.
Watching the reaction from some in the “progressive” camp over Harper’s habit of closing his speeches with “God Bless Canada”, my suggestion to our incoming Prime MInister is this: Faster, Please.
The greater part of the success of the Bush administration’s ability to win elections lies, not in the electoral support of the so-called “religious right” (which is more media mythology than reality) , but in their ability to provoke the “loony left” to come unhinged in front of ordinary Americans.
When a conservative invokes God, no matter how generically, the left cannot help but expose their seething intolerance of all things Christian – thus, shining a spotlight on the highly selective nature of the “diversity” they champion.
The Paul Martin Liberals started well down this path during the last election campaign, the last few days illustrated by the bizarre behavior and “warnings” (abortion! child labour!) erupting from the leader himself. What Conservatives can do now is to quietly keep pushing them along on that path. With a little luck, and the inevitable cheerleading from media, a few more “God Bless”‘s might just encourage the type of Harper “Derangement Syndrome” from “progressives” that helps keep US Democrats out of office.
See above.
Addendum:
Fact Checking the Calgary Herald:

Gore warned that Harper wants to remove Canada from the Kyoto accord, which the United States signed under former president Bill Clinton, but has refused to ratify under President George W. Bush.

False. Clinton signed Kyoto, knowing full well that it would be rejected by the Senate – which they did, voting against it unanimously – 3 full years before Bush came into office.

See also: Who knew Beausejour was in Texas?
Green Canuck to Gore: “Right on, dude!”

British Member of Parliament and world renowned anti-Iraq war crusader – George Galloway.
(Story here)

Dumb as a post. (pdf)

On his misrepresentation of the Conservative tax policy platform – at CBC Watch.
MacDonald pulled a similar stunt a couple of nights earlier when exerpting the contents of the infamous “Chapter 5” of the AG report – suggesting there was nothing there to see.

Flashback – In 2004, MacDonald received an award for his reporting on Israel.

As an addendum – I did something I rarely do anymore, and watched both the CBC and CTV national news. The contrast between the coverage of Paul Martin’s appearance before a seniors group by the two networks was remarkable. CBC mentioned the event was dominated by questions about Options Canada. CTV pulled the cameras back and revealed it was a media frenzy, generated by Martin’s bringing the questions to an abrupt close, as he tried to make an escape. Then, Tom Clark mentioned yet another leak of the next day’s platform announcment on the environment.
In the comments, Chuck raises another – the story the same night on CBC about the “costs” of keeping criminals in jail under mandatory sentencing. Yes, I thought it was ridiculously transparent as well.

And I am pathetic.
*

“Give her back … I know that they don’t give refunds but maybe the Germans can get store credit.”

Canada’s foremost defender of speaking Doc Martens* to Power, paraphrased;

“gosh darn how can we get those darn bloggers to stop? Wave a magic wand mr. legal expert; how can we stop the blogs? My reputation is so important, mr. legal expert, and while no blogger actually defamed me or did anything illegal, there should be some mechanism around for me to stop these populist personal websites from mentioning my good name! Sure, I’m an outspoken political figure, but that doesn’t give Canadians the right to have opinions! About me! Stop them, stop the bloggers!

(I haven’t listened to this audio, but here’s the link, FWIW).

“Nevermind” says Linda McQuaig, Deep Thinker[tm] – that the US is kicking Canada’s ass when it comes to controlling CO2 emissions. Paul Martin was right to poke a finger at the Bush administration and what’s more, 61% of Canadians agree!
She slams the point home with this debate stopper;

“Still, we did sign Kyoto…”

If you parse her text carefully, you’ll realize that McCuaig knows perfectly well that Canada’s rise in emissions are about double that of the US. She simply lacks the intellectual honesty to admit it in print – or the journalistic work ethic to set aside a column that was undermined by fact and start anew.

The last Western leader to run on an anti-Bush platform is moving on to greener pastures;

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder faces mounting accusations of “disgusting” sleaze after accepting a top job on a Russian-German gas pipeline project that he helped set up in his final weeks in office.
[…]
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State-owned Russian gas firm Gazprom announced last Friday that Mr. Schroeder will become supervisory board chairman of the North European Gas Pipeline Co., a joint venture between Gazprom and German firms E.ON and BASF to build a pipeline through the Baltic Sea and pump Siberian gas to Germany.
����
Analysts and politicians from all parties, including Mr. Schroeder’s Social Democrats, balked at the notion of a German leader taking Russian paychecks and said the move smacked of favoritism, given Mr. Schroeder’s close friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Putin were instrumental in arranging the joint venture, announced two weeks before Germany’s September election.
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The affair also revived criticism that Mr. Schroeder’s ties with Mr. Putin led him to overlook abuses of democracy and human rights in Russia.
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The $6 billion project has caused a diplomatic row with Poland and the Baltic states, which are being bypassed by the pipeline and stand to lose gas transit revenues as a result.
����
Mr. Schroeder did not attend the debate yesterday in the Bundestag, where Greens Member of Parliament Matthias Berninger called the job “politically disgusting.”

Gerhard Schroeder a sleazy double-dealer? Say it isn’t so!
If he’d followed the lead of Blair, Howard, and well… Bush – perhaps he’d still be chancellor! You’d think a Canadian head of state would like, notice there’s a pattern there.

