71 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  6. There’s an excellent article about the West’s slide into dhimmitude over at City Journal:
    “BRUCE BAWER
    “An Anatomy of Surrender
    “Motivated by fear and multiculturalism, too many Westerners are acquiescing to creeping sharia”.
    Bruce Bawer is the American homosexual, who moved to Holland in order to live a “freer” life. He soon found out he was wrong about that. This is from Wikipedia:
    “In [his book] While Europe Slept, Bawer makes a strong argument for the danger of Europe’s politically correct culture that is allowing and protecting a Muslim fundamentalist movement that preys upon their liberal social systems. Bawer argues that Islamists use welfare and religious grants to fund extremist mosques and support imams with a violent history. Once established in Western European nations the Islamists avoid integration, obey Sharia Law while avoiding the legal systems of their host nations, allowing for the abuse of women, Jews, gays and just about anyone who doesn’t worship Allah, he argues. In his conclusion, Bawer argues that Islamists, who intermarry and import only Muslim spouses and who have a rising birthrate, will come to dominate European society within 30 years unless laws are passed to close the loopholes.”
    The City Journal article’s a worthwhile read.

  7. Story at NNW about a cbc head honch spending 7000.00 on meals in a very short time. Funny that no reports of it on the cbc. This is a real in and out story that should be headlines, as it was paid for by taxpayers money.

  9. “The real offense is making trouble.”
    …-
    “Hush
    Mark Steyn writes:
    In a scrupulously politically correct age, it’s not offensive to organize a “Kill the police!” demo or to preach that the government invented Aids in order to perpetrate an African-American genocide. You can pull that stuff and still be part of respectable society, hanging out with presidential candidates and whatnot. What’s grotesquely offensive is the chap who’s insensitive enough to point out such statements and associations.
    There’s a scene in Saving Private Ryan where an SS man stabs a Jewish-American soldier in a hand to hand fight. As the knife goes in, the SS whispers to the man he is killing to hush. Don’t make any trouble. Die like a good Jew. Mark Steyn understands that the real offense today isn’t the destruction of Western liberties and standards. It’s resistance that’s unacceptable. The real offense is making trouble.
    Hush now and go quietly.”
    http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2008/04/hush.html

  10. Hey, I just thought of a way for Harper to call an election. Put a bill forward to repeal the fixed election law, and make it a confidence motion. If they vote against it, election time. Vote for it, no more fixed election law and an election can be called by Harper. Is this possible?

  11. Harper has been so good on getting the compliant “Media” to focus on the lack of real leadership in the opposition benches that few have really talked about what a sore lack of leadership we have in the position that most requires leadership: the Prime Minister.
    He governs for the next day’s headlines. Sets records in polling to figure out what he should do. After getting his Five Priorities (TM) accomplished (well, not really, more like 3.5),and wowing us with how he can bend fundraising laws to rake in oodles and oodles of cash… he is rudderless and directionless. Like Chretien who had no agenda but to beat the Conservatives, Harper has no agenda but to beat the Liberals and stay in power.
    More to the point, what some call “incrementalism” as an excuse for record spending, record breaking of promises, record breaking abandonment of conservative principles, is really just lurching from issue to issue thinking about wedge politics and not anything so organized or systematic as “incremental” conservativism.
    That’s the context behind policy/principle flip flops like the “nation” resolution, pandering to Quebec, accepting the myth of “fiscal imbalance”, musing about constitutional changes. Ultimately though, it is proving not good for the one thing he cares about – his re-election – and it is not good for Quebec, it is not good for Canada. And people, including “The Media”, are finally maybe perhaps cathing on to Harper’s lack of leadership.
    ‘More than anything else, we are focusing our efforts on economic priorities,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a Quebec audience last Thursday. “Unlike our adversaries, we do not want to reanimate the old disputes between separatists and centralizers.”
    Mr. Harper’s comments were perhaps a bit disingenuous. Under his leadership, the Conservatives have quite actively dabbled in issues of federalism – much more so, in fact, than have the Liberals under Stéphane Dion. Mr. Harper told Quebeckers in the last election that he would offer them “open federalism.” He has promised Quebec more autonomy within Canada. His party has even flirted with reopening the Constitution, most recently in comments made by Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn.
    Clearly, the Tories have hoped to gain seats in Quebec by appealing to soft nationalists. Mr. Harper’s speech last week might be seen as a tacit acknowledgment that this strategy has failed, or at least that the backlash elsewhere in the country is not worth it. But whatever the reason, his apparent shift in focus is a blessing for both Quebec and the rest of Canada.
    This country does not need another existential debate over Quebec’s place within Canada – one that history suggests would likely end in frustration and an unintended boost to the sovereignty movement. Nor would it be helpful for the Prime Minister to be distracted by such matters at a time when there are far more pressing problems to deal with.

