Via True North, a comment that originally appeared at Free Dominion on Nov.19th;

I was in the city of Toronto today. Around 2:00pm I was at Spadina and Dundas. On the south west corner hundreds, maybe thousands, of Chinese were standing there holding fabric banners that measured approx. 36″ x 30′. One read “Thank you Mr. Harper”. Another supported the government in general. I won’t assume the press will draw people’s attention to it, so I thought I would.

Can anyone confirm this? Kathy Shaidle can’t find anything on Google news, nor can I. Of course, absence of media coverage means nothing – this rally supported the PM. Now, had the event drawn numbers in the double digits, been organized by Friends of Hezbollah or the World Worker’s Party… well, you get the drift.
Update – from the comments, Bob Tarantino;

Well, I was there, I walked through the crowd, I picked up the pamphlets, even got a DVD which I haven’t watched yet. I would put the numbers at around four or five dozen (with the caveat that I’m terrible at guesstimating crowd sizes). As someone else pointed out, it’s pretty much logistically impossible to corral hundreds or thousands of people at the corner in question, regardless of the time of day. All that being said, the lack of media attention, compared to, say, protests being attended by even smaller numbers of people but espousing double-plus-goodthink, is… well, I was going to say “a sad comment on the state of our media”, but that would imply that I had any expectations of them whatsoever to begin with.

“Who do you think the top five GHG [greenhouse gas] culprits are in Canada?”

” . . . 18 billion disposable diapers are used in the U.S. each year. Enough to stretch to the moon and back 9 times (9).”

On November 9th, The Asia Foundation released the findings “from the single-largest, most comprehensive public opinion poll ever conducted in Afghanistan.”

The poll, “Afghanistan in 2006: A Survey of the Afghan People,” reflects perceptions of democracy, security, poppy cultivation, and the 2005 parliamentary elections — as well as attitudes towards governing institutions, the role of women and Islam in society, and the impact of media. It was conducted between June and August 2006 and consists of a random sample of 6,226 in-person interviews with Afghan men and women, 18 years of age and above, from different social, economic, and ethnic communities. Rural and urban areas in 32 of the 34 provinces were covered, with Uruzgan and Zabul — representing approximately 1.1 percent and 1.2 percent of the population, respectively — excluded due to extreme security conditions.

Check it out.

This is a cause for which I am prepared to sacrifice!

*

To Michael J. Fox;

Mr. Fox and his ads’ sponsors are guilty of conflating embryonic stem cell research, which the GOP candidates and many Americans oppose for destroying a human life in the name of curing other people’s diseases, with stem cell research in general, which includes adult stem cell research and umbilical cord blood stem cell research.
The only limits in question are on federal funding of new embryonic stem cell lines, requiring the sacrifice of new embryos. Private and state-funded research (California voters are spending six billion dollars borrowing money to fund this) is ongoing. The implicit claim that research based on new embryos is “the most promising” is absurd, completely unsupported by the scientific literature, and an insult to voters, based as it is on the assumption that they are incapable of understanding the issue. Too stupid to tell the difference, is the elitist assumption underlying this campaign.

continue…

The Dow Jones industrial average swept past 12,000 for the first time Wednesday, extending its march into record territory as investors grow increasingly optimistic about corporate earnings and the economy.

And for those watching the mid-terms south of the border, this item on recent US media poll sampling.
Further thoughts…. anyone who buys into the (inexplicable) Canadian media theme that the US economy has struggled under Bush, while ours soars to new heights .. really needs to take a trip from Winnipeg, Manitoba to Fargo, North Dakota.
(Recommended – comments by Jeff Cosford on this thread.)

A Popular Mechanics article, by pilot Jeff Wise, on the possible cause of the Cory Lidle crash in Manhattan.

