A most interesting article about Sarah Palin has appeared in the NY Times. It actually appears to be … wait for it … in support of much of her message.
At a recent speech in Iowa, Palin touched upon several themes that should strike chords with true conservatives. In doing so, she made a distinction between conservatives and big-government Republicans. Here’s a key section:

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.
On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

Well worth a read!
h/t Morris

What a Sun TV man is posting at his personal blog:

Friday, August 26
Details on the music, readings, and eulogies for Jack Layton’s funeral
by DavidAkin on Fri 26 Aug 2011 01:41 PM EDT
Eulogies from Stephen Lewis, Karl Belanger, and Mike and Sarah Layton; music from Richard Underhill, Lorrane Segato, and Steven Page and other details of Jack Layton’s funeral.
more »
The Bells of Parliament Hill ring out for Jack Layton
by DavidAkin on Thu 25 Aug 2011 11:09 AM EDT
This just in, the music programme today on Parliament Hill as Jack Layton final few hours lying in state in the foyer of the House of Commons:
Today Dr. Andrea McCrady, Dominion Carillonneur, will be playing the following program to commemorate the late Honourable Jack Layton, Leader of the Official Opposition.
more »
…

Might Mr Akin be being ironic?
Update: The conclusion of a piece byKevin Libin at the National Post’s “Full Comment”:

The crass exploitation of Jack Layton’s death
…
When columnists in this newspaper dared to crash the public shiva for Layton with controversial critiques of his deathbed letter or plans for his state funeral, they were vehemently attacked as insensitive and disrespectful to the dead. But there’s a point where publicly advertising your sympathy while calculatedly drawing attention to yourself looks awfully insensitive and disrespectful, too. Imagine if a company like Trek bicycles marked Layton’s passing by issuing press releases expressing grief, while advertising how much he enjoyed pedaling their durable, light, fast, and fun-to-ride two-wheelers. Or if Sleeman offered a public consolation while asking us to take comfort in the fact that his living years were made that much sweeter by the extra body and clean finish of their Silver Creek Lager. Even if there was some truth to the claims, we’d have no trouble recognizing them as crass exploitation of the man’s death for promotional purposes. When activists and non-profits spike their eulogies with commercials for their pet causes, the tactlessness may be slightly subtler. But it’s there, just the same.

Upperdate: Even one of the Ottawa Citizen’s house progressives, Janice Kennedy, can’t take it no more:

…A great deal has been embarrassingly over the top.
Hordes of sobbing strangers on the street, a questionable state funeral (with full television coverage), Imagine pealing out from the bells of the Peace Tower – all this reflects little but a collective popcultural desire to bathe in the waters of emotional excess.
To defend, as some experts have, this mass outbreak of recreational grief as appropriate because the public “knew” Jack is charitable, but awkward. Unless you know the deceased as family member, colleague or friend, you simply don’t know him on a level personal enough to permit full-bore, teardrenched grieving. “The nation’s grief,” as media call it, is manufactured…
Not only does the post-mortem hyperbole do nothing to honour Layton’s name or memory, it cheapens it, turning it into something so grotesquely untrue it becomes laughable…

Tee hee.
Uppestdate: Mr Akin keeps crankin’ em out:

NDP organize “celebrate Layton’s life” events across Canada
by DavidAkin on Fri 26 Aug 2011…
Sun News Network will have live coverage of Jack Layton’s state funeral from Toronto beginning at 1400 ET Saturday. But if you can’t make to Toronto (or to your TV set), the NDP have posted a list of places where well wishers and supporters will be gathering across the country.
“This Saturday, in communities across the country, people are coming together to watch Jack Layton’s Celebration of Life, live from Toronto. From St. John’s to Victoria and from Terrebonne to Courtenay, these large and small communities will have the opportunity to celebrate the life and honour the work of the popular New Democrat leader. Here is a list of events we have heard are taking place across Canada tomorrow…”

Beyond Uppestdate: Publius summarizes:

The Layton Lamentations
The Cult of Jack Grows and Grows!
Scenes from the mourning:
Christie Blatchford fails to genuflect to an idol of the age…
All this for an innocuous piece on Jack! Do recall the Leftist vitriol that flowed at the death of John Paul II. I doubt the writers of those slander pieces received a fraction of the hate directed at Ms Blatchford. Then again JP II was only a Pope…
There we have it. Dippers, Canada’s reality impaired community.

