
The government officials have repeatedly claimed Bangladeshi immigrants are behind the nation’s growing crime problems.

Bahrain MP Abdul Halim Murad had called on the government to “put a timetable for the deportation of Bangladeshi labourers from Bahrain after their repeated involvement in murders and other crimes”.

h/t

There's an Expression

You've heard it said often ...

"Things are quiet ... too quiet!"

As for the greens and leftist "oil-haters" ... it'll be interesting to see if their rhetoric remains as they freeze in the dark.

The skinny on this is that civilization just may be about to enter uncharted waters where Global Warming will be prayed for.

People often wonder what the fall of Al Gore, the IPCC, and Warm-mongering may look like ... if we'll even be able to pick out the day that it all came to a screeching hault. Perhaps, we are already seeing it in the daily news ... click.

Che Are The People We've Been Waiting For

Is there anything that Obama can't do?

Blog Notes

On the road again... but this is the last extended trip until fall. Your cadre of guest bloggers have been invited to drop by and I hope to get on from time to time, but if things get slow, it's a big wide blogosphere out there, so try out some of the links on the sidebar!

In the meanwhile, keep your comments brief, keep the links you use to a minimum, and watch your language. If you don't want to get caught up in the junk filter, that's your best strategy.

Y2Kyoto: Those Greedy Bastards!

"This can only mean one things. CAPITALISTS ARE CONTROLLING THE GLOBAL WARMING ..."

Shanghai Stock Exchange

Reader Gord Tulk points to the SSE Composite Index;

The grossly under-reported story of the year is that the Shanghai Composite is off more than 50% from the high it hit in Nov/07 ... When the US coughs, China gets pneumonia.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Reg Kehoe & His Marimba Queens performing A Study in Brown (1941, 2:34). Note the double bass player, Frank DeNunzio (he starts gettin' real interestin' 'round 1:15). There's more information on Frank and on Panoram Soundies at the second link.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Where Is The CBC's Neil MacDonald And What Have You Done With Him?

Red Alert: CBC Journalist Abducted?

Evidence contained at this page indicates that the 19-year veteran of CBC television news may have been kidnapped and his computer used to access the CBC website. Partway through the message, it appears MacDonald struggles free to send an encoded cry for help ("Different, eh?"), before being subdued.

Anyone who knows of the whereabouts of Neil MacDonald is advised to contact his captors, and request they keep him.

h/t to ron in kelowna

"Hope For The Warriors"

CPT Jason Lynn, an Apache helicopter pilot on his second tour in Iraq, is running his first marathon to help raise funds for the Hope For The Warriors organization. Check it out if you have a few bucks you don't know what to do with.

The New Politics

Is there nothing that Obama can't do?

"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,"

Frankly, My Dear

Link

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Delerium performing Heaven's Earth (Matt Darey Remix, 2000, 8:11). Please note the provisos below.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Ahem. Here in the studio we realize that some of the genres of music we appreciate are nevertheless not broadly appreciated by the SDA LNR audience, and therefore we generally avoid them. On the other hand, one of our guiding principles is breadth of scope; ergo there from time to time arise exceptional cases in said genres that are at least notable in their own right, and so at a minimum are at least potentially interesting for study. And it is Saturday night, so culture-o-normatively speaking, it's time to dance.

Tonight's house/trance crossover selection was one of the top after-hours dance nightclub classics in 2000, and I know this because I was dancin' there then. I mean, let's be honest, you don't think that there's so much danceable music at SDA LNR because we in the studio don't like dancing, do you? Yes this tune was a global success, yet the exceptional thing about this tune in particular, in relation to our context here, is its additional high score on the Canadian content metric.

Not only is Delerium out of Vancouver, but this is Sarah McLachlan's one good song! Her best lines ever are at about 5:35 to 6:00, which notably don't actually contain any, like, you know, words, because every time she tries to put words together she doesn't actually make sense. But she can squeal real good. And one final proviso, this tune is designed to be listened to at about 110 dBa with headroom (you're supposed to feel the bass, pneumothoracically), so if your hi-fi can't quite pull that off, once again, my apologies for the limitations of this medium.

Discovery

Via a reader who explains "taken from NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-124) after Space Shuttle Discovery and the ISS (International Space Station) undocked on 11 June 2008."

The full sized photos are completely worth the time to download them. Large, Medium

Another image here: Large, Medium.

Many more here.

Gutting Guantánamo

John McCain on Friday;

...described the decision by the Supreme Court to allow Guantánamo Bay prisoners to challenge their detention in US courts as “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country”.

The Republican presidential candidate said he agreed with the four dissenting justices on the nine-member court that foreign fighters held at the detention camp were not entitled to the rights of US citizens.

He criticised Barack Obama, his Democratic opponent, for supporting the decision and said it highlighted the importance of nominating conservative judges to the Supreme Court. His remarks represented a hardening of his position from his more moderate initial response to the ruling on Thursday, signalling a strategic decision by the McCain campaign to make it an election issue.

Fred Thompson gets my nod for quote of the day,

In reading the majority opinion I am struck by the utter waste that is involved here. No, not the waste of military resources and human life, although such a result is tragically obvious. I refer to the waste of all those years these justices spent in law school studying how adherence to legal precedent is the bedrock of the rule of law, when it turns out, all they really needed was a Pew poll, a subscription to the New York Times, and the latest edition of “How to Make War for Dummies.”

Y2Kyoto: America's Standing Slips In The World

The Chinese surge ahead!

China has now clearly overtaken the United States as the world's leading emitter of climate-warming gases, a new study has found. The increasing emissions from China - up 8 percent in the past year - accounted for two-thirds of the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2007, the study found.

The report, released Friday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, is an annual study. Last year, for the first time, the researchers found that China had edged ahead of the United States as the world's leading emitter.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Miss Candy Matson was a famous old-time-radio private investigator out of San Francisco. Tonight, for your delectation, here she is in her YUkon 2-8209 show performing the Cable Car Case episode (1949, 30:29).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

For those of you keeping score at home, Candy Matson is a parody of classic pulp fiction, which I do admit is a favourite of ours here in the studio. And for those of you who like this sort of thing (Abraham Lincoln said, "For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like"), for your weekend listening pleasure you may also be interested in our previous SDA LNR old-time-radio pulp fiction shows: Phillip Marlowe, Dragnet, and the Canadian Backbone episode of I Was A Communist For The FBI.

What Would We Do Without Experts?

Death by bathtub;

Vinyl shower curtains sold at major retailers across the country emit toxic chemicals that have been linked to serious health problems, according to a report released Thursday by a national environmental organization.

The curtains contained high concentrations of chemicals that are linked to liver damage as well as damage to the central nervous, respiratory and reproductive systems, said researchers for the Virginia-based Center for Health, Environment & Justice.

The organization commissioned the study about two years ago to determine what caused that "new shower curtain smell" familiar to many consumers.

"This smell can make you feel sick, give you a headache, make you feel nauseous or [cause] other health effects," said Michael Schade, a coauthor of the report.

Tim Russert Dead

Of an apparent heart attack.
(Update: link now indicates cause of death was "sudden coronary thrombosis".)

We Take These Truths To Be Self Evident

Not selectively bestowed by pandering politicians and underachieving bureaucrats.

So said Eleanor Roosevelt, a champion for universal human rights back in the day when the left still believed in the idea, believed such rights were innate, were morally superior to cruelty and ignorance and barbarism, were worth fighting and dying to preserve, protect and extend to every man, woman and child on earth. Today she is quoted by free people sneered at as racists for refusing to endorse the submission of women made evident in sexual-mutilation and child "marriage", refusing to accept apartheid law in place of common law, refusing to accept medieval sumptuary law in place of self-expression or blasphemy law for freedom of speech. Most grotesque of all, dismissed as racists by neo-Nazis and their allies and their apologists for the new crime of opposing genocidal anti-Semitism; this in living memory of the Holocaust.

Y2Kyoto: Everything Cold Is Warm Again

"[Midwest flooding, tornadoes] could be a harbinger of things to come. Some scientists have warned that global warming will create conditions that make violent tornadoes more frequent. There is greater consensus that global warming will, at the least, produce more extreme weather events, such as flooding."

No!

Ireland votes on Lisbon Treaty;

Ireland has voted No to the Lisbon Treaty, plunging the European Union into a new crisis.

With results coming in from across the country, a final result of 52 per cent against and 48 per cent in favour of the treaty was rapidly hardening. A final declaration is not expected until after 4 pm.