First, we had Paul Martin suggest that parents weren’t knowledgeable about raising their children.
Now we have Scott Reid, king of the pitbulls, suggesting that parents will “blow the 1200 on beer and popcorn” rather than on their children or childcare (what is it with Reid & the word “blow“?). And if you view this Question Period clip, you’ll see that the Liberal Party intends to stand behind his remarks, at least for the moment.
Will the arrogance ever end? I’ll be curious to see if Reid’s comments get as much airtime as the CPC mailer that went out regarding “homosexual sex marriage” (honestly, you’d think the guy could proofread the thing).

crossposted
UPDATE: Reid has apologized, and CTV has killed the original link. Damn. I hope someone took a screen shot.
UPDATE #2: Sign the kidsnotbeer petition.
UPDATED yet again: Stephen Taylor has more links on this, including one to Proud to be Canadian, who has a clip of BOTH gaffes.

If you haven’t seen the news, Anne McLellan, the strident-to-the-point-of-earsplitting-pain Deputy Prime Minister who I long ago dubbed the Screech (sometimes its the Screecher, it’s not like consistency is important to my dear MP’s party, after all), had a hard time finding office space.
TABaker has more. Check it out.

A few days ago I linked to an article by Mark Helprin and included this quote;

During the Cold War, one could always suspect that democratic socialists lusted in their hearts for Leninism, and might have given themselves over had the balance of power shifted eastward. This was at least a plausible explanation for their opposition to virtually any measure of Western defense, and their perpetual horror of anti-Communism. But no force, it would seem, should be capable of transforming even a lifetime of socialist ardor into sympathy for absolutist mullahs, 10th-century tribal warriors, decapitators, and circumcisors of women.

Some of our friends on the left took strong exception.
Well, today I have the distaste of presenting the sympathetic Kurt Vonnegut – celebrated author, outspoken Bush critic and “peace activist”.

Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: “I regard them as very brave people, yes.”
Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an “amazing high”. He said: “You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation – it must be an amazing high.”

Fortunately, we have Lileks;

Mr. Vonnegut – again, a patriot whose dissent is being cruelly ground into the nurturing earth before your eyes – seems to think that suicide bombings literally happen in a vacuum, an unpopulated space where the bombers just pop like soap bubbles. It may be painless for them – alas – but it is not painless for the victims. You�d think such an obvious observation would go without saying, but we are dealing with an intellectual. What Vonnegut calls brave – blowing yourself up so you can fly up to the great Bunny Ranch in the sky and rut with fragrant houris blessed with self-regenerating hymens – does not exactly compare to the bravery required of the survivors.

Just don’t question his patriotism.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it” – Aristotle
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” – Robert Frost
“I will continue to expose your right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like your won’t dare show their face on a college campus.” – Prof. John Daly
H/T OTB

Hey Johnny, next time try Idaho.

This was overdue.

22 Minutes is, for the time being at least, being denied media accreditation to get access to the foyer of the House of Commons. This is because the Parliamentary Press Gallery, which is responsible for handing out accreditation, has tightened up its policies following an incident last June. Evidently, a crew from the Radio-Canada show Au-Dela du Real obtained accreditation by devious and duplicitous means, provoking a security scare, which in turn led the Gallery to declare that “non-news-gathering teams” could no longer be accredited.

If ordinary citizens can’t get in the door wearing the “political statement” of a Libranos t-shirt, then really, why the special treatment for these little groups of corporate welfare bums?

Satire is good for politics, just as surely as the reverse is true. A healthy dose of satire can help keep a place honest, even a place like Parliament, where breathtaking displays of pomposity and overblown indignation are the norm, and are celebrated on the nightly news.

In this case however, the satirical have long been as pompous and self-important as their intended targets.
Besides, isn’t the shtick getting a little old?

An pacifist explains why he refuses to wear a poppy.

I refrain from wearing a poppy to criticize the use of military force, at the expense of soldiers, civilians and their families, by the state – any state – in order to achieve political goals, no matter how noble.
[…]
Of course, the question must be addressed, “Faced with the Nazi menace, what were we to do?” Mahatma Gandhi, who also faced oppressive imperial forces during his lifetime, said, “Non-violence is a weapon of the strong.” When faced with oppression and injustice, sometimes it can be easier to lash out in violent reaction – one that will further propagate the conflict, perhaps sowing seeds of future conflicts – than to react in a constructive, non-violent way that will actually resolve the conflict, giving rise to things such as true freedom and democracy. What would Gandhi have done in Poland or Germany if he were faced with the advance of the Third Reich and witness to the holocaust?
Perhaps, in protest, he would have joined a line up of Jewish people waiting to board a train to Auschwitz. Would you have the courage to make that sacrifice? Would I?
Hopefully, we’ll never have to find out.

Someone, buy this man a plane ticket to North Korea.

(language warning)

h/t London Fog.

Out to finish what Bin Laden started…

A NEW York jury today ruled that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was negligent and can be sued for damages from the 1993 truck bombing at the World Trade Centre, setting the stage for a potential raft of lawsuits.
Islamist militants exploded the truck bomb in an underground parking garage of the twin towers on February 26, 1993, killing six people and wounding more than 1000.
The jury ruling in the state-court case means relatives of the six people who were killed and the hundreds of other victims and businesses affected by the blast may proceed with damage suites against the Port Authority for damages.