The federal Liberals’ chief organizer in Quebec recently resigned after Michael Ignatieff overruled his decision about a particular nomination battle. Denis Coderre, who is still sitting as the Liberal MP for the Montreal riding of Bourassa, made clear that his decision to resign was propelled by his anger about the Toronto-centric nature of Ignatieff’s inner circle, which Coderre referred to as the “Toronto palace guard.”

“The message delivered by these recent events is as follows: ‘If you want to have your way in Quebec, you just have to bypass the Quebec officials in the party, going instead to the inner circle from Toronto.’ “

Torontonian Susan Delacourt, writing in The Toronto Star, suggests – cue the tiny violins – that Toronto is being singled out in a way no other city would be, and that a federal leader with an inner circle comprised of people almost exclusively from, oh, say, Calgary, would not face such criticism:

“It is hard to imagine anyone taking to a podium to denounce the preponderance of Montrealers working in politicians’ offices – a fact of life stretching back decades in Ottawa – or Calgarians, for that matter.”

Actually, what’s hard to imagine is the possibility that there would ever be a preponderance of Albertans in any federal leader’s inner circle; it’s easy to imagine the widespread denunciations that would surely follow. Here’s a – non-imaginary – statement from Michael Ignatieff himself:

“(Stephen Harper) is a politician formed and shaped in the radical conservative ideological world of Calgary and Calgary think tanks.”

Take special note of his use of the word “and,” through which he makes clear that he is referring not just to “Calgary think tanks” but also to the the city – the people – of Calgary. Fortunately for Ignatieff he can get away with it, because he and his inner circle are not formed or shaped by any particular regional ideology or viewpoint. Yes, make no doubt, my friend, that as Michael Ignatieff spelunks further and further into the political catacombs of the downtown GTA – where the CBC bunker also happens to be located – he will find not a regional ideology, but rather this great country we call Canada.
(*cough cough*)

On September 10th a now-famous video was released showing an Acorn official explaining to a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute how to submit fake tax forms and how best to procure illegal benefits for some “very young” girls they wished to bring in from another country to work as prostitutes. Within hours the story was all over the blogosphere and Fox News; the following day a flood of news outlets including the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, ABC News online and even MSNBC began covering the story, and over the next several days the Boston Globe and others weighed in.
The uber-Democrat New York Times, though, remained silent as the days passed; even when the US Senate voted to cut off all federal funding to Acorn they didn’t see fit to mention it. Finally, six days late, the NYT published an article headlined “ Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn.” The piece fairly screamed between the lines of resentment at having to publish a story so unhelpful to the Obama Administration, and began not with the gist of the story but with editorial context meant to mitigate the damaging information they were about to reluctantly provide:

“For months during last year’s presidential race, conservatives sought to tar the Obama campaign with accusations of voter fraud and other transgressions by the national community organizing group ACORN, which had done some work for the campaign…”

This tone continued: “Conservative advocates and broadcasters were gleeful”; the Acorn tape was “the latest scalp claimed by those on the right who have made no secret of their hope to weaken the Obama administration..” “Conservatives believe that they have hit upon a winning formula for such attacks: mobilizing people to dig up dirt, trumpeting it on talk radio”; a quoted member of a liberal think tank said conservatives were using “McCarthyite” tactics and “harping on minor failings and distorting records.” “This is dangerous stuff,” he added.
Several days ago, after prolonged criticism of the NYT, Public Editor Clark Hoyt finally gave the reason for the NYT’s blackout: turns out they simply hadn’t been watching the news:

“Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was ‘slow off the mark,’ and blamed ‘insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.’ She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media.”

Ah, that explains it: the Senate’s decision to cut off funding to Acorn was actually just an assertion made by members of the “opinion media“, and the statements coming out of the mouths of Acorn officials on that tape were merely the opinions of conservatives.

Robert Bryce, writing in the WSJ, notes that although conventional energy companies have been charged numerous times for the bird deaths caused by electrocution from power lines, or from contact with crude oil or some other contaminants, the Justice Department doesn’t prosecute the wind companies whose turbines kill an estimated 75,000 to 275,000 birds each year.
One wind farm in particular seems to be a co-venture between Giant Blender Co. and the Grim Reaper:

A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds—nearly all protected by the migratory bird act—are being whacked every year at Altamont.

Oh well. I’m sure that over time we’ll all come to love the (thud!) whirring hum of the the (fwack!) eco-friendly wind turbines that will (konk!) help protect the natural world for (fftunng!) future generations.