The Lisbon Treaty, the reworked successor to the formal constitutional pact dumped by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005, officially needs the approval of all 27 EU member states. But only in Ireland has it been put to a popular vote, meaning today's result may have far-reaching consequences for the entire bloc.

Barely two hours after the count began today, the No camp had already started celebrating, while senior Fianna Fail strategists privately and glumly conceded their defeat.

Related: the UN Human Rights Council directs Britain to abolish the monarchy.

NDP MP for the British Columbia Riding Of Vancouver Moonbat

h/t Wallyj

Why Is It?

That you never have a can of red ants when you need them?

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Tears for Fears performing Everybody Wants To Rule The World (1985, 4:48).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

"Imagine if an anti-gay bureaucrat..."

"... had ordered a gay activist to apologize to a Catholic priest, and then to write a public renunciation of his gay lifestyle in a newspaper. It's unthinkable."

Welcome To Revenue Racetrack

"On average, police are seizing 22 cars and 22 drivers licences every day. "

Blog Notes

My apologies for the slow posting of the past few days. Since Friday I've been alternating between the paint booth and the vet clinic. So far, the count is up to one race car, one race helmet, two hard hats, a goalie mask, and a dog recuperating from cancer surgery. It's been a hard, long week.

Kill Bill 17

The Watermelons - strangling economies one industry at a time;

It was 2:30 am when I finally got my ten minutes to tell the provincial NDP government of Manitoba what I thought about Bill 17 the anti-hog, anti-farming, anti- business bill. It was the second time I was at the legislature this week and I think I waited 14 hours in total for my name to be called. This is what I said…

Tony Blair's Britain

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and who turned out the lights?

Thanks to decades of neglect and wishful thinking by successive governments - and now the devastating impact of a directive from Brussels - we are about to see 17 of our major power stations forced to close, leaving us with a massive shortfall.

Even after 2010, the experts say our power stations cannot be guaranteed to provide us with a continuous supply, meaning that we face the possibility of power cuts far worse than those which recently - largely unreported - blacked out half-a-million homes.

[...]

Scaremongering? Just look at the hard facts. At the moment, to meet Britain's peak electricity demand, our power stations need to provide a minimum 56 gigawatts (GW) of capacity.

Ten gigawatts, nearly a fifth, comes from our ageing nuclear power stations, all but one of which are so old that over the next few years they will have reached the end of their useful working life.

On top of that, however, we shall also have to shut down nine more major power stations - six coal-fired, three oil-fired - forced to close by the crippling cost of complying with an EU anti-pollution law, the so- called Large Combustion Plants directive.

This will take out another 13GW of capacity, bringing the total shortfall to 22GW - a staggering 40 per cent of the 56GW we have today.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is Louis Armstrong singing Dixie Music Man (1947, 3:29). The last four seconds of this video are interesting too, in a meta-musical sense.

Shortly before his death, Satchmo said, "I think I had a beautiful life. I didn't wish for anything that I couldn't get and I got pretty near everything I wanted because I worked for it". We'll be visiting Mr. Armstrong's great works again here at SDA LNR, as we have before; he is surely an artist to be celebrated.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

It's A Small World

With a very large Canadian Forces Grievance Board.

June 12 update from Connie Fournier: - Muriel Korngold-Wexler "said that she has no connection to Richard Warman, however she has chosen to withdraw from the case."

Y2Kyoto: Every Time You Roast A Marshmallow

A polar bear dies.

According to a memo to the park board from the staff released Thursday, “The overall policy question for the Board is whether it is good policy for Seattle Parks to continue public beach fires when the carbon … emissions produced by thousands of beach fires per year contributes to global warming.”

Cartoon Of The Week

Heh.

Next, the Letter of the Week, addressed to the MacKenzie Institute from a Canadian apparently offended by the stereotyping of Muslims;

Your lifetime is over. September 11th is the beginning of you death. You have extended the mission in Afghanistan until 2011. You men will definitely return home after three years, but not alive, but in coffins. You don’t need to worry about the military wife if her husband dies because she will cry for two days, but the third day; she will marry another man. This is the life here. You have given a name to everybody such as: Dirty Arabs for us, Negro for Africans, Parki for South Asians. How about you? We give you a name from now on as SHIT because you don’t wash your ass after you shit. When you call other people by those dirty names, you remember the word SHIT, OK

SHIT

Alah is the only God in the Earth. He is the GREATEST. WE WILL DESTROY YOU VERY SOON. NOBODY HAS DEFEATED A FREEDOM STRUGGLE SO FAR IN THE WORLD HISTORY. WE WILL PREVAIL.

And finally, the Roadkill Of The Week - a private investigator reportedly sent by Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyer Giacomo "Serenity Now" Vigna has been harrassing Ezra Levant's parents;

Vigna has been sending a private investigator to my parents' house again and again, demanding to see me. My parents, who are far more polite than I am, keep telling Vigna's hired tough guy that I don't live there anymore. I did when I was a teenager. But that was in 1990.

The last time Vigna's hired muscle came to my parents' house, he refused to leave. My parents said he had a Bluetooth phone device in his ear, and seemed to be taking instructions from someone -- Vigna himself? -- who told him not to go until he had found me. In the end, Vigna's enforcer must have lost his serenity, too, because he threw some papers down at my parents feet, and stormed off.

Classy.

Fire. Them. All.

The Psychic Friends Universe

Everything I know about our planet, I lurned* from a science magazine;

"...solar physicists aren't like weather forecasters; They can't predict the future."

(*And timely, too.)

Spend!

Is there nothing that Obama can't do?

Obama oversees a team of 700 people--more than twice as many as Bush in 2004--the biggest, most bloated campaign in the history of presidential elections...

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is Gene Kelly performing Singing In The Rain (1952, 4:07).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

A few random links (from Kate)

An all-round nice guy. When he's not eating babies.

"Kukhris rule"

Free Dominion is giving 50% of their pixel fundraiser proceeds to help Rev. Stephen Boissoin in his appeal. "The prospect of living in a country where an ordained minister is forced by the government to publicly renounce his beliefs is just too frightening!"

We're getting our regularly scheduled June life-giving rains in Alberta these days. It's good for the crops, and the water table too, and it washes the magpie crap off my truck. A pretty girl under an umbrella in the rain walked by my office window earlier today. So I actually went out and danced a few happy steps in the rain, just for myself. What's not to like?

We Are All Treaty People

They were carelessly fishing on the target range;

Police have released the name of a man charged with careless use of a firearm after three men were shot at while fishing last month.

RCMP said Monday that Victor Nanatakapo, 55, from the Big River area, is charged in connection with the incident.

On May 18, a father, son and grandfather said they were fishing on Delaronde Lake, 190 kilometres north of Saskatoon, when a shot rang out, and a bullet splashed into the water near them. They said a man standing on a nearby hill yelled, "Get the hell off my lake."

Exporting Anbar

You have to go to the NY Sun to find it;

The leader of the tribal confederation that has fought to expel Al Qaeda from most of Iraq's Anbar province is offering his men to help gin up a rebellion against Osama bin Laden's organization along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In an interview, Sheik Ahmad al-Rishawi told The New York Sun that in April he prepared a 47-page study on Afghanistan and its tribes for the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Kabul, Christopher Dell. When asked if he would send military advisers to Afghanistan to assist American troops fighting there, he said: "I have no problem with this; if they ask me, I will do it."

The success of the Anbari tribal rebellion known as the awakening spurred Multinational Forces Iraq to try to emulate the model throughout Iraq, including with the predominately Shiite tribes in the south of the country. Today, the tribe-based militias formed to protect Anbaris from Al Qaeda are forming a political alliance poised to unseat the confessional Sunni parties currently in parliament in the provincial elections scheduled for the fall and the federal ones scheduled for 2009.

In an alternate journalistic universe, the bomb-a-day coverage we were subjected to two years ago would have been replaced by now with reports such as this - for they are many.

But this is Canada, where "Weather is the new News" (providing negotiations over a sports program theme song doesn't bump it down the lineup). Progress in Iraq? The defeat of Al Qaeda? That doesn't make the cut.

Just think - this week in boardrooms across the industry, media executives are meeting with media experts to hash out yet another strategy, and yet more innovations to address their falling fortunes, every last one of them invested in the unshakable belief that the internet is burying them because it's faster .

As though the only difference between shit and sunshine is the speed at which they travel.