I think so but a friend of mine in Vancouver certainly doesn’t. Here’s the public conversation between us. His words are in regular type-face whereas mine are in italics:

Contrast [what is happening in France] with what is happening in the US where a President once asked: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country” J. F. Kennedy, 1961; A country that is the most generous in the world, can’t seem to get citizens who are more than capable, to shoulder more than its share of taxes for the good of their own country, except when asking its young to die at war.
So, if I understand you correctly, if my government, who already wastes oodles of our tax dollars, asks for even more then I’m unpatriotic if I say “Hell No!” ???
What about a government that strives to keep the rate of growth down to that below the inflation in the private sector?!?
The issue is not about condoning waste or efficiency, nor about patriotism. The issue is the willingness to give of ourselves more or not. With blessings and power comes responsibility – how we exercise it, is the issue. In terms of taxes, the top earners got reduced tax rates, which were to expire – the discussion is about the willingness of those who can, to pay more or not. In contrast, in the name of patriotism, the country has no problem in asking young people to die on their behalf at war (regardless of its value) but have excruciating difficulty asking those who can pay, to pay a little more. I find this quite odd.
http://ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

The conversation continues below but I’m posting this here to see what others on SDA would say to him. Please strive to be polite!

Continue reading →

It is often said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In America these days there appears to be a growing uncertainty amongst those who want President Obama defeated in November 2012 as to who would be the best Republican candidate.
Obama’s foot soldiers in the mainstream media are convinced that Jon Huntsman is the best candidate for the GOP. Any serious person should be most wary of their opinions because their ultimate goal is clear.
But still, the question of whether a true conservative candidate is electable is running through the minds of many on the Right. Several recent polls suggest that the likes of Bachmann and Palin cannot defeat Obama. However, if we look back 31½ years ago, something very interesting can be found. Back then, 7 months before the election, polls indicated that Jimmy Carter lead Ronald Reagan by an enormous 25 percentage points. Yet we all know what eventually happened.
The America of 2012 is arguably in a lot worse financial shape than in 1980. Indeed, life was not grand back then either, with unemployment & interest rates through the roof. While the latter is not the case right now, the former definitely is. Plus, America’s overall fiscal position is in much worse shape, with its debt at truly frightening levels.
Can a true conservative candidate get elected President in 2012? With America’s financial situation in terrible shape, and getting worse, and a sitting president unwilling to deviate from his Far Left Spend-Spend-Spend mantra, the odds seem probable.
h/t Mark Levin & Ken Kulak

“And why should the Globe and Mail care?” (h/t Adrian)

Think about it:

…
Does this portend the vigourous, burden-sharing foreign and defence policy that the prime minister has talked about? Or is it a public relations plan to distract attention from major cuts to expenditure on new ships, planes, and army equipment ?..

A question well worth asking. On verra, verily.

I’ve long thought of the Pivot Legal Society as a victim-baiting organization / Leftist front group. Perhaps elements of them actually are. But on the show that I photographed yesterday, I thought Katrina Pacey sounded more like a reasonable libertarian:

What say you?

Last Thursday evening, WABC’s John Batchelor had a guest co-host named Mary Kissel, who works for the Wall Street Journal. In one of the segments, they interviewed a journalist named McKay Coppins about a recent article of his. You can listen to the interview here beginning at 19:00 (about half-way through the podcast).
Mr. Coppins tried his best to defend what he was saying in the article but Batchelor & Kissel kept battering him with questions, eventually shattering to pieces his defense of Romney. Towards the end, Batchelor asks a most important question: “Doesn’t this suggest to us that Mr. Romney would do better in another party?”
Mitt Romney might be a nice guy, might look like a President, and absolutely does have a good track record in business. But he’s too much of a flimsy fellow when it comes to any core set of values and a concrete vision. Sometimes compromising is a good thing but often it’s absolutely the wrong thing to do.
America is in trouble. A whole lot of trouble. The next Republican American president simply cannot compromise when it comes to fixing the economy and restoring a large semblance of fiscal sanity to government spending. For if it’s more of the same then the whirlpool of financial ruin that the nation is cascading down into will only pull it down in a stronger fashion. That’s not a good thing for anyone in the world except America’s enemies.

Continued!

I was raised as a Roman Catholic. Up until my late teens I was a very strict follower of the faith, went to church every Sunday, etc. But then I gradually fell away from the Church. There were several reasons for this but here’s a recent story that reminded me of one of the most significant ones.
There have long been two distinct trains of thought within the Christian faith. One involves always turning the other cheek and providing constant handouts to whomever asks, no questions asked. The other involves holding transgressors accountable for their misdeeds and acts of charity more in line with “a hand up”. Ayn Rand’s philosophy is definitely connected with the latter. While I don’t agree with everything she has written, there’s absolutely no doubt that Atlas Shrugged had a profound effect on me when I read it in late 1993.
The earlier referenced news story refers to a group called American Values Network (AVN). Within the article, AVN is exposed for the frauds they actually are:

While the AVN is officially a non-partisan organization that wants to see Christians at the helm of both political parties, they’ve been vocal supporters for a number of Democratic initiatives, such as health reform and the anti-nuclear START treaty. They also focus on non-political initiatives such as medical aid for impoverished populations and housing aid for veterans, and advocate for morality-based policy solutions to climate change.