  12. Senior anonymous Liberal organizer:
    Citoyen Dion must “focus” Canadians.
    Same old policy from the LiberalSocialists: tax and spend, aka Focus-Pocus.
    …-
    “Another senior organizer said Mr. Dion will have to determine through his research and focus testing whether Canadians think the idea is too complex, whether they really want to pay more money for gas and home heating.” (G-M)

  13. Barry Rubin, Stuck in the Middle Ages, Islam targets moderation
    If history works out in the end, the high price paid in blood and suffering can at least be justified as having produced some good. But what happens when it doesn’t?
    Clearly, radical Islamism and the region’s current political troubles have parallels with the European history of Christianity and Judaism. Yet often the nearest equivalents date not from a few decades back but rather from the 1500s and 1600s. That calendar gap shows why the region’s task is so monumental and lengthy…

  17. Misleading Headline Again from CTV 04/28/08
    Kenney Won’t Put Timeline on Martin’s Return
    “were optimistic we’ll get her back to Canada in short order”, Kenney said Monday on CTV’s Canada AM, Adding “It would be Irresponsible for me to put a Precise timeframe on it”
    IMO, That is a Responsible Answer. He did Not Say or use the word “Won’t”, Also in the interview Shamus tries to get Kenney to commit to what happens when she returns, In cuffs? Parole, what is it. Kenney answered that he does Not Know the procedures of Corrections Canada, so how could he answer such a ?,But good ol Shamus persist.

  18. Enough politics! Something important has occurred!
    New transuranic element discovered, element 122. Half life, 100 million years. No, that’s not a typo.
    Now THAT is some serious business, my friends.
    phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2008/04/possible-transuranic-element-discovered.html

  19. CBC Porkers at the trough, as usual.
    You are paying for this.
    This Porker’s name is: Richard Portelance.
    It’s oink, oink, oink, all the way home.
    …-
    “Expensive tastes
    $7,500 claimed for meals in six months
    MONTREAL — Radio-Canada’s sales and marketing GM has a heavy pen when it comes to signing the bill for fine food, Sun Media has learned.
    Richard Portelance claimed nearly $7,500 in expenses from January to June 2007 for meals in upscale eateries — once dropping $717 for a single dinner.”
    http://tinyurl.com/4s64qc (sun)

  23. With all of the divisions and polarization in Canada, at least there is something more and more of us can agree on:
    Something about PM ‘I don’t like’
    Survey suggests Harper doesn’t inspire hope or affection among many Canadians
    OTTAWA — Economic fears, a lack of optimism and a sense that the Tories don’t share the concerns of voters are all shaping up as problems for Prime Minister Stephen Harper as Parliament returns from a one-week break.
    A new Canadian Press-Harris-Decima survey suggests 55 per cent of respondents felt Harper doesn’t offer much optimism or inspiration.
    It also found that 56 per cent were worried about a recession and 53 per cent said they felt the Tories don’t care about the same issues they do.[…]
    Another 55 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement: “There is something about Stephen Harper I just don’t like.”
    The sentiment was strongest east of Manitoba and among NDP voters and those age 25-34, but it also included about a third of those who voted Conservative in the last election. […]
    “While there is some personal resistance to Mr. Harper, there is even more surrounding (Liberal Leader Stephane) Dion,” he said.
    ————-
    In other words, the best thing Dion has going for him is Harper and the only thing Harper has going for him is Dion.

  25. Sorry Ted,Dion does have one thing going for him,the lap dog msm,but anyone with half a brain doesn’t listen to those clowns anyway,nor polls.

  26. Relax everyone, all will be right with the world on November 5th, 2008. Think back to all the doom and gloom, before every US election. Bush will be gone so who will the leftists blame then.

  28. Mary T, so to extrapolate your post;
    “after Jan 2009, Harper will be the lapdog of the US president(fill-in-the-blank)”
    so read that to say;
    Democrat-good lapdog
    Republican-bad lapdog

  29. Philip Hunter, What genes remember
    Many geneticists now think that the behaviour of our genes can be altered by experience—and even that these changes can be passed on to future generations. This finding may transform our understanding of inheritance and evolution