Paging Barbara Hall

Pakistan has a helpful suggestion for the West - become more Islamic, and we'll all get along.

Pakistan will ask the European Union countries to amend laws regarding freedom of expression in order to prevent offensive incidents such as the printing of blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and the production of an anti-Islam film by a Dutch legislator, sources in the Interior Ministry told Daily Times on Saturday.

They said that a six-member high-level delegation comprising officials from the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Law would leave Islamabad on Sunday (today) for the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium and explain to the EU leadership the backlash against the blasphemous campaign in the name of freedom of expression.

They said that the delegation would also tell the EU that if such acts against Islam are not controlled, more attacks on the EU diplomatic missions abroad could not be ruled out.

I’m sure readers will spot the familiar supremacist assumptions and the consequent moral inversion. The deaths, riots and violence were, apparently, “unleashed” by infidels who drew cartoons satirising previous threats and violence by belligerent Muslims. Things of which we must not speak. Those actually doing the murdering, threatening and rioting are, it seems, “harassed”. Poor them. Thus, by the ambassador’s thinking, the fits of emotional incontinence and attempts to cow dissent become our responsibility and, conveniently, no-one else’s. And those who need to “reflect” on what has happened - and what will no doubt happen again – are infidels who are, as yet, insufficiently fearful. And, by the same logic, we must learn to pacify and accommodate people who are prideful, malevolent and insane. Or else.

BWWAAHAAAA!!!

Because I know you're itching for a thread on this - CTV Snatches Hockey Night In Canada Theme.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

So many elements, so many good excuses to tax them. That's why we're asking for SDA reader input. After all - being taxed into complete economic submission is "what Canadians want!"

(NOTE: This is a Decima-style poll, so be sure to think "Liberal friendly!")

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra performing Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concerto 3(i), Allegro Moderato, BWV 1048 (5:33, period instruments).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Consider the following statement by Professor Glenn Reynolds, also known as Instapundit: "I can think of no better reason to vote against Obama than the prospect of an administration where any criticism of the President is treated as racism". Glenn made that statement in response to an article he linked to, from which he quoted: "The Left is very invested in both preemptively delegitimizing criticism of Obama and framing opponents as de facto bigots".

This is a problem. Consider the case, for the sake of argument, that, say, Ms. Rice or Mr. Powell was the Republican nominee for President. Do you think that criticisms of the nominee from the Left would bring howls of racism from the Right? Mr. Obama's problem is not that he is of mixed so-called race, it's that he's a socialist Democrat, and our problem is that some people are going to try to use his so-called race to deny other's criticism of him being a socialist Democrat.

Pardon me for channeling Jackie Mason for a moment, but I have to say that I think that identity politics is a human sickness that has caused grossly more harm than good in the history of our species. We have to figure out how to break the bonds of fraudulent collectivism, racism, sexism, classism, &c, in the name of each of our own individual experiences, each of our own strengths and weaknesses, each of our own successes and failures, and each of our own volitional contractual arrangements, freely speaking, associating, and assembling with those like-minded, while also not denying others same (except in self defence, of course).

This does not mean that collectives would go away. It's not anarchy. The key point is that those collectives that properly accomodate human spirit, faith, and hope are volitional collectives, not mandated collectives, not by genetics, not by edict, or fiat, or diktat, not by ponzi-scheme protection-racket fear-mongering shystertairat extortion. Sure it's a tough problem. Of course, that's the whole point of at least some of the debates here at SDA. So I now happily return to your regularly scheduled Reader Tips...

Eloquence

Is there nothing that Obama can't do?

via Ace

"You are not judges, you are jokers"

The Robson Square Witch Trials, as reported in the Washington Times. Elmasrey did not return their calls. Tarek Fatah did.

"If at all there will be a anti-Muslim backlash, it will be because the Canadian Islamic Congress and Mr. Elmasry contributed significantly to it," Mr. Fatah told the Washington Times.

A practicing Muslim, Mr. Fatah accused the Canadian Islamic Congress of being agent provocateurs for Islamists by trying to provoke such a backlash.

"My feeling is - and I could be wrong - but they're trying to trigger a backlash against Muslims, so that the imams and the Hamas and the Hezbollah people back in the Middle East can say: 'Look, we told you that the West is at war with Islam,'" he said.

How Thoughtful Of Them

A newspaper located in a Liberal governed province in economic decline looks westward for ideas, licking its lips...

(screenshot)

Not Waiting For The Asteroid

"The perception that reporters are advocates rather than observers is held by 82% of Republicans, 56% of Democrats, and 69% of voters not affiliated with either major party. The skepticism about reporters cuts across income, racial, gender, and age barriers."

Michael Crichton flashback: Mediasaurus

I Predict That Hillary Will Bring To The Obama Campaign

... the same sort of enthusiasm and influence that Bill brought to hers;

Upon taking control of Congress in 2007 the Democrats found themselves running simpatico with those terminally elite nations who sniffed with disdain at American individualism while being strangled by the tentacles of their own statism. Emboldened by these openly chummy alliances, and sensing a GOP in the mood to slit its own wrists and die, the Democrats looked across the breakfast table at Hillary Clinton in her sensible clothes and felt a little disappointed. There she sat — a hard worker, smart, always willing to do what it took to win. By and large, she’d been a good helper, delivering the pretty little votes, raising the pretty big dollars, entertaining, organizing, laughing, gazing, and lying when she had to, for the good of the family.

They Do This For Crab Meat?

h/t Maggies Farm

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Spandau Ballet performing Chant #1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On) in 1981, (6:16).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

I Disapprove Of What You Say

But I will defend to the death your right to say it - and my right to publish it.

The kangaroo court judge in this case is a Tory patronage appointee, a divorce lawyer from Lethbridge named Lori Andreachuk, (pictured at left). That's her expertise: divorce law. Not constitutional law; not freedom of speech or freedom of religion. And it shows.

Last November, she convicted Boissoin. Last week she ordered her "remedy".

It is the most revolting order I have ever seen in Canada. Ever.

Y2Kyoto: The Polar Bear Swim

CBC:

Some of the world's top athletes had to seek medical attention after competing in what may have been the coldest swim in World Championship Triathlon history in downtown Vancouver. The preliminary sprint distance race kicked off early Friday morning in unseasonably cool weather when about 600 competitors — lashed by wind and rain — hit the 11-degree water for a 750-metre swim in English Bay.

Then, with the air temperature hovering around eight degrees, the athletes jumped on their bikes for a 20-kilometre ride followed by a five-kilometre run through Stanley Park wearing only light Lycra triathlon suits.

That's when things really got chilly, according to Jeff Hayne, one of the dozens of athletes shivering under a reflective Mylar blanket in the medical tent after the race.

""It was about as cold as I have done in Canada... even Fort McMurray 12 years ago wasn't this cold. To get out and get on a fast downhill is what really got you in a bad spot. [During] the run, you finally warm up a little bit," said Hayne.

Dr. Sam Gutman said it was controlled mayhem in the medical tents at the finish line where many athletes collapsed from hypothermia.

Ambulances had to be used to warm up the athletes because the warming tents were too cold. It got close to the point where it was not safe to continue the event, said Gutman.

Bring Your Cheque Book

We're dining out at Jungle Junction.

The Second Coming

Is there nothing that Obama can't do?

"I cried all night. I’m going to be crying for the next four years," he said. "What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history. ...The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance."

Frankly, My Dear

This bench reserved for Suicide Squad.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is the Jimmy Smith Trio, featuring legendary Hammond B3 jazz organist Jimmy Smith, with Quentin Warren on guitar and Donald Bailey on drums, performing Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf (1965, 4:59)

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Sure Enough, Farmers Finally Begin To Make Some Money

And there are people out there who want to wreck it for them.

Annette Desmerais is associate professor justice studies at the University of Regina, Jim Handy a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan. For the Western Producer (behind subscriber wall).

It is this neoliberal, industrial and corporate-driven model of agriculture that has been globalized over the past 30 years. This is a model that treats food like any other commodity, presents agriculture exclusively as a profit-making venture, concentrates productive resources into the hands of agro-industry and places food in commodities futures markets.

Here profit-hungry speculators, investors and hedge funds scoop up millions of dollars through frenzied bidding and betting on price changes and predictions of scarcities. Agriculture has moved away from its primary function, that of feeding humans.

Today, less than half of the world's grains are eaten by humans, Instead, grains are used primarily to feed animals, and recently these grains are now being converted into agrofuel to feed cars. This is manufactured scarcity par excellence.