Reading between the lines, they’re mostly just a Leftist front group. The problem with that is that Leftism is, in practice, a religion (read “cult”) all on its own. Its precepts always supercede those of any formal religion. Leftists (aka “cult members”) can talk all they want about being Christian but in point of fact, that’s almost always just a talking point.
Getting back to the difference between a hand out and a hand up, Dennis Miller explains it another way: The Clueless versus the Helpless

Today, on the TV show I’m involved with, was a woman from Richmond, BC named Leila El-Khatib. She spoke with host, David Berner about Islam and about the Middle East:

What are your thoughts on what she had to say?

“I’m with the USDA, and I need to see the permit for your rabbit.”

The National Post must be applauded for their most recent editorial, “Wanted: Zero budgetary growth“. The question is, will Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty pay any attention to it?
The most basic of conservative principles is to live within one’s means. If a majority Conservative government in Canada won’t eliminate the annual deficit within a year or so, is the entire notion of conservative thought lost in our country for at least the next few decades?

Publius on the realities of our politics:

Harper by the Numbers
Terence Corcoran on Harpernomics…
The ordinary voter – who is reluctantly dragged to the polls every few years – pays scant attention to political affairs and virtually none to public policy. A half digested series of symbols and impressions fill out their understanding of our government’s role and its operations. The Conservatives (team blue) are the party of fiscal restraint, giving big business a free reign and criminals a hard knock. They are the party of hard practicality. The daddy party as some American commentators have dubbed their Republicans counterparts down south.
The NDP (team orange) are the party of idealistic granola chomping hippies, mouthing happy utopian pleasantries about social justice and being sorry for the poor and weak. The Liberals (team red) are the party of compromise. Some hard practicality (like balancing the budget during the Chretien-Martin era) matched with promises to help the poor and weak, and some nice freebies for the middle class (i.e. “average hardworking Canadian families”). Stephen Harper has successfully convinced enough of the Central Canadian middle class – through bland rhetoric and targeted tax credits – that the Conservatives are now the party of compromise…
It is a law of modern politics that you betray your base and flatter your enemies…

Read on. Publius can both think and write at the same time.

Fox:

Troops were deployed to help people get out and to throw up a security cordon around the stricken area, and residents throughout the city were urged to stay home or with neighbors and conserve water and food.
(…)
During hours of chaos in the city, people dug through rubble with their hands to free people trapped. Firefighters climbed extension ladders to pluck people stranded on roofs to safety. A crane lifted a team of rescuers on a platform to one group of survivors in a high-rise.
(…)
Officials had established relief centers in schools and community halls, where food was being served to thousands of sheltering people and donated blankets were being handed out. In at least one park in the city, people — many of them tourists who had abandoned their hotels — huddled in hastily pitched tents and under plastic sheeting. The Red Cross was working to secure accommodation for them.

Culture matters.

I really dislike the idea of the CRTC becoming involved in the Usage Based Billing policy.
I don’t, in the least, disagree with UBB. If the large communications companies weren’t under the purview of the CRTC, they would have been doing it years ago because it makes sense; use more, buy more. There is a lot of dark fibre in the urban rings, but that doesn’t string regions together. A couple of key technological improvements in fibre have expanded bandwidth by a factor of ten or more, but that has allowed the backbones to keep up rather than future-proofing.
In about ten years, given no more improvements, there is going to be a big infrastructure charge to supply the bandwidth that will be required. Without the ability to charge users for what they are using where is that money going to come from?
It would be ridiculous to think that any company will invest in that kind of expense from the goodness of their hearts so it will come down on the users instead, UBB ensures that it comes down on those demanding the bandwidth the most.
Currently the arguments I’ve heard from the tin-foil hatted types is that the successful communications companies were pushing this because of businesses like Netflix or Skype cutting into their market. That argument may be valid, but a person really should look at both sides of the coin. Netflix, Skype and similar are basing their businesses on not having to pay for the road they run on. They are taking advantage of the broadband that was put in place without them or their customers contributing to the pot.
Instead the average and below average user subsidizes the Torrent fiend and those same lower bandwidth users will be paying for the future requirements because the Netflix user can’t have jitter in their HD. How many garage start-ups are developing Internet provided rich media applications? How much more bandwidth is going to be required in the next few years for the next YouTube?
Making everyone pay the same price regardless of usage isn’t “fair”, it’s socialism.
Cheers,
lance
Updated: The CRTC decision.

The Religion of Pieces:

In Edmonton on Wednesday, RCMP officers arrested a 38-year-old Alberta man for his alleged role in the multinational terrorist group that carried out the bombing at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq.

Update: Extinction? We only wish Peter. H/T Mississauga Matt and I think Mazz2 for the vid.

Before anyone north or south of the border (or to the northwest) knee-jerks, do read this, and the links. Can you respond substantively?

Key differences between Canada and the US
I cannot imagine any Canadian political leader saying this with reference to, say, Jim Balsillie…