34 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. Today’s Toronto Star featured a predictable Labour Day article on the alleged resurgence of Karl Marx, written by extreme leftist York poli sci professor Leo Panitch.
    He trots out the usual drivel, such as that the state can “wither away” (even though the Marxist implementation of violence gives encouragement to the worst among humanity, who won’t lightly give up their privileges of political power) and that Marx would not have approved of the East European communist regimes.
    He says: “Marx had no illusions that the purely economic contradictions of capitalism would bring about a better world”. There is no such thing as an “economic contradiction”; contradictions are a matter of logic. And capitalism has brought about a much better world than the socialist alternative ever has, or can.
    And this: “Marx knew that capitalism, by its nature, fosters social isolation leaving ‘no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment’”. That’s one of the major virtues of capitalism: it respects the fact that relationships between individuals are voluntary and based on trade for mutual benefit (which can include the emotional trades of love, friendship, etc.). It is based on recognition of the nature of human reality. When some have to subordinate their self-interest to others, the result is slavery.
    Finally, Panitch says that “Marx today would encourage the formation of those types of collective identities, associations and institutions through which people could redefine their needs and develop their ambitions and capacities to fulfil them by winning the battle for economic democracy. This is something no capitalist society can ever become”. There is no such thing as “economic democracy”. When socialists suggest people “redefine their needs”, it’s always in a downward direction; I think of the horrors of deprivation in Castro’s Cuba when I hear phrases like this. Giving in to “collective identities, associations and institutions” means ceding power to the vicious power-hungry goons that advocate socialism. I wrote in one of yesterday’s threads that the left employs an anti-concept called “democratization” in which they try to extrapolate the concept of democracy (which refers to nothing more than electing a government) to a vast array of things, most of them economic, where democracy is not valid, such as grain production. This is another example.

  2. The Executive Office of the President wants to know more about you. The link is to a 51 page soliciation for a contract for the ‘capture of information’ from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and virtually any internet site.
    Materials to be captured includes {but is not limited to} text, photos, and video. And under section 12.2.1, the Contractor agrees to complete secrecy.
    Nothing to worry about here folks, Obama’s lookin’ out for you.
    http://www.nlpc.org/sites/default/files/RFQ_WHOS090003.pdf

  3. TO Red Star*: Iggy is bobbobbobbing along.
    RetroIggy’s WayBack Machine.
    “the new Liberal slogan, “We Can Do Better,” is the same slogan used by former Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield in the 1972 federal election.”
    Wiki confirms:
    Stanfield in his underwear, 1972: “A Progressive Conservative government will do better.”
    But, some experts say, surveys say, critics point out, that Wiki is not reliable. Wiki may have been torqued by hackers?
    Iggy says, We can do butter.
    Star pines for the good old days, the Dionky days:
    “Climate change is a good example. While Ignatieff attacks Harper for his failure to come up with a meaningful climate change strategy, the Liberals have no policy of their own.
    Under Stéphane Dion, the Liberals advocated a revenue-neutral carbon tax, recognizing that any serious approach to dealing with climate change required a clear price on carbon.”
    But, Iggy says, We can do butter.
    No, Iggy. Zap! You’re frozen toast.
    *http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/691301

  4. “The reviews are in….
    Since Warren Kinsella is the Master Strategist of the Liberal party, it is interesting to see his take on the Ignatieff ads. Here’s the quote:
    “I like the French ones, naturally, because they’re edgier. It’s going to be an edgy election, after all.”
    He didn’t say, “I like the French ones best.” He said he likes the French ones. Meaning? He did not like the English one. He was, with silence, agreeing with Chuckercanuck that the english ad is about as compelling as that Al Pacino movie where he plays a geezer professor who bags a twentysomething hottie and she doesn’t mind that he got up 4 times in the night to go to the washroom (oh yeah, 88 minutes of crap).
    But the giggle worthy part of the Kinsella quote: the french ads are “edgier”. This is true in the way that its true that Shefferville is colder than Labrador City in the winter: the french ads are about as edgy as a circle. If, as Mr. Kinsella promises, the election will be full of edges like these ads, then we are likely to be asleep by day 7 of the campaign.
    And for all the nerf-made edginess, the ads are insulting to Quebeckers. Canada was never a world leader in the fight against climate change. To pretend that we were once world leaders in the fight against climate change asks us to accept an alternate reality in which, to quote the great Iggy himself, “we didn’t get it done.”

  6. Why is Naomi Wolf Howling?
    http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36225
    (Article by Robert Spencer)

    How interesting that the same things that Western feminists have scoffed at for decades — “marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home” — become warmly appealing when they see them in the Islamic world.

    Those feminazis have lost the debate already because they’ve contradicted themselves 100%.