…but take your time; there’s no rush. The IPCC’s own Third Assessment Report estimated that the global sea level is rising at a rate of 1.0 to 2.4 millimetres – one-tenth to one twenty-fifth of an inch per year. There is some regional variability; in the south of China, for example, the sea rises about a tenth of an inch per year, while in northern China it rises at a rate of approximately one-fiftieth of an inch per year.
United States President Barack Obama, speaking at the U.N., sees the grave danger…

“Rising sea levels threaten every coastline…On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes…”

…and raises taxes:

“And yet, we can reverse it…we’re making our government’s largest ever investment in renewable energy– an investment aimed at doubling the generating capacity from wind and other renewable resources in three years. Across America, entrepreneurs are constructing wind turbines and solar panels and batteries for hybrid cars with the help of loan guarantees and tax credits — projects that are creating new jobs and new industries. We’re investing billions to cut energy waste in our homes, buildings, and appliances — helping American families save money on energy bills in the process. We’ve proposed the very first national policy aimed at both increasing fuel economy and reducing greenhouse gas pollution for all new cars and trucks — a standard that will also save consumers money and our nation oil. We’re moving forward with our nation’s first offshore wind energy projects. We’re investing billions to capture carbon pollution…”

Yes, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who stand idly by, and those who understand that we simply must act now.

It’s Friday night. Here’s a little something for the ladies.

Un-Liberal Prime Minister Stephen Harper, speaking in Oakville today:

Ahmadinejad’s declarations, particularly recently, particularly…not just the detention of Canadian citizens, not just the flagrant abuse of human rights, but his recent declarations – just disgraceful, insulting declarations denying the holocaust – there is no way I’m going to permit any official of the Government of Canada to be present and give any legitimacy to remarks by a leader like that.

President Ahmadinejad has said things, particularly about the state of Israel, the Jewish people, and the holocaust, that are absolutely repugnant. It is unfitting that somebody like that would be giving those kind of remarks before the United Nations General Assembly. Canada does not want to be equivocal at all in terms of our view on that; we find it disgraceful, unacceptable, and we’re going to be absolutely clear on that. There are other things that bother us as well beyond these repugnant comments; also, obviously, the crackdown in Iran on all kinds, any kind of legitimate dissent; the fiasco around the elections is quite disturbing. As well, the holding of a Canadian journalist – Mr. Bahari, I think it is – without charge continues to be unacceptable (and) we continue to demand his release. But as I say, there are times when things are being said in this world that it is important that countries that have a moral compass stand up and make their views known, and our absence there will speak volumes about how Canada feels about the declarations of President Ahmadinejad.

Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister.

In the modern world, nothing is more predictable than the spectre of left-wing animosity to Israel. Many on the left – not that they’ll admit to it – clearly see the tiny nation as nothing more and nothing less than a country full of Jews who won’t own up to it, and we’re all familiar by now with the persistent, angry demands for more accountability: CUPE leader Sid Ryan, for example, in response to criticism of his support for a ban on any Israeli teaching in Ontario universities, clarified that he only wished to ban academics who refused to condemn Israeli military actions against Gaza.
On and on it goes. In a column in yesterday’s National Post, Naomi Lein vs. the “angry Jewish males”, angry woman – and Jew – Judy Rebick executes a stunning public act of moral inversion by portraying Naomi Klein and others who protested against the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to focus on Israel as being the victims of an “hysterical response.”
Rebick feels “heartsick” on behalf of her fellow assailant:

Naomi Klein didn’t start the protest, but she used her contacts and her celebrity to make it more effective. The focus is on her because she is today one of the most prominent Jewish intellectuals in the world….I hope that the pile-on of angry Jewish males will not stop her or others of her generation from continuing to speak out…

In response to Rebick’s “hey, don’t blame her, she was just joining the crowd, plus she’s a woman” defense of Klein, Barbara Kay steps forward, in broad daylight, to mercifully hoist the sodden debate forcefully back onto it’s own two feet:

Rebick says “(Naomi Klein) is risking a lot to speak out so passionately on this subject.” Risking what? A testy editorial in the National Post? Israel-hating is about the safest occupation in the world today, in fact. Indeed, Klein is much loved by the people who actually do put honest intellectuals at risk. It isn’t Klein who needs a bodyguard when she speaks on campuses; it’s supporters of Israel like David Horowitz and Alan Dershowitz who take the risks and get the death threats.