For pilots taking off from Teterboro, a general aviation airport in New Jersey, 12 miles north of midtown Manhattan, the typical procedure is to head east under the control of Teterboro tower and then switch frequency to a radio channel that’s monitored by everyone going up and down the Hudson. At the Alpine Tower, a radio mast on a New Jersey cliff overlooking the Hudson, you turn right and descend to 1,000 feet and then follow the west bank. It’s like driving down a highway: southbound traffic on the west (New Jersey) side of the river; northbound on the east (Manhattan) side. The view of the city is incredible: You’re lower than the tops of the highest buildings, and as you pass over the George Washington Bridge linking northern Manhattan and New Jersey, it almost feels like the top of the span might snag your undercarriage.
Essentially, you’re flying in what amounts to an invisible tunnel carved out of the heavy-duty Class B airspace that surrounds the region’s three airports: Newark airport, 16 miles southwest of midtown Manhattan; LaGuardia airport, 10 miles east; and JFK airport, 18 miles southeast. Class B is for the big boys—airliners flying heavy loads of passengers at high speeds. Class B is the Carnegie Hall of aviation, the Yankee Stadium. The thought of wandering into it by mistake gives most recreational pilots palpitations.

h/t

But others, I understand, read Captain Capitalism for the charts.
But for the academically inclined, I present An empirical study on Playboy Playmates’ academic achievements and their correlation with worthless degrees less rigorous disciplines.
Or, why you should persuade your daughter to study math and science.

The more things change;

Resolved, that this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretence of military necessity, or war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored on the basis of the federal Union of the States.

From the Democratic Party platform of 1864.
They were careful to add that they supported the troops, though.
Via Maxed Out Mama (who, as usual, has several posts up worth your time today.)

Confirming something I noticed a long time ago – most of what the average Canadian claims know about the US is the result of watching American TV.
h/t

Just this weekend, I was listening to a radio interview with an expert of some alternative energy persuasion who announced that with today’s satellite mapping and other research technologies, that it was unlikely that there would be any new major oil finds outside of the Antarctic;

A trio of oil companies led by Chevron Corp. has tapped a petroleum pool deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico that has the potential to boost the nation’s reserves by more than 50 percent. A test well indicates it could be the biggest domestic oil discovery since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay more than a generation ago.

I guess that’s why I can’t remember his name.
(Today’s little known fact for the Sect Of Smug Canadians – The United States is the world’s third highest producer of oil. Canada is eighth – behind Norway. Update – those are 2004 numbers. Read the comments for the full confusion. )

US Ambassador to the European Union C. Boyden Gray sounds an international trade alarm in the WSJ ;

The fundamental flaw of Reach — which stands for the Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals — is that it is not carefully tailored to address possible harms, and its potentially enormous costs are not offset by enough clearly identifiable health benefits. Reach would require producers and importers of chemicals and products containing chemicals that are manufactured in or imported into the EU in quantities over one metric ton per year — approximately 30,000 substances — to register them with a new EU agency in Finland, and to provide extensive information on their properties, uses and handling.
While this might seem unobjectionable, some of Reach’s key provisions will apply to chemicals to which there is no human exposure — and thus no possibility of harm. At the same time, the proposal exempts certain highly toxic chemicals where there is serious human exposure and much known existing harm. The latter group includes chemicals such as gasoline and diesel fuels — which, without an exemption, would likely be blacklisted by Reach…
These factors explain why virtually every non-EU country with a chemicals industry has joined the U.S. in voicing serious concerns about Reach. This “coalition of the excluded” includes South Africa, which is worried that Reach will cripple the mining industry in some of the poorest parts of the developing world. At the other end of the spectrum are sophisticated high-tech producers in South Korea, India, Japan and Israel.

(via NRO’s Iain Murray)
More analysis from the Competitive Enterprise Institute;

Currently on the horizon is the proposed EU Chemicals Policy, which represents what will be perhaps the most expansive regulation of the chemical industry ever. Known as REACH—which stands for registration, authorization, and evaluation of chemicals—this directive is likely to cost society billions of dollars, reduce innovation, and limit U.S. access to EU markets. Its protectionist effects are expected to trigger World Trade Organization (WTO) disputes. Meanwhile, the benefits of the proposal are likely to be small given that it attempts to reduce the effects of trace levels of chemicals, which have produced little documented adverse effects on public health.
The EU chemicals policy would employ the so-called precautionary principle by requiring companies to prove that their products are safe before their introduction into commerce. Currently, government officials bear the burden of proof and must prove a product unsafe before removing it from the market. REACH would reverse this burden, demanding that firms conduct extensive tests to demonstrate product safety. Since manufacturers can’t prove anything is 100 percent safe, this policy will likely produce arbitrary bans of many relatively safe substances and discourage innovation.

