Welcome to SDA Late Night Radio, home of the ever-gracious Vitruvius. In keeping with the thoroughly eclectic nature of his entertaining selections, tonight we cross the briny North Atlantic, run aground on the rocks, then scramble ashore to watch a performance of one of the truly inspiring national anthems extant, Norway’s lovely Ja, vi elsker dette landet — “Yes, we love this country.”
It’s helpful and well worth it to read the English translation (verses one, seven and eight) while watching. Note also (unsung) verses three and four, and imagine the thrill of singing them at, say, a Winter Olympics biathlon medal ceremony.
Reader tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Beautiful thanks! That’s where my peeps is from. Happy to still remember a few words here and there.
Skål!!
So that’s what happened at Fredriksten! Thanks, EBD.
Aha, Erik, so there are other Norwegian spawn out there. My Mom’s of Norwegian descent, my dad was a Dane.
Vitruvius: The Norwegians in Fredrikshald burned their houses to keep them from the Swedes from getting their hands on them — a practice that continues to this day during tourist season.
Hey Vitruvius, I believe it was you who linked at some point to this must-read essay, “Can There Be an ‘After Socialism'”? by Alan Charles Kors. It’s a classic — should be read in every high school in the western world:
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth–722-Can_There_Be_After_Socialism.aspx
Choice excerpt: “The cognitive behavior of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society, on the one hand, and with the socialist ideal and then the socialist reality, on the other, takes one’s breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry ‘caste.’ In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either ‘poverty’ or ‘consumerism.’ In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry ‘alienation.’ In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry ‘oppression.’ In a society of boundless private charity, they cry ‘avarice.’ In a society in which hundreds of millions have been free riders upon the risk, knowledge, and capital of others, they decry the ‘exploitation’ of the free riders. In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry ‘injustice.’ In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like ‘liberty’ in quotation marks when these refer to the West….”
Word.
Aye, EBD, and they eliminated King Karl VII of Sweden too.
As long as we’re into stirring national anthems; **how about this Casablanca scene**
Sorry about the link. Try again
Antonia Zerbisias in Wednesday’s Toronto Star, commenting on the Conservative convention:
“Resolution P-213 … eliminates support for full gender equality as well as equal pay for work of equal value.”
“[It states] the party is all for ‘the full participation of women in the social, economic and cultural life of Canada’. But the phrase ‘gender equality’ was scrubbed and equal pay will only go for ‘equal work’.”
“That means male parking lot attendants can continue to make more than female child care workers, even if the latter have university educations and are entrusted with your precious kid instead of your car.”
In principle, people doing the same job equally well should earn the same income, and gender is certainly not a relevant consideration.
But the notion that women’s wages overall should exactly equal men’s is bizarre. There are many valid reasons why women overall don’t make the same amount; I don’t need to repeat them here. “Equality” means equality of opportunity, not equality of result. Nothing else. Ditto for most other areas where equality is an issue.
And the idea that unrelated jobs can be arbitrarily bunched and assigned an “equal” wage designation is strange too. Wages are essentially agreed upon by the employer and the employee (the latter can quit if he thinks it’s too low). If a government body were set up to determine them, you’d have yet another bunch of parasitical, unproductive bureaucrats adding nothing to the economy, thereby driving the standard of living down for everyone. Which is the last thing we need.
But then, that’s the goal of most leftists, to get themselves into paper-pushing positions where they can order other people around, not be held responsible for anything, and not have to accomplish anything productive.
I’m doing absolutely nothing of any value, shouldn’t I be getting the same salary as Jack Layton?
Peter: Taliban Jack’s one reason we have to invent the “negabuck”.
On Norwegians, CTV covered the opening (or maybe closing?) ceremonies of the Lillehammer Olympics, during which the anthem was played. Dan Matheson liked it, and made some comment about how there was no mention of bombs in it. Not knowing the words, all I could do was scowl at the teevee, “yeah, Dan, try an invasion sometime.”
Beautifully done. My husband’s 1/4 Norwegian, so I sent the link to his mom. I guess that makes my kids 1/8 Norwegian — better some Nors than none!!
Skål!
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/11/20/mike-harris-ontario-liberals-have-spent-the-province-into-have-not-status.aspx
Read this column by Mike Harris. Mikey come back we need you now! Kate, putting this column in SDA would generate a million comments.
My comment in the National Post column praising one of Ontario’s brightest lights.
Mike is exactly right in his hard-hitting column and I would love to see him back again.
Any Ontarian that lived through the dreadful Rae years saw what socialist policies could do to our province. If you didn’t get ready for the repeat. We were close to bankruptcy and devastated by this idiot. Even the public unions hated this clown yet today these same unions support the Liberals who are following the same program Rae/Peterson followed leading to the same result. Isn’t this the definition of insanity?
Liberal/NDP supporters simply refuse to see the real destruction caused by socialist policies whether in our schools, our streets or our economy
EBD – the comment about tourist season – coffee all over my keyboard doode!