[...]

National polices such as price controls, tariffs and marketing boards, designed to ensure the viability of small-scale farmers and an adequate supply of culturally appropriate and nutritious food through support for domestic agriculture, have been replaced by the voracious demands of the market.

[...]

La Via Campesina, an international farm movement representing 149 organizations from 56 countries, argues that the global food crisis demonstartes the desperate need to build a fundamentally new model of agriculture -- one based on food sovereignty.

[... They argue] that this crisis can be resolved only if governments support peasant and small-scale production, rebuild their national food economies and regulate international markets and if the international community respects and protects and fulfills human rights, especially the right to food.

"Adequate food is simple justice" reads the headline.

Well, well well, a professor of justice and a professor of history, chiding the growers, traders and distributors of food for treating food as a commodity - blaming profit hungry traders, speculators, and hedge funds for the high price of food. This drivel from professors that earn a scandalous return on investment, (with tenure, by the way), by being paid tens of thosuands of dollars with not one nickle invested, makes me respond to the tripe.

A professor of history that ignores the great famines of the past in Russia, China and elsewhere under the communists, the famines of the present in North Korea and Africa that have nothing to do with traders and speculators, but with despots willing to starve their own people.

A professor of justice ignoring the tariffs and other governmenbt restrictions on the movement of food. A professor of justice that thinks that others should be responsible for feeding him and others.

Professors that distain the feeding of feed grains and ethanol by-products to livestock, thus converting waste products into concentrated protein for human consumption. Professors that live in a city where not one in a thousand, including themselves, are self sufficient in food.

La Via Campesina wants a return to the "back to the land" movement - as happened in China when millions starved and the government controlled the availability of food.

Professors that advocate a cheap food policy for the world's poor, but support marketing boards that restrict the production of food to maintain the artificially high price for commodities (with the resulting quota bidding) better remember which side they are on.

Professors that seem to be ignorant of the need for animals for motive power and agriculture in all countries. Cattle and sheep that harvest the grass in dry and mountainous regions, thus converting it to protein for human consumption. Yaks that till the rice fields, horses, oxen, and other animals that haul farm produce to markets, cows that graze at will and supply milk and fuel in India, the list goes on.

The Canadian government isntituted a cheap food policy in the Trudeau years, and the result was the decimation of the farm population. Maybe it's time for a cheap university education policy - not with subsidies, but with the slashing of income for professors, like the cheap food policy did for farmers.

The mansions built in University Park weren't built by traders and speculators in food.

The Cathedral

First: if there is one pattern we see in the public policies the Cathedral produces, it's that they tend to be very good at creating dependency. We can observe the dependency system by imagining what would happen if Washington, DC, out to the radius of the Beltway, is suddenly teleported by aliens into a different dimension, where its residents will live out their lives in unimaginable wealth, comfort and personal fulfillment. We here on Earth, however, see the Federal City disappear in a flash of light. In its place is a crater of radioactive glass.

What would happen? Many, many checks would no longer arrive. Children would go hungry - not just in North America, but around the world. Old people would starve. Babies would die of easily preventable diseases. Hurricane victims would squat in squalor in the slums. Drug companies would sell poison, stockbrokers would sell worthless paper, Toys-R-US would sell little plastic parts designed to stick in my daughter's throat and choke her. Etc, etc, etc.

Washington has made itself necessary. Not just to Americans, but to the entire world. Why does Washington want to help the survivors of Cyclone Nargis? Because helping is what it does. It dispenses love to all. Its mission is quite simply to do good, on a planetary basis. And why does the government of Burma want to stop it? Why turn down free help, including plenty of free stuff, and possibly even some free money?

Because dependency is another name for power. The relationship between dependent and provider is the relationship between client and patron. Which is the relationship between parent and child. Which also happens to be the relationship between master and slave. There's a reason Aristotle devotes the first book of the Politics to this sort of kitchen government.

Modern Americans have enormous difficulty in grasping hierarchical social structures. We grew up steeped in "applied Christianity" pretty much the way the Hitler Youth grew up steeped in Hitler. The suggesting that slavery could ever be or have been, as Aristotle suggests, natural and healthy, is like suggesting to the Hitler Youth that it might be cool to make some Jewish friends. Their idea of Jews is straight out of Jud Süss. Our idea of slavery is straight out of Uncle Tom's Cabin. If you want an accurate perspective of the past, a propaganda novel is probably not the best place to start. (If you want an accurate perspective of American slavery, I recommend Eugene Genovese's Roll, Jordan, Roll, which is a little Marxist but only superficially so. No work like it could be written today.)

[...]

We can see the answer when we look at the fate of politicians who have attacked the Cathedral. Here are some names: Joseph McCarthy. Enoch Powell. George Wallace. Spiro Agnew. Here are some others: Ronald Reagan. Richard Nixon. Margaret Thatcher.

The first set are politicians whose break with the Cathedral was complete and unconditional. The second are politicians who attempted to compromise and coexist with it, while pulling it in directions it didn't want to go. The first were destroyed. The second appeared to succeed, for a while, but little trace of their efforts (at least in domestic politics) is visible today. Their era ends in the 1980s, and it is impossible to imagine similar figures today.

Look Everyone! It's A Book Review!

By CTV "news" staff;

The Maclean's article presents a relatively convoluted claim about a future dominated by Muslims. It jumps from arguing about the ordered achievements of colonialism on "Injun" countries to a possible apocalyptic future envisioned in such novels as P.D. James,' "The Children of Men."

Unlike Africa -- which Steyn dismissed as a "tribal" continent "riddled with AIDS" -- the Islamic world, he argued, poses a threat to the West because it is younger and more energetic. The article -- entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam" -- then quotes a European imam who allegedly said Muslims are reproducing like "mosquitoes."

And by the way - Africa is a tribal continent riddled with AIDS, and despite the best efforts of make believe journalism, scare quotes have been sadly ineffective in changing that.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Cyd Charisse and Ricardo Montalbán dancing the tango Orchids in the Moonlight from the movie On an Island with You, featuring Xavier Cugat and his orchestra (1948, 2:28).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Y2Kyoto: Wet Feet On Global Warming

Too bad, Bangladesh! The ocean's rise continues unabated - the Messiah missed the vote;

Apparently three days of debate was enough for what many senators called "the most important issue facing the planet."

With little chance of winning passage of a sweeping 500-page global warming bill, the Senate Democratic leadership is planning to yank the legislation after failing to achieve the 60-vote threshold needed to move the bill to the next stage. After a 48-36 vote on the climate change bill, the Senate is likely to move on to a separate energy debate next week.

[...]

Several senators who missed the vote, including Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), would have voted for the bill, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said on the Senate floor this morning, meaning the legislation had the support of a majority of the Senate.

The Robson Square Witch Trials

Just one more day before Steyn gets thrown in the drink.

My day is pretty much tied up with masking tape and a race Corvette, so you're advised to seek Andrew Coyne for the gory details.

Update - I'm beat. 9 straight hours in the paint booth (I may have photos in a few days. Depends on what they send me.). A couple of items to wrap this up - Beyond the Twilight Zone, the written submissions from Canadian Association of Journalists and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Civil Liberties Ass'n., plus, we hear again from Tarek Fatah in Coyne's comments thread;

Dear ‘Just Living,’

Try living a full and free life instead of hiding behind a cyber-burka and a name that tells all, viz., Just Living.

To label all people on this forum as ‘bigots,’ is not surprising as it is the only tool employed by Islamists hell-bent on upholding the jihadi doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada.

I know it is difficult, but is it possible that the only people contributing to Islamophobia in Canada are the mulla-elmasry duo?

What did these twits achieve other than to embarrass all Muslim Canadians, who appear to held hostage by the blackmail of community patriotism?

Last night one of these imams came on the Michael Coren Show to discuss polygamy and made such an ass of himself, waving the Quran at the host, mocking Christianity on a Christian TV station and then claiming there was Islamophobia in this country! When I defended my faith by explaining that polygamy was a medieval Bedouin tradition meant to take care of war widows, the Imam started reading from the Quran, screaming, “My religion allows me to marry four wives…Tarek Fatah knows nothing about Islam,” then he sneered at me with ugly facial gestures, waving hands and feminine accent, “Tarek Fatah is modern … moddderrrnnn Muslim…He is not a Muslim,” as if modernity itself was his enemy!