  7. You’ll like (some obviously won’t!) my post this morning about the Liberals’ de-motivating (for them) electoral chances. Especially the hilarious video of using an apparently well-made Barney doll as target practice (who’d ever a thunk dat da leettle bugger was darn’ near immortal?).
    Poor Liberals. Iggy’s leading them straight into the tar pit. It’s either become PM NOW or to hell with the whole thing, as far as he’s concerned. He’s ready to get off the pot if he can’t get ‘er done quick.
    http://thecanadiansentinel.blogspot.com/2009/09/libs-want-election-fine-their-funeral.html

  8. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars webcast:
    Black and White and Red Ink All Over: Newspapers in Peril
    September 08 2009, 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. [Eastern]
    Leonard Downie, Jr., Former Executive Editor, The Washington Post; Allison Silver, Founder, The Washington Independent; Paul Starr, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University; Gabor Steingart, Washington Bureau Chief, Der Spiegel.
    By many accounts, American newspapers are in peril. As advertising revenues shrink, so, too, does the number of reporters. Newspapers are shuttering their overseas bureaus and curtailing investigative journalism. Meanwhile, new journalistic platforms are emerging in the form of blogs, twitters, and on[snip] newspapers, and the media are turning to “volunteer newshounds” and “citizen journalists” for analysis as well as tips. What does this mean for journalists, their profession, and the standards of reporting? And what does it mean for the American public and their ability to make informed decisions about the critical matters that affect them?
    [The video should be available on demand later in the week.]

  10. Fred, I have yet to see any MSM article on how it could be possible that polls are accurate to “plus or minus 1.9% 19 times out of 20” when a dozen polls taken within 1 week of each other show swings of 10% for the various parties.
    Either that are some extremely fickle Canadians who float whichever way the breeze blows on any particular day, or the polls are not as accurate as they claim. Why doesn’t ANYONE challenge the veracity of the polls?
    That was a rhetorical question.

  11. Eeyore, we need Rasmussen doing polls up here. It would be interesting to see poll numbers of actual likely voters vice what we get from our betters in the media.

  12. Media Polls;
    Anyone ever seen the raw data ?
    A list of those chosen to be polled ?
    Could they be a fraud ?
    Does the Media have political ideology bias ?
    dots dots dots

  16. Pig Flu News from the left-liberals.
    Liberal-left panic/fear mongering with models?
    Miss Piggy protests that she is offended and will press charges with the PIGRights Commission.
    Red Alert: >>> “behind the scenes, teams of mathematicians, physicists and other numerically inclined folks who are doing the groundwork that helps those officials make their policies.”
    …-
    “Swine flu models preparing Canada for pandemic”
    urlm.in/czre

  18. Pig Flu Panic is the proxy for The State, Our Enemy.
    …-
    “France to use swine flu to gut laws: report
    In case of a swine flu pandemic the French government has a plan to introduce emergency measures that would gut legal protections for citizens, the daily Liberation reported Tuesday.
    According to documents provided to the daily by a judges’ union, the plan would extend the period police can keep a suspect in detention without charge or a hearing before a judge to up to six months.
    Suspects would also not be able to contact a lawyer until after spending 24 hours in custody.”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2334661/posts

  19. Canadian Sentinel @7:36 – Naomi Wolf is the worst kind of academic feminist; not only is she a fundamentally stupid woman, a daft socialist, humourless, ludicrouly self-involved, and a smug inhabitant of Planet Harvard, she’s not even crazy. She’s too bourgeoise to be crazy. Say what you like about Germaine Greer, (for example), but however nasty, and however much in earth-orbit, she has a certain bold, loopy energy and spirit. Betty Friedan was pretty much wrong but she had brains and a position to argue. Naomi is just a dull, earnest, conformist memsahib, and now she’s doing her 21st c. Marie Antoinette routine, dressing up as an islamic yokel. This is a woman who’s based half her career on being pretty while publishing books about how awful it is that women feel the need to look pretty.
    I’ve read a couple of her books. I realized “The Beauty Myth” was paint-by-numbers-paranoid crap when I was in my early teens.
    Back then Camille Paglia was calling her “Little Miss Pravda”.

  20. Now that I remember, I even saw her speak once. I don’t remember anything about it, but I assume I could have been wasting my time in a better way.