We cut personal, capital, corporate and other taxes almost 200 times, dramatically reduced the size of government, forced the broader public sector to become much more efficient and eliminated Ontario’s massive deficit. We scrapped Bob Rae’s job-killing labour law and gave people a hand-up, not a hand-out, by creating work-for-welfare. In doing so, we created an environment that led to unprecedented economic growth, the creation of almost a million new jobs and 700,000 fewer people trapped in the cycle of welfare dependency. In 2002, our economy was booming and we had a budget surplus. Ontario was the envy of the world and the foundation was in place to ensure our province’s future prosperity. As I said in one of my last speeches as premier, I only regret that we didn’t move faster, and push even harder, to make the changes we did. – Mike Harris
The Mike Harris years, versus the previous Rae, Peterson regimes, were a real eye opener; my first and quite possibly my last real, actual, genuine Conservative leader governing as a Conservative( at least as close as it ever is going to get in Canada). Good times despite the constant revisionism you hear.
Time for another Common Sense revolution!! As a Rae Day survivor, I say let’s bring back Mike!!
Ha! The biggest whiners and complainers of Mike are the ‘Ministry’ people who saw the end to gravy train. We know many who are having a difficult time working for private (profit making) companies that expect production and accountability from their employees.
The elite are creeping back in to the provincial ministries(especially transport, education and health) once again with cushy admin jobs and attitudes that need adjusting.
Watch for Mcguinty to try to cut infrastructure and health funding (which employs Joe the Plumber and Jane the technician) but keep the pencil pushing elites in their unproductive offices.
Wow…just reading that from Mike gets me pumped…
Bring Back Harris!!!
Exhibit of Canadian MSM’s spiteful Aunty-Americanism: Canadian Leftist MSM’s self-loathing headline.
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“Bad U.S. news overshadows surprising Canadian strength”
Eric Beauchesne , Canwest News Service”
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NASA-Hansen et al: AGW Lying Liars.
The “nasa_giss_cockup_catalog”.
“The next day the data was adjusted yet again.”
“The Siberian hot spot was reduced, and the global anomaly stands – for now – at a whopping 0.25°C lower than their original announcement.”
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“NASA’s curious climate capers
Computer says: It’s getting warmer
There have been a few red faces at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in recent days, to match the predominant color of its October global temperature map. Based at Columbia University in New York, GISS is the division of NASA that is responsible for global climate data and is used by the media in assessing global warming. After analyzing the data, GISS reported that October 2008 was the warmest October since reliable record-keeping began in 1880. But there was something very wrong with the numbers.
Last week the October data started to be released. First, UAH (the University of Alabama at Huntsville) and RSS (Remote Sensing Systems) – the two groups that measure satellite data for lower troposphere – weighed in. The temperature anomaly for October was much the same as September, they reported approximately 0.2°C over the 1979-2000 average for each of those months.
But GISS, unlike UAH or RSS showed a startling jump, indicating the warmest October ever recorded.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/19/nasa_giss_cockup_catalog/
Listening to the anthem made me think of a letter written to a mother who lost her son on Black Friday Feb. 9/45:
“Oh God”, I sobbed. There he lay, thrown forward, his face and head bruised, but otherwise his body looked alright. We stood there, all three, unable to utter a word, each with our own thoughts. I began to weep, likewise my father and our friend. Here he lay, this young Canadian. He had given his life that we here in Norway might have our freedom, that our land might be freed from the foreign yoke which had bound it for almost five long years. Would it succeed? Had he for nought offered his life? A silent prayer went up to God who reigns on high, and who rules all in the world, for his mercy in this war of ours. Also a prayer of gratitude for him who lay before us, who had paid the greatest price possible, his very life. It was a sacred moment. God grant that he now sits at his Father’s right hand, and has received the eternal crown of glory.”
“Thinker-politicians like Jefferson, Adams and Madison were just as familiar as we are with the metaphor that likens created work to physical property, especially to a landed estate. But they thought of that landed estate in a new way – as the basis of a republic. An American’s land was his own – he owed allegiance to no sovereign – but his ownership imposed on him an almost sacred moral requirement to contribute to the public good. According to Hyde, this ethic of “civic republicanism” was the ideological engine that drove the founders’ conception of intellectual property, and to his mind, it undercuts the ethic of “commercial republicanism” that dominates our current conception of it.
Our right to property is not absolute; our possessions are held in trust, as it were. Seen through the prism of early civic Republicanism, Hyde asks, what might the creative self look like? Do we imagine that self as “solitary and self-made”? Or as “collective, common and interdependent”? ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/magazine/16hyde-t.html?partner=rss&emc
Good thing Prentice is such a lightweight, otherwise we could have had an Orwellian DRM written expressly to turn the record business into a litigious and government enforced utility earnings model.
“What climate change? Meltdown trumps fears at APEC”
Ass Press is asking that question? MSM is asking that question?
It’s a levorution. AGW ranks # 7.
APEC “announced Wednesday that climate change was the summit’s No. 7 priority, based on an annual survey of regional government officials, business people and academics. Last year, it was No. 4.”
http://tinyurl.com/6dktsb (google)
“RUSSIA GIVES NATO LAND BRIDGE TO AFGHANISTAN
Moscow, Nov 20 – Russia has granted NATO-member Germany permission to ship weapons and equipment for its force in Afghanistan overland through Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at kyivpost.com”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2135533/posts
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Commenter said:
“When two of your enemies are fighting, offer to hold their coats…………….”