Dear ‘Just Living’, start living and while you are at it, if you are looking for bigots, chances are you will find them in Elmasry’s mosque or Dr. Habib’s clinic, definitely not on this Macleans forum. Sarcasm? May be. Anger? Yes and justifiably so. Islamophiobia? Not a shred of it in five days of discussion.

Dear ‘Just Living,’ the notion that the US or Canada are anti-Muslim does not withstand scrutiny. The number one selling author in both countries for over two years is a Muslim: Dr. Khalid Hossieni whose novel ‘Kite Runner’ has made so many Canucks shed tears on Go Trains and in their solitudes as they embraced the young poor boys of Kabul as their very own family. There is more.

The most sold poet in all of North America is the medieval Muslim poet Rumi. Why would Americans choose to read Maulana Rumi if they hate Muslims?

The most popular sportsman in US for decades is Muhammad Ali Clay. This mischievous boxer who titillated and entertained all of us with his sly smile and political wit. And who still stings like butterfly and floats like a bee! If Americans and the US hate Muslims, why do they love Muhammad Ali, Rumi and read the Kite Runner?

Why does CNN give Ali Velshi so much airtime prominence if it is anti-Muslim? Why, if the West hates Islam, is Farid Zakaria the editor of Newsweek magazine and why is permitted to host his own show on PBS and CNN?

Right in the heart of Vancouver where the boy-band is spewing hate against Canada and its free press, lives Senator Mobina Jaffer. Does her appointment to the senate reflect an anti-Muslim bias in the West or Canada? How doe we end up electing a young Muslim lawyer from Ottawa Centre if Canaucks are anti-Islam? And if your anger is directed at the Conservative flank of Canadian political spectrum, why them would the Reform Party, then the Alliance and later the Conservatives elect Rahim Jaffer as an MP since 1993. Or do you discount him to be a good Muslim simply because he is smart, good looking, dates a lovely MP and wears stylish suits, and heavens forbid, has sense of humour that borders impish naughtiness, a trait that would help such cry babies as Khurrum Awan and Faisal ‘Joseph’ to grow up and stop sucking on their thumbs as they utter drivel.

Dear ‘Just Living,’ please start living.

Ripley's Believe It Or Not!

"The Aspers make no secret of their support for Israel"

Sixty-Four Years Ago Today

The greatest generation took on the greatest mission of all times...

(The video is a project from an 8th grade student... There's hope for us yet)

The questions that roll around in my mind on a day like today, "Have we made them proud of us? Have we earned it?"

Turning Back The Tides

Is there nothing that Obama can't do?

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

h/t reader sjt

Salman Rushdie Is A Fortunate Man

For, instead of having published The Satanic Verses in Margaret Thatcher's England, he might have unwisely chosen Trudeaupia: 2008 for the release of his novel, and thus found himself dragged from hiding and delivered to his would-be executioners through the force of a human "rights" tribunal dictate to account for his blasphemy.

Whoops! Did I just commit stereotype?

And by every indication, this sorry waste of skin would have been skipping along at the heels of the pack, cheering the "human rights" process towards its logical conclusion[1].

So, I believe the time has come to challenge to this self-described Liberal "ass kicker". Mr. Kinsella - how many more hours must pass before you publicly add the name Mike Duffy to your growing list of neo-Nazi sympathizers?

We'll wait while you search for your balls.

Footnote:
[1] I'm stumped. What child's toy goes best with "Danny Pearl was not a documentary"?

Y2Kyoto: Death By A Million Farts

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present the cutting edge of scientific research in this, the year 2008 - fully 300 years since Sir Isaac Newton was knighted for his contributions in the fields of physics and mathematics.

Sheep flatulence inoculation developed;

Scientists in New Zealand have been working around-the-clock to reduce emissions from agriculture, such as changing the way fertilisers are used on pasture land, Mr Goff added.

Sheep, cattle, goats and deer produce large quantities of gas through belching and flatulence, as their multiple stomachs digest grass.

Ruminants are responsible for about 25 per cent of the methane produced in Britain, but in countries with a large agricultural sector, the proportion is much higher.

The 45 million sheep and 10 million cattle in New Zealand burped and farted about 90 percent of that country's methane emissions, according to government figures.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra performing You Can't Cheat a Cheater (1929, 3:00).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Let The Wailing In The Leftosphere Begin

Not guilty on all charges.

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) - A Marine intelligence officer accused of trying to cover up the killings of 24 Iraqis appeared stunned at first when a jury acquitted him of the charges.

For more than two years, 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson had been under suspicion, accused of ordering the destruction of evidence in the biggest U.S. criminal case involving Iraqi deaths to come out of the war.

"I didn't really believe it was going to end until they said not guilty," Grayson said in his first public comments following the verdict. "The case was so volatile, you didn't know which way it was going to go."

Grayson had always maintained his innocence. On Wednesday, a military jury agreed with him.

[...]

"I think it sets the tone for the overall whirlwind Haditha has been. It's been a botched investigation from the get-go," he said. "I believe in the end all of the so-called Haditha Marines who still have to face trial will be exonerated."

Prosecutors said Grayson, whose job was to analyze intelligence, ordered the photos deleted in an effort to protect the Marines.

But outside the courtroom, Grayson said the charges appear to be the result of a misunderstanding. He has always maintained he was following Marine Corps policy that prohibits the keeping of pictures on personal computers of Iraqi bodies.

Grayson fought back tears as he described the months leading up the trial.

He said he first found out he was under suspicion when he got a call from his commander months after the killings. A short time later, he was read the charges.

"It was surreal," he said. "You can't quite believe you are hearing all this."

Grayson's life was thrown into turmoil. He was barred from leaving the Marine Corps until the case was adjudicated. He had been scheduled to get out in June 2007.

Grayson said early on in the case he refused a deal that would have reduced charges and kept him out of prison.

"I was the one that had to look at myself in the mirror. To take the easy way out, you are the one that has to live with that," he said.

CHRC Program Notes

Ezra Levant will be appearing later this morning as a guest on John Gormley Live on the topic of Human Rights Commissions. You can catch the show online at the link.

And watch this space for Andrew Coyne's live reports from the Robson Square Witch Trials.

While we wait - NRO interviews Andrew Coyne about the proceedings.

Privacy Breach At Canadian Canola Growers Ass'n

People need to be fired.

It took more than two months for a federal government agency to alert 32,000 farmers, including 7,000 Manitobans, that their private information was in unknown hands after a laptop was stolen.

The news comes on the heels of an annual report released this week by Canada's privacy commissioner, which blasted the private sector for failing to protect personal information.

Although the theft happened March 30, Canadians weren't sent letters until last week informing them their social insurance numbers, bank account numbers and other data had been stored on a laptop stolen from the Canadian Canola Growers Association (CCGA).

Civilizations Die

By suicide;

Tourists were shut off from the B.C. legislature’s rotunda this week as work began to hide four historical murals behind walls.

MLAs voted in 2007 to remove the murals and display them elsewhere, because some people find the colonial depictions of aboriginal people to be offensive.

Since they are painted directly on the plaster walls of deep-set alcoves, the plan has evolved to covering them until some way can be devised to take them out without destroying them.

The four murals were commissioned in 1932 as a gift to the province from Provincial Secretary S.L. Howe. They were completed by artist George Southwell to depict Howe’s desire to illustrate the “establishment of civilization” in B.C.

• “Labour” shows the building of either Fort Langley in the 1820s or Fort Victoria in the 1840s.

• “Justice” shows colonial Chief Justice Matthew Baillie Begbie holding court in Clinton during the Cariboo gold rush in the 1860s.

• “Courage” depicts the meeting of captains Vancouver and Quadra at Nootka Sound in 1792 to turn over Vancouver Island territory from the Spanish to the British.

• “Enterprise” shows Hudson’s Bay Company official James Douglas landing at Clover Point to select the site of Fort Victoria in 1843.

THE CWB Great Grain Robbery

Questions at Agriville;

Where did all the money the CWB stole on our Basis contracts go?

There needs to be a forensic audit... and find out what is happening... has happened since October 1 / 07.

It Sure looks like have averaged over $2.50/bu OVER the MGE futures... since then (Oct 07)... that is over $90/t. The basis has been as high as $300/t above the futures... and never once has gone negative.

This means that the folks who used PPO contracts... have cross subsidised the pools... 4mmt times $90/t... over $300 million. In the end... the pool will be over $30/t higher than it should be... if proper spreads were used on the basis.

New Crop:

The Great Grain Robbery Continues!