  21. O’narcissist’s legacy*:
    *”Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of the narcissist.”
    *”This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.”
    As the MSM says, the numbers are compelling.
    …-
    “”We worked so hard for real change,” the petition reads. “President Obama, please demand a strong public health insurance option in your speech to Congress. Letting the insurance companies win would not be change we can believe in.”
    “Health Deals Anger Former Obama Staffers, Supporters
    President Obama has said in recent weeks that he still supports a government-sponsored health insurance plan, or “public option,” but he has stopped short of calling it a necessary element of health care reform. For tens of thousands of his supporters, that is not good enough.
    More than 70,000 former Obama campaign staffers, volunteers and donors have signed a petition, spearheaded by the liberal group the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, saying as much.
    “We worked so hard for real change,” the petition reads. “President Obama, please demand a strong public health insurance option in your speech to Congress. Letting the insurance companies win would not be change we can believe in.”
    The PCCC is organizing the petitioners to gather in front of the White House today just after Noon, to protest the potential abandonment of the public option, a proposal the president once said “must” be included in a reform package, as part of a health insurance exchange, or “marketplace” from which consumers can choose from various insurance plans.
    Of the more than 70,000 who have signed the petition, more than 400 are former Obama staffers, about 25,000 were volunteers for Mr. Obama and 40,000 donated money to his presidential campaign”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2334653/posts
    *”The “small people”, the “rank and file”, the “loyal soldiers” of the narcissist – his flock, his nation, his employees – they pay the price.
    The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing.
    The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated – is drawn-out.
    It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate.
    Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of the narcissist. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.”
    http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections

  24. O’narcissist*: ODS virus is mutating/spreading.
    “was reported in the gay press but passed without national notice.”
    ““I want change”.
    …-
    “Adviser losing patience with Obama
    One of President Barack Obama’s former top campaign advisers is “losing patience” with the White House, he told POLITICO Tuesday morning, as frustrations among the president’s liberal allies crest over issues from health care legislation to gay rights.
    “I am one of the millions of frustrated Americans who want to see Washington do more than it’s doing right now,” said Steve Hildebrand, the deputy campaign manager who oversaw the Obama campaign’s field organization and was an architect of his early, crucial victories over Sen. Hillary Clinton in Iowa and South Carolina.
    Obama, he said, “needs to be more bold in his leadership.”
    “I’m not going to just sit by the curb and let these folks get away with a lack of performance for the American people,” he said, speaking of Washington’s Democratic leadership as a whole. “I want change just as much as a majority of Americans do, and I’m one of the many Americans who are losing patience.”
    Hildebrand is by far the most senior member of Obama’s political team to express public doubts about the White House, though he had already begun to part ways with Obama’s other top aides as the 2008 presidential campaign wore on.
    Hildebrand was a key player in the primary campaign but grew increasingly alienated from the organization over, a person close to him said, strategic differences. Other top campaign officials grew frustrated with what they saw as Hildebrand’s at times negative attitude and his candid comments to the press, rare in the intensely disciplined campaign.
    Still, he remains close to some top Obama aides, and his blast from the left is a mark of the depth of dissent even within elements of the organization that elected the first black president. His public comments are “nothing I haven’t directly said to folks in the White House,” Hildebrand told POLITICO in an interview from his native South Dakota, where he came to prominence running former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s political operation.
    Hildebrand broke his long post-campaign silence in a speech to the San Diego Democratic Club on August 22, which was reported in the gay press but passed without national notice. Hildebrand, who is gay, confirmed the comments reported in Zenger’s Newsmagazine, though he said the article’s assertion that he’d made a “slashing attack” on Obama was “over the top.”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2334710/posts
    *”Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of the narcissist. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.”
    http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections

  26. This is So Big Breaking News that CTV has sent it to the bottom of the heap, So in other words No One cares! Who gives a royal crapolla & please, please if there is an election keep her out of the debates FGS..
    Elizabeth May seeks federal nomination in B.C
    ctv.ca
    *May has announced she will seek the nomination in Saanich Gulf Islands, the B.C riding currently held by Conservative Gary Lunn…

  27. Amazing logic (or lack thereof):
    http://peelpolice.ca/News/Media%20Archive.aspx?MainContent=2500
    Where did you, dumb asses, think the kids were prior to Sep 8th? Like, huh, are the kids deserving of police protection only IF and WHEN they are attending public school?
    All summer walking with the kids we observed speeding motorists, drivers not checking mirrors when pulling out of driveways, not stopping for signs (not even slowing down, actually), driving on the wrong side of the road, with no headlights in limited visibility, and the list goes on.
    All of a sudden Sep 8th comes and there is, voila, zero tolerance policy. Don’t worry, inconsiderate drivers! It will weather off in a matter of a few days, maybe a week, and you’ll be able to continue to be rude and inconsiderate that you are during the rest of the year. Yawn, back to doughnut shop.

  32. Vitruvius,
    Let me be the first to comment on your selection of “tonight’s tune”….a well chosen classic by Mr. ‘Mandolin’ hisself! Thanks!
    “Is it true that music DOES soothe the savage beast?”

  33. Another fine choice of tune, Vito. I always thought “Old Daingerfield” just didn’t get no respect!

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation