Hear, hear Minister Clement.

For background, Premier Wall made a patriotic and impassioned speech to the Regina Chamber of Commerce where he explained his decision not recommending the sale. It’s worth listening to. (1/3)

Part Two
Part Three
The issue isn’t so much one company buying another, it isn’t as black and white as that. PCS isn’t the only player in the potash market in Saskatchewan, just the biggest. Agrium, Mosaic and others are also involved.
They all share ownership of a company called Canpotex. Canpotex is basically the distribution and marketing arm for the Saskatchewan potash companies. They own a lot of rail, rail cars and port terminals in Vancouver and Portland. They sell the potash. PCS supplies approximately 60% of the potash Canpotex sells.
BHP has explicitly stated that they prefer to market their own product. They made it clear that they would not be interested in supporting Canpotex.
An affirmative decision from Ottawa with regards to this sale would adversely affect Agrium, Mosaic and Canpotex to a great degree and ultimately leave them ripe for a fire sale.
Last year the potash companies all halted production because the potash market had been saturated. The state of the global economy couldn’t support the volume of potash being mined. This depressed the stock prices, caused lay-offs in numerous Saskatchewan communities (of which Delisle was one because Agrium is about 6 miles away and PCS’s Cory mine is about twenty miles away).
This depressed market is what spurred BHP to come in and make a play for PCS. Good business and I’d applaud them. However the fact that BHP’s business model is so radically different from what is in place, the fact that the proposed take-over would threaten much more than just the board of directors for PCS, and the fact that potash is integral to the Saskatchewan economy made Saskatchewan very leary of the proposed take over.
I applaud Premier Wall for sticking up for his province against his normal prejudice and I applaud Minister Clement for the same. As I understand the Saskatchewan MP’s advocated strongly with the Federal Gov’t on Premier Wall’s behalf. They’ve been through a rough ride over this and they deserve thanks as well.

Another first rate rant.
From the WSJ – “Bravo, Canada”. (Update – Full text)

Via.

… that Americans are war-mongers.

Mark Helprin;

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, says of those who with heartbreaking bravery went into the towers: “We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting.”
Mr. Mayor, the firemen, the police, the EMTs and the paramedics who rushed into those buildings, many of them knowing that they would die there, did not do so to protect constitutional rights. They went often knowingly to their deaths to protect what the Constitution itself protects: people, flesh and blood, men and women, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers. Although you yourself may not know this, they did.
The choice is not between abandoning them or abandoning the Constitution, for although the liberties the Constitution guarantees sometimes put us at a disadvantage even of self-preservation, they also make it possible for 300 million Americans to prevail—reasonably, peacefully, and within the limits of the law—against provocations such as this.
They make it possible to prevent the construction of the mosque at this general location—with no objection whatsoever to, but rather warm encouragement of, its construction elsewhere—not by force or decree but by argument, persuasion, and peaceable assembly. These are rights that the Constitution guarantees as well, and clearly it is one’s constitutional right to oppose the mosque, not to participate in the building of it, and to convince others of the same.

Meanwhile, in a CNN interview;

… Rauf indicated that the movement of the GZM away from Ground Zero must be rejected: Even if done out of a sense of propriety and sensitivity, he said, it would be perceived by “extremists” as an attack on Islam and therefore result in a spate of violence worse than the rioting over the Danish cartoons, threatening “our national security.”

Snapshots from the Centre Of The Known Universe.

If we are going to talk about “the policies that created this mess in the first place,” let’s at least get the facts straight and the names right.

Through Through The Looking Glass;

The truth about Iraq is that, for all the tragedy and the loss, the U.S. military performed a miracle. After nearly seven years, a constitutional government endures in that country. It is too often forgotten that all 23 of the writs for war passed by the Congress in 2002 — from enforcing the Gulf I resolutions and stopping the destruction of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs, to preventing the Iraqi state promotion of terrorism, ending suicide bounties on the West Bank, and stopping Iraq from invading or attacking neighbors or trying to acquire WMD — were met and satisfied by the U.S. military. It is also too often forgotten that, as a result, Libya gave up its WMD program; Dr. Khan’s nuclear franchise was shut down; Syria left Lebanon; and American troops in Saudi Arabia, put there as protection against Saddam, were withdrawn.