  30. “what is Vigna’s coup de grace?”
    …-
    “Good grief. Now Giacomo Vigna is threatening to sue me!
    It’s hard to believe, but I’ve received yet another threat of a lawsuit from a member of the human rights set. This one is from Giacomo “Serenity now!” Vigna, a lawyer for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
    Here is a copy of Vigna’s home-made libel notice. It’s
    Cherniaky in its logic and Kinsellian in its command of the law.
    Vigna’s letter is a classic case of why lawyers should not represent themselves, even if they think they’re saving a few bucks: their judgment is clouded by their emotions.
    I mean, seriously, look at why Vigna says he’s going to sue me. On page three of his threat, he’s underlined what he says makes him really mad at me. He complains that I made fun of his courtroom antics, when he told a tribunal chairman that the whole hearing had to stop because Vigna didn’t “feel in a serene state of mind”. I compared Vigna’s lame series of excuses – a discussion that went on for twenty pages of court transcripts! – to a student who pulled the fire alarm to get out of writing an exam.
    You’d think that Vigna would want to forget about that awful, awful day when he turned the tribunal hearing into his own therapy session. But not Vigna – he says he’s going to sue me for calling his drama audition a “farce”.
    Alright, readers, skip the next few paragraphs. They’re a private message from me to Vigna, barrister to barrister, and friend to friend.”
    http://ezralevant.com/2008/04/good-grief-now-giacomo-vigna-i.html

  31. File under “Not Waiting for the Asteroid”
    http://commonsensewonder.com/?p=3351#more-3351
    Print circulation continues on its steep downward slide, the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed this morning in releasing the latest numbers for some of the country’s largest dailies in the six-month period ending March 31, 2008. When a full analysis appears it is expected to find, according to sources, the biggest dip yet, about 3.5% daily and 4.5 for Sunday.
    The following circulation compares the new data to the same period a year ago. Daily circulation is the Monday-through-Friday average.
    – The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday. Circulation on that day fell a whopping 9.2% to 1,476,400. The paper’s daily circulation declined 3.8% to 1,077,256.
    According to New York Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty, the company had budgeted for the declines in Sunday and daily circulation. Two-thirds of the Sunday loss stemmed from the elimination of bonus days and third-party bulk copies. Also: the paper had a single copy and home delivery price increase in July. The paper also focused on growing “highly profitable circulation,” she noted.
    – At The Washington Post, daily circulation decreased 3.5% to 673,180 and Sunday dropped 4.3% to 890,163.
    …

  32. Wells”:
    Debate opens tomorrow on this Bloc Québécois motion:
    “Que la Chambre exprime sa pleine et entière confiance envers Élections Canada et le Commissaire aux élections fédérales.”
    “That this House express its complete confidence in Elections Canada and the Federal Elections Commissioner (Inkless translation — ed.).”
    OK, OK, I was pulling your leg. It’s not a motion testing Parliament’s confidence in the government. The Tories could be outvoted without facing anything worse than embarrassment. But it will be interesting to see what Tory MPs have to say about all this, non?
    Will the governing party vote for or against a motion of confidence in the government and its institutions?

  34. Charles MacDonald,
    “What genes remember”
    You might compare that with the fairly recent discovery that Zipf’s language law applies to so-called junk DNA.

  35. And before anyone whines (again) about the Commissioner being a leftard, anti-Conservative, socialist, statist pawn of the LIEberals (or whatever passes the current conservative “discourse” on the issues these days), remember that Corbett was appointed in 2006 by Harper after the prior commissioner had found the Conservatives and Harper himself had broken campaign finance rules at their last convention. (Which firing was, of course, totally different than the firing of the head of the nuclear watchdog for doing her job even if it wasn’t what the Conservatives wanted; honest, it was totally different. There’s no pattern here.)

  37. You’re right Ted,there is a pattern,left wingnuts thwarting any move the prime minister makes,including the left wingnut nuclear watchdog.The pattern is the Lieberals supported by the lapdog msm and sheep like you doing anything to get back into power.No vision or direction,just power so they can go back to greasing their palms as well as their friends.What do we have after 13 years of lieberal power,same sex marriage and scandal after scandal.Mr. Harper’s done more with a minority government than any lieberal majority,but you keep sticking your head in the sand pal,that way that meanie harper is bound to go away.

  39. Ted @ 12:30pm, . .
    made a big thing out of 55% and 53% of voters who are not too pleased with Stephen Harper.
    Compare that to 99% of voters who are severely annoyed that brilliant university professor Dion, plans to solve all our problems by piling Carbon Taxes on top of manipulated high gas prices.
    The only weakness in that 99% is the group of liberal uninformed who have no idea of what is going on anyway. = TG

  40. No vision or direction,just power so they can go back to greasing their palms as well as their friends
    The Right Honourable Stephen Brian Jean Harper learned fast, didn’t he h.ryan.

  41. TG:
    How like a Harper-ite to quote statistics with no supporting evidence.
    Having said that, like I said, Harper and Dion are each other’s best friends. If Harper wasn’t doing so miserably, the Liberals would be way behind the Conservatives in the polls instead of being tied and they’d want Dion gone. If Dion wasn’t doing so miserably, the Conservatives would not even be treading water and they’d want Harper gone.
    The funny thing about this Parliament is that the government is doing everything it can to try to get back to being the opposition and the opposition is doing everything it can to try to keep the government governing.
    And ordinary Canadians keep getting screwed by power-craving politicians interested more in re-election than making Canada better.

  42. Busy day for you Ted.
    And while I think the ‘ol in and out that the Cons did is ethically poor (especially when the in n’ out is where taxpayers get it put in somewhere that they don’t want, and cash taken out of their wallet), some of the Libranos actions of the past 15 years are alot bigger.
    I think published facts could easily lead one to believe that they have had a good part in corrupting the RCMP deeply (think APEC, Cretin and the Grand Mere & BDC, Juliete O’Neil etc.), that an organized conspiracy took place to loot the nation’s treasury of tens of millions of dollars for votes (Adscam), among a host of other scandals and ethical transgressions.
    The Cons have only lied to Canadians (Income Trust Taxation), selectively enforced the criminal code (Caledonia), and grabbed on to my wallet by taking a full run at a vague untested election law.
    I expect better from these people, but, as you said above: “And ordinary Canadians keep getting screwed by power-craving politicians interested more in re-election than making Canada better.”
    Posted by: Ted at April 28, 2008 3:35 PM
    You are spot on there Ted.
    I always wonder how partisans rationalize their beliefs.
    Political parties are their own agents. And certainly not for the benefit of our nation. Perhaps they’re confused.

  43. ted, how like a Liberal you are, to assert opinions with no evidence.
    How is Harper ‘greasing his palms’, Ted?

  44. My comments are usually backed with a link or two.
    No need for a survey to answer the obvious, however. = TG

  45. whoa – forgot about the Cons appointing an un-elected bagman to the Senate too. I’d throw in the failure to pass an Accountability Act of substance, but, I think that comes under the ‘lies’ bit up top.

  46. Public servants addicted to Crackberry… and you’re paying for their high
    ==================
    OTTAWA — Cell phone and BlackBerry use at a major federal department has been out of control, with costs skyrocketing in a chaotic, Wild West atmosphere, says a new audit.
    Natural Resources Canada failed to lay down any rules, lost track of the number of such devices, and let workers cut their own expensive service deals at a cost to taxpayers of up to $500,000 a year in wasted wireless spending.
    “There are no policies, guidelines and procedures for voice telecommunications devices and service plans,” says the newly released document, dated last November.
    http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gXESeQyl_reFfz7E7Pjdp6BBQb5Q

  49. hardboiled – just a few items.
    First, the CPC’s advertising money wasn’t taxpayer money. The money was totally private, from private donations.
    This is in sharp contrast to the Liberals who used taxpayer money, hidden as ‘ad contracts’ to fund their Quebec ridings.
    Second, what they were doing isn’t illegal, and all parties do it – transfer money from national to local ridings and back.
    I concur with you that the Liberal corruption extended to the RCMP.
    The CPC did not lie about Income Trusts. The definition of a lie is to deny an act or statement that has already been carried out. The PROMISE not to tax income trusts was broken. That’s not a lie; it’s a broken promise.
    There was a good reason to break this promise. The banks and other systems were getting in on the Income Trust grab bag, gathering in large sums of money that would not be subject to tax. This would lead to a huge tax shortfall for the govt, which would have to be made up by increasing personal, individual income taxes. The govt had no choice but to break its promise.
    Again, a lie and a promise are worlds apart.
    What is this ‘full run untested election law’? What is it and how does it grab your wallet?
    The Accountability Act? That was totally damaged by the Liberal Senate who changed it completely, including removing themselves from accountability. Kindly put your blame where it ought to be – the Liberals and the Senate.
    Appointed an ‘unelected bagman’ to Senate? What are you talking about?
    Caledonia? Ever heard of the OPP who are supposed to be enforcing the law? Obstructing the peace is not a federal offence; it’s up to the OPP.

  50. ted, how like a Liberal you are, to assert opinions with no evidence.
    How is Harper ‘greasing his palms’, Ted?
    Posted by: ET at April 28, 2008 4:09 PM
    ————-
    Reading comprehension problems, again, ET?
    This is a classic, ET, commentary. You put “greasing his palms’ in quotations, ET. In English grammar that means you are quoting someone and, in this case, quoting me. Now – and don’t squirm away from a direct question this time – please show me where I wrote that.
    Like I keep telling you over and over and over: When you see my name below a post, pause, think about it, read it again, pause, think about it, wait some time, type in a response slowly, pause, re-read what you’ve written, re-read what I’ve written, think about it and try to think if there is any connection between what you are writing and what I wrote (usually there is not) and then, after maybe pausing and reading a few more times… and only if no one is around to help you understand… click on “Post”. I’m not sure there is any other way around your obsession with my comments.

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