Prime Minister v. President:
…
Harper appeared to marvel at just how tied an American president’s hands are, not just by constitutional checks and balances, but with bureaucrats, cabinet secretaries and senior advisors all weighing in to counter or contradict actions a president may wish to take. A Canadian prime minister with a majority and cabinet government has much more room to act, he said…”
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Barack Obama, January 2009:
“We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.”
“Editors at the journal Science are taking very seriously a request by the NSABB to publish only an abbreviated version of a research report related to a strain of H5N1 avian influenza virus,” Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts said in a statement.
“At the same time, however, Science has concerns about withholding potentially important public health information from responsible influenza researchers.”
Iceland’s fear of the euro collapsing has caused one of Iceland’s political parties to openly suggest the idea of going Canadian and dropping the idea of EU membership and currency.
h/t Adrian
An excellent reminder why we always put economic statistics into “Charty-Goodness” form.
And Merry Christmas to my Canadian friends.
Attawapiskat and Atikokan: A tale of two northern towns
| A CBC poll goes horribly wrong… |
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Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Montreal Gazette, Nov. 19th;
The White House sent new signals Sunday that President Barack Obama may be forced to kill TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oilsands pipeline if his administration is forced to make a decision on the project within 60 days.
Gene Sperling, a senior economic adviser to Obama, told CNN that legislation requiring a final ruling on Keystone XL within two months could doom the pipeline because there’s not enough time to complete a new environmental review.
John Mauldin.com (free subscription);
“Which brings us to the rather strange case of the Keystone XL Pipeline project….”
(bumped, because this graphic deserves wider distribution)
Pleasing your enemies does not turn them into friends.
… from skepticemia:
In the climate realm, fabrication is also rife. Enthralled by their emotional biases, sceptics mouth desperate appeals to the corruptibility of scientists, or to the fallibility of climate prediction models.
To err is human and we should forgive many their inability to constrain the draw of the emotions. But this failure is inexcusably egregious in our politicians who are steering the ship for the long voyage, not just around the next reef. To those who still succumb to immediate gratification at the expense of our long-term good, I say welcome any Christmas gifts on brain bugs and emotional intelligence with open arms. Our grandchildren’s future could depend on it.
“Cavoukian better hope that censorship isn’t expanded to talentless hacks who offend the musical sensibilities of anyone who has outlived kindergarten.”
Tonight, for your musical pleasure, the Beegie Adair Trio plays an agreeably mellow instrumental version of Mel Tormé’s modern Christmas classic The Christmas Song.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
SDA gets results: Saskatchewan orders math education review
Faster, please.
It’s what you get when you cross a congressional investigation with 300 dead Mexicans.
h/t Adrian, via Zerohedge.
Via OTB: North Korea “Mourns” The Death Of Kim Jong-il.
New developments in Obama’s handover of Iraq to Iran…
We interrupt President Obama’s celebration of keeping a campaign promise to bring you news from Iraq, where a political crisis has been unfolding since just hours after Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta departed on Thursday. The ethno-sectarian settlement achieved at such cost to Iraqis and Americans is unraveling rapidly. The principal Sunni bloc has withdrawn its members from the Iraqi Parliament and is threatening to withdraw from the government altogether within two weeks unless Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki adheres to the written commitments he made during the negotiations to form a government.
Maliki prompted their action by arresting and torturing the bodyguards of Sunni vice president Tariq al Hashemi. Multiple unconfirmed reports indicate that on Thursday night, Maliki moved elements of the Baghdad Brigade, commanded by his son, to surround the residences of Sunni political figures, including Hashemi. In retaliation for the Sunni parliamentarians’ walkout, Maliki has demanded a no-confidence vote for Sunni deputy prime minister Salah Mutlaq, and indicated his intent to bring charges against Hashemi and others for conspiring to assassinate him.
[…]
Above all, however, now is the time to show that this administration actually cares about what happens in Iraq. It is not enough for the vice president to phone it in. The secretary of state should go to Baghdad, not to celebrate our withdrawal, but to play an active role in mediating the aftermath. Obama should invite Maliki and his Sunni and Kurdish counterparts to a summit somewhere in the West to hash this out. If not, we will no doubt be treated to yet another series of visits by Iraqi leaders to Tehran as the Iranians again demonstrate their willingness to engage where Americans withdraw.
Arab springs eternal;
The fire that broke out in a Cairo library that houses thousands of rare documents raised concerns over the government’s and the army’s ability to protect historic sites at times of upheaval and drove several experts to warn of a possible intervention by foreign entities to preserve the heritage at risk.
Legal and archeological experts described failure to contain the fire that devoured large parts of the Scientific Complex in downtown Cairo and to rescue the priceless maps, manuscripts, and books kept inside as a disaster and warned that the possibility of similar acts of sabotage would make foreign intervention very likely.
Haggag Ibrahim, deputy chairman of the Association for the Preservation of Heritage and member of the Higher Commission for Museums, labeled those involved in setting the Scientific Complex on fire “the new Tatars” who want to erase all aspects of culture in the country.
“Those are the grandchildren of the Tatars who burned the library of Baghdad when they invaded the Muslim world,” he told Al Arabiya.
According to Ibrahim, UNESCO is now capable of placing historic sites in Egypt under international protection since Egyptians proved unable to do so themselves.
“Some countries like France might take this initiative.”
I wish I could disagree with him, but I can’t find fault in what Mark Steyn is saying.
Is it not mind-boggling that after the conservative Tea Party revolution in the Republican Party that the two leading contenders ending up being Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich?
Related: The gents at Ricochet discuss the situation with Glenn Reynolds.
Two years after the Airbus 330 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, Air France 447’s flight-data recorders finally turned up. The revelations from the pilot transcript paint a surprising picture of chaos in the cockpit, and confusion between the pilots that led to the crash.