Mrs. Kay precisely hits the Achilles heel of Rebick’s “victim” plaint: In the activist circles Naomi Klein inhabits, attacks on Israel are, far from being even nominally uncool, shortcuts to progressive credibility. In stark contrast, anyone who makes public expressions of support for Israel is sure to be mercilessly assailed at every appearance. Klein, in other words, is certainly not the victim.
Back to Rebick, though: how could it come to pass that a Jew could be so staggeringly blind to the eternal and storied hatred that lies at the core of the eternal force she diligently throws her support behind? Perhaps we should let Rebick herself provide the answer:

In my family, neither the pogroms, nor the Holocaust were ever discussed.

Well, sure, yes. Willful, diligent, muscularly applied excision of essential, real-world context, starting from an early age, should do the trick. What stands out, though – read her column – is that in relaying this ignorance, she’s bragging about it.

According to the most recent Rasmussen report, opposition to Obamacare has grown to its highest level yet – 56 percent – despite Obama’s speech to congress and his unprecedented media blitz. Ed Morrissey writes:

“Part of the reason why this strategy has not been effective is because Obama has had nothing new to say in months. He appears convinced that the answer to voter rejection of his arguments is to offer them repeatedly and in increasing loudness and anger.”

It’s the Michael Ignatieff approach, essentially, but with the addition of actual concrete proposals.

Should legislators read the legislation they pass, or should they simply sign it into legislation? It’s an open question, apparently. In this video of a town hall meeting in Philadelphia yesterday, you can see a citizen asking Senator Arlen Specter, “When congressmen stop at the notion of reading a legislation because they are unqualified or they aren’t competent to understand it, how can we be confident that those congressmen are competent to re-engineer the entire health care system?”
It’s the essential question at the moment, but one that Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services who stepped in to field it, deemed unfair: “I am not a member of Congress, have never been — that’s just a fact — I’m just, I’m just telling you…I have never seen a member of this congress work harder (than Specter), and it is unacceptable to ME for somebody to…” At this point, the crowd began to shout angrily, and Specter stepped forward to tell the audience that bills are often so large — “a thousand pages”, he said — that they have to be broken up into sections and handed out to his staff for perusal, because “we have to make judgements very fast…”
It was that phrase — “very fast” — that drove the crowd to almost apoplectically explode “Why? Why?” Those assembled knew that Specter had essentially said: “This is one more lengthy piece of legislation. There’s not enough time to for me to personally read it because it has to be passed quickly.”
Paul Mirengoff at NRO:

…it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Senate is not a deliberative body at all — not when Senators concede that they would vote on legislation to overhaul one-sixth of our economy, and arguably the most important sixth, without having read the legislation. Specter’s defense that there’s not enough time for him to read it all himself simply raises the problem in a more acute from: why would the world’s greatest deliberative body consider legislation on a timetable that leaves Senators with insufficient to see for themselves exactly what’s in the bill?

Mark Steyn, too, finds odd the notion of casually outsourcing the duties that are integral to one’s job description:

If (a legislator) doesn’t read the law before he makes it law, he’s not doing the only job he has. When you go to see Barbra Streisand, she has an orchestra and a conductor and arrangers and lighting designers and hair stylists, but she’s still expected to do the singing herself. If she stood up and said, “Okay, I’ve outsourced ‘People’ to my intern Kevin and ‘You Don’t Bring Me Flowers’ to the niece of a friend of mine who needed a summer job and the Yentl medley to some people Kevin met for a breakfast session and said seemed to know what they were talking about,” you’d begin to wonder why anyone needs Barbra.

…she ain’t as aware of her surroundings as she used to be.
On July 17, the New York Times published a piece, “Cronkite’s Signature: Approachable Authority” on the public life of Walter Cronkite. Five days later numerous changes were made — a virtual rewrite — with this notice given underneath:

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.

Deadline pressure can certainly lead to errors; one could imagine that the author of the obit/appraisal, Alessandra Stanley, was pressed for time, or that maybe the sudden passing of Cronkite left the NYT’s editors unable to fact-check as carefully as they otherwise would have, but in fact Stanley wrote the piece, and gave it to her editor, one month before Cronkite’s death. The New York Times’ public editor Clark Hoyt explains, though, in a piece titled How Did This Happen? that the piece was submitted on a “Friday, a heavy time for the culture department, which was processing copy for Saturday, Sunday and Monday.”
A full ten days after the first correction was published, this second correction was added underneath it:

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

An appraisal on July 18 about Walter Cronkite’s career misstated the name of the ABC evening news broadcast. While the program was called “World News Tonight” when Charles Gibson became anchor in May 2006, it is now “World News With Charles Gibson,” not “World News Tonight With Charles Gibson.”

No word on whether it took the NYT thirteen days to issue that last correction, or if it took that long for ABC employees and execs to notice that their flagship news broadcast had been incorrectly named in America’s supposedly most consequential and influential newspaper.