Related.

A short history of the Tea Party – and then some – from Mark Levin. (Via)

The most important question that flows from this discussion is whether China can rise peacefully. It is clear from the Defence White Paper—which is tasked with assessing Australia’s strategic situation out to the year 2030—that policymakers here are worried about the changing balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region. Consider these comments from that document: “As other powers rise, and the primacy of the United States is increasingly tested, power relations will inevitably change. When this happens there will be the possibility of miscalculation. There is a small but still concerning possibility of growing confrontation between some of these powers.” At another point in the White Paper, we read that, “Risks resulting from escalating strategic competition could emerge quite unpredictably, and is a factor to be considered in our defence planning.” In short, the Australian government seems to sense that the shifting balance of power between China and the United States may not be good for peace in the neighborhood.

The rest is here.

Typing the word “census” will not. That tells me everything I need to know.
(related)

“Yeah, there’s a long history of fans using explosives as a way to welcome a visiting popular president.” – Charles Krauthammer

Related – More cheering!

Or you know, it’s not like disfigurement-disfigurement.*

Via Brutally Honest

Now that context finally matters, prepare for the apology floodgates to open;

And while we’re at it, how about some apologies for all the false allegations by Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Charles Blow and numerous left-wing bloggers claiming that health care protesters were violent, and falsely linking the Tea Parties to the Amy Bishop shooting, the IRS Plane Crasher, the Fort Hood attack, and the Pentagon shooter.

They can start with Rush Limbaugh.

There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense. The idea that taxes cause scarcity, and subsidy abundance is a foreign concept. The notion that entitlements create dependency is considered Neanderthal. Tough penalties supposedly do not deter crime. Abroad, military preparedness or deterrence pales in comparison to “soft” diplomatic power and clever talking. Borrowing trillions is “stimulus” and need not quite be paid back. In other words, take a deep breath and imagine the opposite of everything you know by experience to be true, and you have mostly the worldview of the sheltered cultural elite, who navigate in rather protected channels and not in the open seas of the real world.

If you missed it on the weekend, be sure to also read this essay: America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution, by Angelo M. Codevilla. It’s since gone viral, helped in large part by Rush Limbaugh’s massive audience.
h/t EBD

From Bryan;

I’m doing some consulting related to the oil spill. Since you posted about Salazar chasing away our offshore rigs, I wondered if you saw the news that the second rig was leaving the Gulf. 2 down, 31 to go.
You know you’re in trouble when businesses consider the US a more hostile environment than Congo.
Also, isn’t it sad that Salazar can get away with a drilling moratorium not because there is a clear threat but because there’s an unclear threat?
His whole memorandum (PDF) is filled with admissions that although the safety record of offshore drilling is good, he just doesn’t know all the risks.
Left unsaid is that BP had to do a lot of things wrong to cause the blowout (see this nifty infographic and the links in it), and BP has a much worse record of risk-taking, safety violations and accidents than its competitors (even the NYT says so.)

Meanwhile there’s a Setback: BP cap in limbo over gov’t questions. 213,000 comments and counting…. Rigzone calls it “a strange turn of events”.

It is unlikely any amount of rational thinking will suddenly engulf this Administration and cause them to allow BP to continue its tests on the cap.
While the decision to continue capturing oil with some spillage (instead running tests that could lead to temporary capping ahead of the relief well) is the most cautious approach, the choice seems to lean more towards public relations risk avoidance by the US than a thoughtful consideration of what is most prudent.
It certainly appears that this was a more unilateral decision made by U.S. and in our minds illustrates that stopping the oil flow as quickly as possible is now not the governments primary objective. Think about this folks – the government had no qualms about BP trying to close the well previously using the ROVs to trigger the shear rams, why are they so concerned about the well structure now? Clearly, the government’s new logic is at odds with what they were previously commanding BP to accomplish.

Video and helpful doses of paranoia here.
Update: Looks like the Rigzone piece was yanked. Good thing I quoted it while I still could….

“Read it if you dare, and you’ll figure out why Canada adds jobs and we lose them.”

h/t Revnant Dream

“Harper is an evil genius who wants to turn Canada into a dictatorship, let’s give him all our guns.” *