I can find virtually no mention of this in media, and nothing in the Canadian news services.

Riehl World View ran across some history when googling Wake Island, a US territory hit by the storm surge and 300km/h winds of Super Typhoon Ioke. (All the residents were safely evacuated).

Ioke is the strongest central Pacific typhoon in at least 12 years. Forecasters expect the “monster” storm to submerge Wake Island and destroy everything on it that is not made of concrete.

The island was the scene of a WWII atrocity by the Japanese.

Mickey Kaus reacts to reporting on new poverty numbers out in the US;

Crude initial reaction: The purpose of welfare reform wasn’t to lower the poverty rate. It was to move people from welfare to work–out of an isolated, non-working subculture that had all sorts of bad social effects (fatherless families, crime, segregation, etc.). If welfare reform could have done that with a small increase in the poverty rate, that would have been a price worth paying. If reform had accomplished this goal–a near-60% reduction in the families getting welfare**–with no increase in the poverty rate, that would be a victory. That the poverty rate has actually fallen a full point from 1996 (13.7% then to 12.6% now–an 8% reduction) is a significant success. … P.S.: The black poverty rate has fallen from 28.4% in 1996 to 24.9% in 2005, a 12% drop. In 1993, when Clinton took office, it was 33.1%. Since then it has dropped by more than a third. … P.P.S.: And think what the poverty numbers might have looked like without the arrival of millions of hard-working, unskilled illegal immigrants bidding down the wages of those $7 and $8 an hour jobs….

This bears repeating – “The purpose of welfare reform wasn’t to lower the poverty rate. It was to move people from welfare to work.”
Just don’t expect the “social justice” advocates to embrace any such nonsense!

From the man who famously cautioned that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”;

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Both quotes from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech.
We just never hear about the second one.

Gnotalex believes that Canada may be in a position to offer a cure for AIDS. Or in this case, I guess it’s “offer up”.

With all the attention the Toronto AIDS conference received this week, one wonders why this didn’t receive the widespread media coverage it merits.
Well, actually, one doesn’t wonder.

Progress is being made in the fight against AIDS in Africa, thanks in no small part to the president’s aid program. But that’s not what some people want to hear.
FIVE YEARS AGO, in Jos, Nigeria, a city on the country’s central plateau, Dr. John Idoko regularly made rounds in a hospital packed with people dying from AIDS because they couldn’t pay for the antiretroviral drugs necessary to keep them alive. Three years ago, as the price of the drugs plummeted, the Nigerian doctor was able to deliver the life-extending medication to 700 patients-until his government’s supply ran out for several months.
Today, the change for the better is astonishing: Idoko now treats nearly 6,000 HIV-positive patients. He has expanded his clinic three times in five years, and his waiting room once again is too crowded. “Now, we are eyeing an abandoned building nearby,” he said last week, chuckling.
The major reason for Idoko’s success is the Bush administration’s AIDS program, which in the last three years has sent billions of dollars to Africa and helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. When I moved to Africa three years ago, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, was just getting off the ground. As I return to Washington this month, the $15 billion program is just hitting its stride, and many Africans believe it has become the single most effective initiative in fighting the deadly scourge.
“The greatest impact in HIV prevention and treatment in Africa is PEPFAR-there’s nothing that compares,” Idoko said.
Only you wouldn’t know it in America-or Canada, or Europe, for that matter-given the tenor of the AIDS debate in Washington and the nature of the international media coverage.

h/t

“Time for my own poll. Is there any question so wacky that one-third of the population will not answer it in the affirmative?“