What gives... PNW/Gulf port new crop basis levels are still over $60/t OVER the MGE futures... so why is the CWB attempting to deduct $60/t off the futures price?

Why aren't the CWB being sued for theft?

The Sound Of Settled Science

Via Anthony Watts:

Abstract: We have observed spectroscopic changes in temperature sensitive molecular lines, in the magnetic splitting of an Fe I line, and in the continuum brightness of over 1000 sunspot umbrae from 1990-2005. All three measurements show consistent trends in which the darkest parts of the sunspot umbra have become warmer (45K per year) and their magnetic field strengths have decreased (77 Gauss per year), independently of the normal 11-year sunspot cycle. A linear extrapolation of these trends suggests that few sunspots will be visible after 2015.

Much more at the link.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is Sergei Nakariakov performing Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestersuite #3 ("Air"), BWV 1068 (3:38).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Note that per Kate's advice, I've moved the daily Reader Tips entry posting to 22:00 central time, in order to reduce conflict with the Blogging Tories aggregation algorithm. Also, the SDA LNR Archives available from the first link in these entries is now up to date, in case you're lookin' for something you've heard at SDA LNR before. And finally, in my opinion, the violinist in the background at 1:40 is, um, oh dear, my opera glasses are fogging up ;-)

Since You Asked

They inhabit the planet "Reading Comprehension".

We Invite You To Form Your Own Judgement

Special thanks to Richard Evans for putting this together. The original, full length version is here.

Day Three

"10:55 AM They’re back, and they’ve decided they’re going to hear her evidence. Buffy scholars everywhere breathe a sigh of relief."

"We anticipate that success in this case will provide the impetus for prohibiting discriminatory publications in the other provinces.”

Coyne's commentors are scouring the net, of course. A previous quote from the expert witness for the plaintiffs, currently on the stand;

"It has a lot to do with the difference in belief about freedom … the essential difference is how freedom is understood. I believe that my freedom ends where the dignity and respect for all the prophets begins.” (—Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub)

Coyne has noted that Mark Steyn is in the room.

The day ends, not with a bang, but a wimp out... - "Wait! Porter in on his feet: “If Habib and Elmasry are afraid to testify, I don’t want them as my witnesses. They’re a pair of scaredy-pants, and…” I swear to God that’s what he said. The proceedings dissolve in even more confusion than usual…"

I Think She May Be Right

UPDATE - Harriet is interviewed on FoxNews (h/t JT in the comments)

Mary, Mother Of Jesus

Cover thyself;

While the claim is unconfirmed as of this writing, the controversial Mark Steyn article, over which the British Columbia hearing is being held, was posted to the Catholic Answers message forum. Moreoever, popular Jewish-Canadian blogger Ezra Levant, who is blogging live from the hearing, and who is the subject of his own human rights commission complaint, published a description of the unnamed Catholic forum. Several details match, including the screen names of two participants to the Catholic Answers forum discussion of Steyn’s article.

Imagine that! Canada’s human rights tribunals are now attempting to prosecute a case against an American resident, based upon what an American citizen allegedly posted to a mainstream American Catholic website. What passes for mainstream Catholic discussion in America is now the basis for a hate complaint in Canada.

Update Confirmation has been received that Catholic Answers is indeed the site named. It's described thus: "Catholic Answers is one of biggest Catholic media empires in the U.S., and is especially popular among young orthodox Catholics."

To Our Most Timid Minister Of Justice

An open letter;

But this is what I do know. If the Minister of Justice for Canada is not willing to stand for free speech anywhere, anytime, against anyone, then the Minister of Justice does not deserve to be representing the citizens of Canada in such a capacity, let alone as a Member of Parliament for a democratic state. On the assumption that you even do support us, if you are trying to figure out when to speak out, where to speak out, or how to speak out on such a vital issue to the future of this country, then I say in all honesty and sincerity: there’s something wrong with you.

Before anything else, you are supposed to be defending our freedoms and real Canadian values - values that were bought and paid for on the fields of Flanders not the manufactured ones that serve the perpetually aggrieved communities to which your government is shamelessly pandering. At the very least, you should not be siding with the fraudulent thugs at the HRCs and the fools in your own Department who say that “truth is no defense”. Whatever trick you’re using to sleep at night as Canadian citizens are being financially and emotionally raped and pillaged by these Star Chamber Tribunals would give Somenex a good run for its money, I have no doubt.

Other dead tree commentary from David Warren, the Vancouver Sun, and National Post.. and a huge round up of links at Free Mark Steyn, too.

While you're at it, you can contact our most timid provincial premier here;

The Honourable Brad Wall
Premier of Saskatchewan
226 Legislative Building
Regina, Saskatchewan
CANADA S4S 0B3
Telephone: (306) 787-9433
Facsimile: (306) 787-0885
E-mail: premier@gov.sk.ca

Be sure to ask how it came to pass that an individual is considered a "public official" obligated to set aside their Charter rights when performing a state function - but a "private citizen" on the hook for their own legal defense when set up for a human rights sting operation?

Every marriage commissioner (or any other public official) in the province should be thinking long and hard right now about their own personal exposure. Poligamy hasn't yet been tested in the courts in regards to charter rights - would it be prudent in this legal atmosphere to refuse a ceremony joining a man and his second husband?

(Nichols lawyer is Michael Megaw, should you want to forward a donation.)

Why Don't They Just Merge The Two Networks?

And save the useful fools the trouble of crossing over one at a time?

Originally a successful radio and television producer, Phillips, who is English, worked in America, Canada, Italy, Russia and the UK for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), before accepting her new role as Al Jazeera English director of foreign bureau and development in Doha, Qatar.

Damian Penny in the comments: "Why would Al-Jazeera risk being tarnished by the CBC's legendary anti-American, anti-Israel bias?"

Justin, Son Of Margaret

Please someone, refresh my memory. Justin Trudeau's qualifications to speak publicly on the topic of "protecting the earth and the future of Canada's health care systems, schools and communities" are what, again? Any idea? Oh, that's right - he won the Lucky Y-Chromosome Lottery. Lucky him. Lucky us.

Bitch In The Manger

I don't think she's interested in the Vice-Presidency.

I think what she's interested in is sealing Obama's fate with that "angry white woman" base, by forcing him to reject her.

A new Pew Research Center poll points to a surging tide of fury, especially among white women. As recently as April, this group preferred Obama over the presumptive Republican John McCain by three percentage points. By May, McCain enjoyed an eight-point lead among white women.

Me, either.

h/t

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, to celebrate my new role as launcher of the daily Reader Tips entry (see below), here for your delectation is Sniff & the Tears performing Driver's Seat (1978, 03:46).

Jenny was sweet,
She always smiled for the people she meet.
On trouble and strife:
She had another way of looking at life.

The news is blue (the news is blue),
Has its own way of getting to you.
What can I do (what can I do),
When I remember my time with you?

Pick up your feet,
Got to move to the trick of the beat.
There is no elite,
Just take your place in the driver's seat.

Your Reader Tips are of course, as always, welcome in the comments.

Thanks everyone for your kind support, after last night's show and the SDA LNR Classics show, for these new amalgamated Reader Tips and SDA LNR entries. I've consulted with Kate, and at least for now the scope of this venture is that I will post the daily Reader Tips entry, usually using the Late Nite Radio show as the anchor for the entry. This has the primary advantage of taking seven utility entries a week off Kate's busy schedule, with the secondary effect of providing a formal home for the apparently popular Late Nite Radio shows (without the overhead of dedicating entire entries just for the nightly show).

Note that Kate mentioned that from time to time she may add some of her own Reader Tips to the entry, after the show has been posted, so don't be surprised if you see some of that.

I plan to post the Reader Tips entry at approximately 21:00 central time every evening (thus providing both the Late Nite context, and a chance for folks to catch the show on that night, not only in Pacific, Mountain, and Central Canada, but also in Eastern, Atlantic, and Newfoundland Canada), but it will be dated 12:01 the next day, since the principal purpose for the entries is the next day's Reader Tips. The format will be generally as above, with links to the SDA LNR archives (in the Good Evening sentence), the artist(s) involved, and the performance itself (but usually without the lyrics, those above are a special bonus relevant to tonight's show).

My intention is to draw the show content from audio/video performances publicly available at Google, YouTube, &c, including music, comedy, interviews, old-time radio shows, and stuff like that. Recommendations for future shows are always appreciated, especially considering that the new regularity of SDA LNR will make it difficult for me to always come up with "classic hits" on my own. Even then, some days there may be no show, just Reader Tips, and some days I may revisit classic performances from previous shows made long ago (in Internet time).

