Ezra Levant will be in Regina, November 29, 2010 for a FCPP sponsored noon luncheon. Details at the link.

The Fraser Institute is giving away $10,000 in cash prizes in its 2010 Student Video Contest. The topic – The Nanny State: Is government regulation threatening your personal freedom?
Full contest details here.

Different strokes for different volk/folk:

First the Dutch…
…now what about the Swedes?..

An original SDA “regular” is running for a seat on city council in Woodstock, On. The civic election is Oct.25th, and let’s just say his opponents are damned lucky the seat isn’t decided by internet poll.
But the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy doesn’t end there!

Elect NEIL FLAGG for Toronto District School Board Ward 5 Trustee.
There’s a paypal button on this page. Do it for the children. (Also on Facebook.)
Check out their platforms. You can wish them both luck in the comments.

Demonstration to Demand an End to the Long Gun Registry
In Ottawa today, 4:30 – 6:00 PM local time at the Eternal Flame in front of Parliament Hill. More details here.

Today’s Question “Do you support the long-gun registry?” The “NO” are currently* leading by a 70 – 30% margin.
Scroll down the main page, you’ll find it on the right.

It’s why you come to the blogosphere – to get next year’s mainstream opinion.

Program note: Ezra Levant will be up shortly on the Charles Adler show to discuss his new book.

Listen live here.

The Republicans were warned. Now, they’re being retired. (link fixed)

“That’s the Establishment’s worst nightmare: Irrelevance.”

More headlines at Drudge.
Plus – Bill Buckley’s magazine gets letters.

Maybe it is because of the circles you run in, but I don’t think you understand how angry people are in the country. It was an absolute insult to Republican voters to take someone as awful as Castle and expect the rank and file to vote for him just so Jim DeMint can be majority leader. Republican voters played that game in the 00s. And swallowed their principles and voted for lousy candidates in the name of keeping Democrats out. Well no more. That is the fallout of the 00s. Yeah, people want to get rid of the Democrats. But they are not going to do it if doing so means putting the same garbage that gave us Abramoff and the rest of the 04-06 Congress. And if that offends the delicate sensibilities of NRO and the Republican pundit establishment, well sometimes life is like that. And you better get used to it. Because the days of people like Castle winning in this party are over.

If only there were some sort of technology that could carry political developments in the US to our own Conservative Party headquarters.

Contrast this…

… to the message about Palin we’ve been getting the rest of the week, especially from that scathing Vanity Fair profile, and it’s starting to become increasingly difficult as we approach November to tell apart the real Palin from the smear campaigns, or the real Palin from the propaganda. But it also means the entertainment value of all three are increasingly exponentially, and if Palin continues to crank out apolitical and light-hearted moments like this one, she’ll only make it harder for those on the left to continue to find her irritating and noxious.

Via

A poll at Cnews. (On the left of the home page, about a third of the way down.)
Update: Something’s gone horribly wrong. One hour since posting, the poll has moved from a 6 point lead for “no”, into a dead heat.
Update2: Now 4 hours into the poll, the “yes” side has drawn into a 10 point lead. Curious and curiouser….

Related: Crowd estimates

Listen all about it:

Really good American talk radio: John Batchelor, WABC New York

There’s also Cousin Brucie, Joey Reynolds (and Wolfman Jack in the “Comments”).

Different strokes for different…

Americans are from Mars, Canadians mostly Venus (and are mentally islolated)

…start small:

Maywood: A city that sacked its entire staff
The US city sacked all its staff to stave off bankruptcy – and its citizens think services are now better. Tom Leonard reports.
To the casual eye, nothing about Maywood looks unusual. Police cars patrol the city’s palm-tree lined streets a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles, red-shorted lifeguards watch over the public swimming pool and, inside the striking Art Deco city hall, clerks issue yard sale permits. The police cars, however, are from “out of town” and manned by deputies from the county sheriff’s department, while the lifeguards and clerks are on loan from the neighbouring city of Bell.
Maywood – working-class, respectable and 95 per cent Hispanic – has attempted something unheard of anywhere in local government. It sacked its entire workforce and staved off looming bankruptcy by outsourcing everything. More than 70 workers lost their jobs at the end of June. Others were re-employed contractually, losing key benefits. But the newly jobless may be the only people not smiling now…

H/t: Denise.

John Hawkins;

The fine folks at The Society Of St. Vincent De Paul are holding an unbelievable raffle. In fact, this is, without a doubt, the best collection of raffle prizes I’ve ever seen in one place. […]
Now today, I’m going to give an opportunity to all the bloggers out there: Link this post, so we can help sell some more of these raffle tickets for charity, and then email me to let me know you’ve done so, and you may win a raffle ticket yourself.

Done!

Stephen Taylor;

Indeed in this country, there are two groups of people. In fact, some would call these groups the haves and the have-nots. This is an not inaccurate way of describing it, but those that would might have the two switched. Canadians form two groups: those that receive from the government and those that pay to the government. Those who form — or are constituent to — organizations dependent on government policy (and spending) are firmly against the changes to the census. Those on the other side are largely ambivalent because they are the large, unorganized and unsubsidized net taxpaying masses.
The conservative/libertarian Fraser Institute think tank’s motto is “if it matters, measure it.” The untruth of the inverse of this statement is at the centre of why this government should follow through. “If you measure it, it matters” is the motto of those net tax-receiving organizations who only matter if they can make their case. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has tried the ideological argument against these groups for years. But ideology is by its nature debatable; removing the framework of debate is his shortcut to victory.

There is one positive aspect to this controversy – millions of Canadians are now fully informed that, contrary to threats by census takers, refusing to fill out the long form census carries no actual penalty.
I suspect many of us will find that information useful.
h/t Maz2

You should have seen the newsrooms the other day when you got out on bail. Senior journalists were wandering around in a daze, smacking their heads in disbelief and calling up their libel lawyers for the first time in years.

Your Conrad Black thread.

Ha!
Update: so wrong, in fact that they’ve deleted it. (Showing 96% of respondents approve of Arizona’s illegal immigrant legislation)