Documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer has a few questions for the people in involved in Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid.

h/t Black Mamba

In this article in the NP, Kevin Libin notes the uncivil and unproductive nature of Question Period, where “the men and women who represent us hoot noisily a their parliamentary rivals, loudly spit impromptu comments like delusional street preachers, and phonily guffaw at corny one-liners.”
It is an embarrassing and childish spectacle, largely because virtually every question is an insult, and not an actual question. This yes-or-no “question” from Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez is exemplary:

“Will the Prime Minister keep on acting like a tin-pot dictator who ignores democracy?”

Obviously, opposition MPs weren’t looking for answers per se. When Ignatieff opened the fall session with the question “When will the government start listening to the real priorities of Canadians?” and, later, “When will the Prime Minister put an end to the politics of division and fear…” he wasn’t asking for a date and a time, and neither were opposition MPs like the NDP’s Glen Thibeault, who asked “When will the Conservatives stop playing wedge politics…”, or Lib Maria Minna, who demanded to know “When will the Conservatives stop making poor decisions with taxpayers’ money….”, or NDP MP Megan Leslie, who asked “When is the government going to put aside partisan games and shameless vanity…”
NDP leader Jack Layton, too, had a pressing and highly specific question about the government’s time frame:

“When will the Prime Minister realize that he is making bad decisions for ordinary people?”

Um, next Thursday, at 3:36 pm?
The opposition wasn’t just interested in knowing when, they also demanded to know why: “Why does the government choose to listen to the NRA and not to Quebeckers?” “Why is the Prime Minister so indifferent and incompetent…” “Why is the government determined to divide Canadians on this issue…” Ralph Goodale: “Why so out of touch with ordinary Canadians?” Bob Rae: “Why are the Conservatives prejudiced against democracy in Canada?” Liberal MP Geoff Regan: “Why can those characters not behave responsibly?” Ignatieff, again: “Why is the government so insensitive to the needs of these families…”
The prize for the most disingenuously, entirely rhetorical question has to go to Michael Ignatieff, who asked a question that began –

Is it any wonder, with that record…”

On Tuesday Sun TV News withdrew its application for the Category 1 license that would have required satellite and cable companies to carry the channel.
Here’s what one member of the “I get to decide what views are acceptable in this country” crowd had to say:

It is a huge victory for every Canadian who took time to write, email, phone or other wise (sic) protest this grotesque plan to move Canadian political culture to the far right.

That is one powerful TV station.

Susan Jacoby tells a personal anecdote that nicely encapsulates the progressive West’s moral drift:

An 80-year-old friend of mine — a woman of forceful intellect who used to teach Renaissance history — now lives in a Florida retirement community where many of the part-time staff are teenaged children of recent Afghan immigrants. When my friend saw one of her favorite young Afghan-American women — a high school senior — weeping in the dining room, she asked what was wrong. “Oh, madam professor,” the girl replied, “my father has arranged for me to meet my future husband. He is 40 years old, and the wedding will take place in six months. I wanted so much to go to college, and this will not be permitted.”

When Jacoby’s friend reassured the distressed woman that no woman in America has to marry someone just because her parents tell her to, another resident chastised her for her lack of cultural sensitivity, telling her, “We have no right to interfere with her culture, her religion, her family.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls’ genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs and stones them for falling in love….The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better.

When the CBC, or CTV, or any network – whether it’s CNN, MSNBC, ABC, or any other – is the subject of either a newspaper news story or opinion column, the headline will inevitably describe the network by it’s name, not by a euphemistic slur; you’ll never see the headline “The LPC Promotional Network Thwarts Access to Information Requests,” for example, in a story about the CBC. Yet for some reason newspaper headlines commonly refer to Sun TV News as “Fox News North.” Try it: if you Google “Fox News North,” you’ll get more than twice as many results as by Googling the actual name, “Sun TV News.”
The phrase “Fox News North” is typically put in quote marks, of course, to indicate that the headline writer is using a euphemism, a slur, or, in most instances, both. Scott Feschuk’s piece at Macleans.ca, for example, is titled “The secret script for ‘Fox News North‘”; another Macleans article has the headline “Can ‘Fox News North‘ win its next battle?” The Canadian Press published a report titled “‘Fox News North‘ set to launch in Toronto.” The The Financial Post published “‘Fox News of the North‘ to launch in Canada”.
On and on it goes. Reuters: “‘Fox News North‘ channel set to launch in Canada.” The Globe and Mail: “Margaret Atwood takes on ‘Fox News North.'” Toronto Life: “Fox News North accepts defeat.”
Sometimes the intended slur is used absent the quotes, which, in proper grammatical usage, indicates that it’s the actual name of the proposed network. Heather Mallick’s article in The Star was titled “Fox News North is a rancid idea”; in the National Post, Tasha Kheiriddin’s piece – and she’s a supporter of Sun TV News’ application – was titled “Fox News North a welcome addition to Canadian media jungle”; Norman Spector’s story in The Globe And Mail was headlined “The real deal behind Fox News North.”
When a headline uses the correct name, Sun TV News, the phrase “Fox News North” inevitably finds its way into the text. This G&M column by John Doyle, titled “I Guess Sun TV News only works if shoved down our throats,” goes on to say “The really interesting thing all this shows about the proposed Fox News North is that…” This news story in The Star, headlined “Former Harper spokesman leaves Sun TV News”, then refers to “Quebecor’s bid to launch a new cable news network that critics have dubbed ‘Fox News North.'”
“Critics have dubbed…”
That’s the whole point, isn’t it? It’s a slur, intended as a scare-tactic, used by critics who want to stop the channel from being approved by the CRTC. So why do so many “news” organizations – particularly those who support the application – use the term in their headlines? Why aren’t dismissive slurs used in the headlines of stories about other networks?
Free advice to outlets who support the application to the CRTC: Stop using the detractors’ sneering description of the proposed network in your headlines. Use its real, actual name instead – Sun TV News.
What a concept.

“Whoops…”

America, it’s time for a combover:

“Donald Trump, the property magnate and reality television host, has declared his interest in running for president of the United States, saying that ‘somebody has to do something, because we are losing this country.'”

Britain is the home of a surprising number of environmental-activist groups. If you follow the links to the “partners” of British climate-doom website One Hundred Months (“We have 100 months to save our climate“) you’ll start to grasp the extent of it. One organization, Plane Stupid, (“Bringing the aviation industry back down to earth!“) demands a ban on domestic flights and aviation advertising; another protests against renewable (bio) fuels, while another suggests we can get “free energy from air.”
If you spend enough time tooling around these sites it becomes apparent that in many, if not most cases, the activists’ concern for the environment pales in comparison to their level of self-righteousness and self-obsession. This recycling, eco-village-building whiz (gallery here), who describes herself – in the third person – as someone whose “life is organized on a logical basis,” and who “tends to control life, organising systems and people,” is fairly typical of those for whom environmental activism is essentially a tool used to draw attention to their too-too special selves.
When you look at the middle-or-upper class “activists” on display here and here, you have to wonder: if they honestly and truly believed that their actions were being undertaken in the interest of saving the planet – the baby animals, and the third-world poor – from a looming climate apocalypse, would they be acting so amused, and having so much giggly fun? If they were instead protesting, say, an ongoing genocide, would there be so much celebratory, “look-at-me” merrymaking?

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 23rd, Barrack Obama said:

Yesterday, I put forward a new development policy that will pursue these goals, recognizing that dignity is a human right…

We’ll have to wait to see how that one pans out. In the meantime, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, described as the inventor of the world wide web, claims that “a right to the freedom to access the internet could even be linked back to Magna Carta.”
JuliaM’s priceless response:

I’m pretty certain when that was written, the right to 24 hour access to ‘Maidens who doth show some ankle!’ and the ability to download the latest hot top ten madrigal wasn’t foremost in their thoughts…

The Japanese government has set new national guidelines under which businesses would face massive fines if their employees’ bellies exceed a certain circumference:

Companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of all employees and family members over the age of 40…(Japanese company) NEC (is) facing 19 million dollars in penalties if it’s employees don’t slim down.

So…who’s hiring?

Go green, and stay in bed with painful cramps:

(Investigators from Channel 7 news in Denver) tested several reusable bags…and took the lab results to Dr. Michelle Barron, the infectious disease expert at the University of Colorado Hospital.

‘Wow. Wow. That is pretty impressive,’ said Barron. ‘Oh my goodness! This is definitely the highest count,’ Barron commented while looking at the bacteria count numbers. ‘We’re talking in the million range of bacteria,’ she said.

C.S. Lewis:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.”

10:10 founder Franny Armstrong:

“What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody’s existence on this planet? Clearly we don’t really think they should be blown up, that’s just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?”