Please use the email address available via the "SDA Late Nite Radio" link shown at the beginning of each entry to send me your recommendations. I do request though a little quality control, please avoid selections with only fair or poor audio or video quality (other than special archival items), entries that are not suitable to a general audience or not safe for work, and "angry young man" or politically strident music (there's enough of that in the news already ~ the news is blue).

And one last thing, please try to keep in mind that this is the general purpose Reader Tips entry (as the title says), the LNR show is just a single seed tip, and in particular these entries are not Late Nite Radio arguments. So let's try to keep the latter from getting out of hand. Never forget: de gustibus non disputandum est, which means: there is no arguing taste.

The Robson Square Witch Trials

The Accused stands accused of time travel as the national embarrassment known as the BC Human Rights Tribunal picks up speed - the natural consequence of going downhill;

Uh-oh. The chair seems pissed. If you weren’t happy with their disclosure, did you bring an application for further and better disclosure? Well no. {Paraphrasing here.] If they’d given us a list, we’d have looked at whether they were clear enough. But they just said to us, we’re going to enter some documents that you have. As for UN reports, “I’m convinced they’ve churned out five or six in the last half hour. Probably more to come later today.”

Joseph cleverly rebuts: those may be the rules of evidence in a real court, but we’re not in a real court! He’s got a point there… (Well, he didn’t say “real court.” I beleve he said “at the appellate level.”

10:28 AM As for the irrelevance of reports on Islamophobia “across the pond,” well, “Islamophobia does not stop at the waters.” It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Reports were meant to illustrate the impact of Islamophobia, regardless of its precise location. “My friend wants you to judge the evidence before you receive it.” We’re breaking for probably half an hour or so while the panel considers the question.

Here's my best effort at a direct quote from McConchie, after telling the tribunal how real courts work: that's "how at least in my experience and my understanding of the law... I accept this tribunal is not bound by the same rules as a regular court, but there are boundaries, there's a minimal requirement to prove the authority of the document that's submitted to the tribunal that is represented to be some sort of academic study, and that would ordinarily be done through an expert witness, and not a lay witness who happens to have seen it."

That's how a polite man tells a tribunal they don't know what the hell they're doing.

Needless to say, not one of the Troika is paying much attention to him, and panellist Tonie Beharrell has her eyes closed for much of it.

I suggest folks get busy forwarding both reports to the offices of every MP and MLA in the nation, along with Ezra's three word solution.

Fire. Them. All.

Update Tarek Fatah writes in Coyne's comments;

Does anyone remember Sheikh Younus Kathrada, the Imam who preached that Jews were “brothers of monkeys and swine”?

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/07/21/cleric-rcmp050721.html

Well, what do you know. The good old “monkeys and swine” imam is part of this convoluted Islamist alliance fighting Mackeans.

How, you ask? Relax. Since none of the esteemed reporters are digging deep enough, let me help them out from Toronto.

The National Post today suggests that Naiyer Habib, unlike Khurrum Awan, gives the trial a “local flavour.”

Most B.C. Muslims would beg to differ…

Naiyer Habib is from Saskatchewan and only moved to Vancouver recently. The Regional Director of the CIC in BC is Luay Kawasme. Where is he? Don’t know.

I am told Naiyer Habib is the father of Adnan Habib. Adnan Habib is a Vancouver lawyer, and the legal counsel for the BC Muslim Association.

Earlier this year the BC Muslim Association hired a new Imam. Guess who? None other than the discraced hate-monger Sheikh Younus Kathrada!

Thee Imam who preached that Jews were “brothers of monkeys and swine” is now lecturing at Masjid al-Iman in Victoria run by an organsiation whose legal counsel is the son of Naiyer Habib!

Convoluted assoications? yes. Guilt by association? Probabaly, but it is not me who is saying all Muslims are one organic body that weeps whenever the boy-band is insulted.

What Would We Do Without Experts?

CTV offers up some of the findings carried in a Tourism Association of Canada report on the "crisis" in the industry that took "a year and a half to create";

suggested fixes include:
* reducing costs to the Canadian aviation sector;
* securing approved destination status from China; and,
* enhancing government-owned tourism properties like national parks and museums.

"Maybe the anti-American locals who leave snide notes and key US cars might consider the repercussions of their actions. The Internet is rife with such stories, discouraging other Americans from venturing north - and return visits from these same offended tourists."

"A WEEKEND in Northern Ontario, Muskoka or Great Wolf Lodge is about the same as a WEEK in in an all-inclusive Caribbean. Where would you go?"

"Out in Tofino for example, a site to pitch a tent is $55 a night, if you buy their wood and want a modest 4-5 hour camp fire, add another $35. Park fee's a day, $10. Ferry to get over there, $70."

"I would love to stay in Canada and travel but when I can spend $45 on a hotel in the US compared to $120 here in Canada the math is simple. Plus I can fill up for about $20 less. Why would anyone in the US right now want to come up to Canada, with their economy the way it is to pay extra for hotels and gas, you don't need 2 years to figure this out."

"All the American bashing is finally having an impact. Chickens are coming home to roost. If you continue to pass moral judgement on your biggest trading partner... Mayor Miller should be the poster child for the tourism colapse."

Seven Year American Recession Watch Remains On High Alert

The economy grew at a faster pace than originally estimated in the first quarter,

... the government said on Thursday, but the nation remained on track for its most stagnant period of growth in five years.

Gross domestic product, a measure of overall economic growth, expanded at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the first three months of the year, according to the Commerce Department. That was an uptick from the initial estimate, released a month ago, which put the growth rate at 0.6 percent.

... dragged down by lower automobile exports, giving the Bank of Canada more reason to cut borrowing costs again next month.

Gross domestic product contracted at a 0.3 percent annualized rate in the first quarter to C$1.33 trillion ($1.34 trillion), the first drop in almost five years, Statistics Canada said today in Ottawa. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg said the growth rate would slow to 0.4 percent from 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter. None of the 22 predicted a contraction.

Y2Kyoto: Reality Bites

Planet Gore

A new report by Cambridge Energy Research Associates finds that “rising materials costs, engineering challenges, and installation snags threaten European goals to dramatically expand wind power.” The report assesses as unlikely the European Union’s goal of getting 20 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020 without massive new government subsidies.

An article in the New Zealand Herald is blunt: “How to meet the lofty target is a puzzle. Clean renewables are still in their infancy yet will be required to deliver gigawatts of power when many fossil-fuel and nuclear power stations are at the end of their operational life.”

In Sweden, of course, all nukes are at the end of their life thanks to the government’s nearly 30-year ban. In the face of this blunder, Sweden’s government has postponed its 2010 deadline as it scrambles to find a solution to its aging utility infrastructure and emissions ceiling.

Now, Had They Waterboarded Him Between Slices

THAT would have been bravery.

Not to mention, appropriate.

Reader Tips

Thanks to Vitruvius for doing such an admirable job with Reader Tips while I was away. If you'd like him to continue, cast a vote in the comments. It doesn't mean I won't throw in my own linkfests, but the late nite radio schtick seems to be popular enough to merit its own category. Let me know what you think.

And my thanks, as always, to the rest of the guest blogging contingent. SDA is a 7 day a week endeavor, so the breaks I get serve as innoculation against burnout. The guest bloggers make it possible. The only alternative is shutting down the place while I'm gone and while that wouldn't be the end of the world, it's not my preferred option.

Your tips thread is open.

Truth And Antirevisionism

Rodney A. Clifton;

As a young student, Mr. Ignatieff attended Toronto’s Upper Canada College, arguably the top private “residential school” in the country. At the time, he probably did not know that employees of other Canadian residential schools received little pay and many sleepless nights for their labour. But, as an intellectual and as an MP, he should have searched harder for the available evidence. In Stringer Hall, for example, I was responsible for 85 senior boys between the ages of 12 and 21 for 22 hours a day, six days a week. The work was difficult, even for a strong 21-year-old.

Yet today, the reward for former residential school employees is denigration in the national press by people such as Mr. Ignatieff — and, more surprisingly, by the churches they served. I pray that the Commission will hear a variety of perspectives.

Unfortunately, I do not think this will happen because of the hostile climate that now exists. Few former school employees — both non-aboriginal and aboriginal — will acknowledge that they worked in residential schools, and even fewer will appear before the Commission. They already know that the “truth” has been pre-determined, and that “reconciliation” means financial compensation, which is already being distributed in any event. Few people will praise the residential schools — their administrators, their teachers or their supervisors. Fewer still will dare publicly admit that their residential-school experiences were positive.

Levant, Martin vs Fine

The May 24th debate from the 30th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of Journalists is up at CPAC.

Update: Reaction in the comments - "HOLYSHIT!"

If Quoting A Norwegian Imam Can Get You In CHRC Trouble

Just think where quoting Ahmadinejad might take you!

"I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene,"

"I tell you that with the unity and awareness of all the Islamic countries all the satanic powers will soon be destroyed,"

The BC Human Rights Tribunal VS Macleans And The Free World

My apologies for not having this up sooner - except for a quick stop at the farm to crash a few hours, I've been on the road the last 19 hours or thereabouts. (And offline most of the past 5 days).

Andrew Coyne is liveblogging the Mark Steyn hearing today, as best he can;

9:45 AM PST
The Chair is reviewing the legal history of the complaint. Apparently they have no jurisdiction over the Maclean’s website. So that’s a relief…

9:48 AM
We have friends: the BC Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Association of Journalists are here as intervenors.

9:54 AM
Lawyers for the two sides are wrangling now over what witnesses the complainants are going to call, and whether “my friend” had properly informed “my friend” as to what “my friend” (the first one) had planned...

10:59 AM
Just coming back from a break. Lots of media interest, it seems: CBC, CTV (I’m told), the National Post, local media, and a guy from the New York Times, who’s doing a piece comparing how the two countries’ legal systems deal with speech cases. Needless to say, he can’t believe what he’s witnessing…

2 June 2008:

Wow ! Heather MacNaughton, who chaired the three-panel BC Human Rights Tribunal in the mixed judgement of the Port Coquitlam Knights of Columbus v. two lesbians, is the same Justice who fined Christian printer Scott Brockie and denied an appeal by Christian teacher Chris Kempling.

This is bound to be interesting ! We couldn’t have asked for a more leftist judge.

Kathy Shaidle has lots and lots as does RJJago on the support rally. (The blank signs were my suggestion. Heh.)

Keith Martin has issued a press release:

"I just returned from the Canadian Association of Journalists AGM in where I attended a debate with a member of the CHRA. After the debate it became even more obvious that the Act needs to be modernized. The CHRA member had little understanding of the deep flaws and misuses of the Act by the Commission and the trampling of free speech that the Commission sometimes engages in," said Dr. Martin.

Update - What we pay them the big bucks for;

CBC journos asked me who I was with? Just an interested observer I replied.

Who is this Steyn guy they asked. Is he a journalist? Who does he write for? He's right wing isn't he?

Tony Blair's Britain

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and one man's gospel is another constable's hate crime;

The preachers, both ministers in Birmingham, were handing out leaflets on Alum Rock Road in February when they started talking to four Asian youths.

A police community support officer (PCSO) interrupted the conversation and began questioning the ministers about their beliefs.

They said when the officer realised they were American, although both have lived in Britain for many years, he launched a tirade against President Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Cunningham said: "I told him that this had nothing to do with the gospel we were preaching but he became very aggressive.

"He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station."

A Martyr For His Faith

Is there nothing that Obama won't do?

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Reader Tips and SDA Late Nite Radio. One of the problems with a tour de force performance like last night's SDA Late Nite Radio Classics is: what does one do for an encore? I mean, one's just used up one's best material (by definition); what now? Yet it remains the case that there was a notable intensity to all of yesterday's selections, thus an alternative for tonight is a notably mellow selection. So here, for your delectation, are Mugsy Spanier & His Ragtime Band performing Relaxin' At The Touro in 1939.

Also, after last night's show, listener Eeyore wrote in to request due coverage for bagpipes. They're always on the list, Eeyore. For now you may wish to check out some of the bagpipe links previously available at Small Dead Animals.

More importantly than all that, note that Mr. Andrew Coyne plans to be live-blogging the BCHRT inquisition against Maclean's magazine and Mr. Mark Steyn starting at about 09:30 PDT today.

Your Reader Tips are of course, as always, welcome in the comments.

An Alternative Look at Africa

There has been an interesting discussion going on over in the More Pavilions in South Africa's Folkfest entry about what is going wrong in Africa.

But what about what is going right in Africa?

I'd like to invite you to view these three videos before you decide.

• Here's professor Hans Rosling explaining how, even though Africa is behind the rest of the world (although it varies greatly from country to country), Africa is steadily improving.

• Here's Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, so-called Banker to the Poor, explaining how legitimate uncorrupted micro-financing enables the emergence of the private citizen class.

• Here's George Ayittey explaining how government and corruption are the problem in Africa. The problem is not Africans, the problem is that the systems they are operating under are stifling them, and are currently beyond their own control.

Old timers here at SDA know that I generally agree with ET's model of the evolution of civilizations. In theory. Nevertheless, in practice, one has get from here to there. Pace Zeno, what now?

More Pavilions in South Africa's Folkfest

Xenophopic violence continues in South Africa- the toll so far being 62 dead and 670 wounded:

Attacks broke out in a poor neighbourhood of Johannesburg on May 11 and spread across the country, targeting immigrants including Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, whom locals blamed for taking their jobs.

The Ugandans aren't impressed with South Africans:

We have always known South African black people to be even more discriminatory than the whites who rode roughshod over them during apartheid. We just didn't think they'd go this far- beating and killing fellow blacks from other countries, blaming them for their economic woes.

The Nigerians are protesting at the South African embassy.

Mozambique claims there has been no retaliation against South Africans but they have absorbed 32,000 people fleeing the violence.

Of course none of this is really new to South Africa, it has just become more intense and is now making the news. Just check out the dismal photo gallery that has been documenting the death of Johannesburg since 2006.

Frankly, My Dear

Oh, look at that smile!

They Must Have Found A Cure

How else to explain someone with this much time on their hands?

That ip address belongs to the Canadian Cancer Society.

Reader Tips & SDA LNR Classics

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Reader Tips and SDA Late Nite Radio Classics. And when I say classics, I mean that this new gig provides me the opportunity to highlight a dozen of our most favourite music videos here in the SDA LNR studios, as selected from previous SDA LNR shows, as a full entry in it's own right here at SDA, and for bonus points this exercise gives me an excuse to experiment with SDA's extended entry facility.

Your Reader Tips are of course, as always, welcome in the comments.

In order to whittle down our list of our dozen favourite music videos available in the Interwebothique and according to previous SDA LNR Archives (which are currently out of date), I've decided to omit those that don't actually have performance-related video, such as Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto's 1964 version of Girl From Ipanema, and Yma Sumac's Tumpa, which only have still-image montages, and those for which the video is some sort of post-modern non-performance related abstraction, such as Yello's Vicious Games with Different Names in 1985.

With those provisos in mind I surveyed our studio staff (I made a list), and so without further ado, here for your delectation are the current top dozen Interwebothique music videos according to the SDA LNR studios (me), in some particular but undefined order (please view these in full-screen mode if your terminal has the horsepower to support it):

• Karl Richter performing Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, BMV 565 (which was written in 1705), at the Abbey Basilica in Ottobeuren, on the Dreifaltigkeitsorgel organ, which was built in 1766.

• Herbert von Karajan conducting Beethoven's Symphony #5, in 1966 (in particular the first movement).

• Glenn Miller and his orchestra performing In The Mood.

• Franzl Lang performing Einen Jodler hor i gern.

• The Manning Chorus performing How to move a 100 year old church.

• Cesaria Evora and the boys performing Besame Mucho.

• Grace Jones and orchestra performing Slave to the Rhythm.

• Sade performing Smooth Operator.

• Nina Hagen performing New York New York.

• James Brown & Luciano Pavarotti performing It's a Man's World.

• Frank Sinatra performing My Way.

• Louis Armstrong performing What a Wonderful World.

What a wonderful world. One of the interesting things about individuals preparing top n lists, such as this one, or my Top 50 Documents Ever list, is that it tends to say more about the individual than it does about the list. Once one realizes that, it's a curious kind of responsibility. On that note: I hope you enjoy at least some of the above selections, that's enough baring of my soul for today, and as always, best wishes everyone, and thanks to our lovely hostess Miss Kate.

(And yes again, once again, I'm posting this two hours before I'm posting this; today's excuse is that it's ready, it's Saturday night, and little music wouldn't hurt.)