Taliban Toilet Day.
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“Canadian-led mission flushes Taliban from Zhari”
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2008/11/20/7477451-cp.html
this cannot be.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24684263-421,00.html
The deadly accurate Andrew Coyne points out the obvious, as Clement scrambles to set his cheque writing machine to ‘high’…
Anyone proposing to bail out the auto industry, in whatever amount, is obliged at the least to answer the question: where does the money come from? The answer is not simply “the taxpayer.” If that were all, the immediate objection—why should taxpayers be dragooned into paying for cars that consumers won’t?—might be answered: because the alternative is worse. Indeed, bailout proponents argue, not bailing out the auto industry might cost the taxpayer even more.
But the cost of such subsidies is not borne only or even primarily by the taxpayer, but by all those industries and firms that don’t get bailed out. It’s what economists call the opportunity cost: all the capital that subsidy traps in one industry is capital denied to other industries; all the sales diverted to one firm are sales diverted from its rivals; all the jobs “created” in one part of the economy are jobs destroyed elsewhere. Indeed, the cost of subsidy grows rather worse the more the subsidy “succeeds.” For then the diversion, from the efficient and competitive to the inefficient and uncompetitive, is made permanent.
Just in case you thought conservatism existed in our Liberal lite government.
Uh oh. Mr. Page is somewhat strangled by not being independent, but thanks to the Cons, he’s been indentured to librarians by design. Liberating him might be more difficult now, especially by stating fact….
OTTAWA – Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page told MPs Thursday that Canada’s deficit next year could be as high as $13 billion and that Conservative government decisions to cut the GST and raise government spending are to blame, not global economic events.
“The weak fiscal performance to date is largely attributable to previous policy decisions as opposed to weakened economic conditions,” Page wrote in his first report to parliamentarians on the government’s economic and fiscal position.”
Shame the Cons cut a consumption tax, versus reforming the Income Tax Act (I didn’t see that in their platform, come to think of it…).
And increasing the structural size of government by 20% when the nation’s inflation rate was 9% over the same period….well….you get the idea.
This is your Dad’s Conservative Party!!!
But Harper said his government’s tax and spending policies have helped the Canadian economy weather the economic crisis better than its peers.
“The government undertook last year, as the crisis began, to act earlier than most other countries, engaging in long term fiscal stimulus both on the tax side and in infrastructure investments. We make no apologies for them. Those actions deliberately reduced the size of the surplus,” Harper said in the House.
So, increased spending reduced the size of the surplus. Boy, never saw that coming.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=37e84a85-2ccb-4309-9a0e-cd3dde432de2
And hey, while the Libranos are done for awhile, it’s never a good thing when a ‘conservative’ government – left to itself – ends up sounding like a Liberal government.
Unless they have something in common. Wonder what that is?
Of course they have something in common, Hardboiled:
they have to win elections in order to be the government.
Why is this so hard for you to understand?
Yes hardboiled increased spending reduced the surplus. Now here is the hard part: Why was there a surplus in the first place? Running a surplus is almost as evil as running a deficit. Both are acceptable in the short term but to extend surplus or deficit over a period of terms means you don’t know how to budget and the people have no real idea what kind of financial state the government is in.
Ignore hardboiled. It’s the same tripe day in, day out.
We get it. You’re soooo much more conservative than anybody else in the room. Except, of course, the room is empty, as everyone long realized you’re a bit of a jerk.
An AGW world of bee-ess in this string of cliches:
““The economic realities of recent months have created challenges for everyone in our business.”
This is the crown jewel cliche:
“we expected that there would be cost synergies as part of company reorganization.”
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“Weather Channel axes staff
The Weather Channel, which NBC Universal bought in September, has laid off some of its staff. It is unclear how many people were cut or whether they are receiving a severance package.
NBC Universal and Weather Channel officials would not comment beyond a statement.
“The economic realities of recent months have created challenges for everyone in our business. In addition, when NBC Universal purchased the Weather Channel earlier this year, we expected that there would be cost synergies as part of company reorganization. While it is always difficult to lose valued employees, we are doing our best to minimize the impact, and remain committed to providing the highest quality content that our viewers have come to expect from the Weather Channel.””
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/20/weather-channel-axes-staff/
EBD wrote: “Can There Be an _After Socialism_?”
We’ve got to use the Microsoft tactic of ’embrace, extend and extinguish’. For decades now we’ve been embracing and extending, so…
EBD, a very inspiring choice. Lovely harmonies, and looking at the Norse goddesses singing them wasn’t too difficult either.
The translation reveals that they haven’t given away too much to political correctness either.
This country Harald united
with his army of heroes,
this country Håkon protected
whilst Øyvind sung;
upon the country Olav painted
with his blood the cross,
from its heights Sverre spoke
up against Rome.
Hey Vit – why is holding Harper to his pledges, words, and actions so very hard for you to understand?
‘Mindless partisanship’ is a self explaining phrase.