As media pundits rode the emotion pony into a lather this week, someone forgot to ask an important question of Michael J. Fox.
As fate would have it, he volunteered the information today on ABC’s This Week;

Stephanopoulos: In the ad now running in Missouri, Jim Caviezel speaks in Aramaic. It means, “You betray me with a kiss.” And his position, his point, is that actually even though down in Missouri they say the initiative is against cloning, it’s actually going to allow human cloning.
Fox: Well, I don’t think that’s true. You know, I campaigned for Claire McCaskill. And so I have to qualify it by saying I’m not qualified to speak on the page-to-page content of the initiative. Although, I am quite sure that I’ll agree with it in spirit, I don’t know, I— On full disclosure, I haven’t read it, and that’s why I didn’t put myself up for it distinctly.

I’m sure that in light of this development, Adler will have a followup this week. Not on the details of Missouri’s Amendment 2 – that’s just US domestic politics, after all – but on the legendary laziness of his profession in failing to present political controversies in their factual context.
(To be fair, I did send Mr.Adler a couple of links last week that examined the nuts and bolts of what the Amendment actually speaks to in the context of Michael J. Fox’s endorsement, along with a criticism of Fox by a physician familiar with the science. For all I know, he’s been working on it all weekend.)
Video

David MacLean;

“This certainly puts a bullet in the “Senators were set up by the government” conspiracy theory.

(link fixed)

Aussie style;

HALF a billion dollars spent buying back hundreds of thousands of guns after the Port Arthur massacre had no effect on the homicide rate, says a study published in an influential British journal.
The report by two Australian academics, published in the British Journal of Criminology, said statistics gathered in the decade since Port Arthur showed gun deaths had been declining well before 1996 and the buyback of more than 600,000 mainly semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns had made no difference in the rate of decline.
[…]
Politicians had assumed tighter gun laws would cut off the supply of guns to would-be criminals and that homicide rates would fall as a result, the study said. But more than 90 per cent of firearms used to commit homicide were not registered, their users were not licensed and they had been unaffected by the firearms agreement.

It made no difference for the same reason as establishing the gun registry in Canada has made no difference – it’s already illegal to shoot people.
Despite laws banning the practice, the problem of people shooting people (along with the closely related “kniving people” and “bludgeoning people”) persists. Faced with that difficult reality, gun control advocates turn to delusion as a solution – arguing that laws against owning murder weapons will succeed where laws against commiting murder have failed.
The director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, Dr Don Weatherburn, has advice for such people.

He said it showed “politicians would be well advised to claim success of their policies after they were evaluated, not before”.

h/t

The upcoming Auditor-General’s report is expected to be scathing in its assessment of the former Liberal government programs, but this should be no surprise to anyone.
Back in 2003 no less than David Suzuki was warning about the bizarre junk science boondoggles being funded:

Is pig iron the way to a better planet? The Canadian government apparently seems to think so. It’s funding a bizarre project in Brazil to plant vast farms of eucalyptus trees, which will eventually be made into charcoal to produce pig iron – a low grade iron. Somehow along the way, this is supposed to slow global warming.

When David Suzuki is complaining about useless money wasting government programs you can be sure it will be a target rich environment indeed for the Auditor-General.
But would you believe Kyoto would end up subsidizing the Saudi oil industry, bringing depleted oil fields back to production?

Continue reading →

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Update – this story appears ready to go mainstream.

“Five-year-old girls worried about weight, obesity conference told”;

Girls as young as five are sensitive about their bodies in a “weight-hostile” environment that equates popularity and attractiveness with thinness, an international conference of experts has heard.

From what I’m seeing as they waddle along with their mommies, I can only suggest that they ought to be. Now, how does one get a corresponding level of concern to register with the parents shoveling the Tostitos and soft drinks into their shopping carts?

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung..
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It’s easy..
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made..
No one you can save that can’t be saved..
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be in time.
It’s easy..
All you need is love, all you need is love,.
All you need is love, love, love is all you need..
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love..
All you need is love, all you need is love,.
All you need is love, love, love is all you need..
There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

Michael Totten is back in the Middle East and reporting from the front lines of the Lebanon/Israeli war.

This is starting to feel like a TV game show;

“Lights! Camera! Ululate!”.

More on the main page.

h/t Maz2 in the comments.
Update – Video of Charles Johnson on CNN.
.

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Via email from reader Bruce;

This afternoon radio out here (Vancouver) announced that the Harper
governemnt has suspended the “trips to Ottawa” orientation program pending a review. I have not been able to locate a press release, but it was apparently on the news wire.

As I was saying – SDA gets results!

This is ridiculous.

Every new federal civil servant from coast to coast is being sent to Ottawa on a two-day, all-expenses paid trip to give them a “big picture” understanding of how government works.
The trip is mandatory for all new employees as well as anyone contracted to the federal government for more than six months — everyone from mailroom clerks and agricultural ministry workers to new Mounties.
The first trips are scheduled to start in three weeks, organized under a government branch called the Canada School of Public Service.

What isn’t mentioned in the article is that the ridiculousness is just “business as usual” for the civil service. Bureaucracies across all levels of government seem addicted to the practice of transporting government employees long distances at taxpayer expense to gather together before centralized sheets of paper.
update – In the comments, Bruce clarifies;

This lunacy was brought in by the Martin government, finalized by Treasury Board prior to November 28, 2005. Follow the link.

update 2 – Looks like there’s a pretty good chance the program will be axed under the Conservatives. Liberal MP Hedy Fry seems unhappy about that. A very good observation by NDP MP Peter Julian;

Julian said government would be better off spending money to send senior decision makers in the civil service out to the regions to see how their policies affect the public, “rather than have new members of the public service going to Ottawa where they are essentially inculcated into the kind of atmosphere we have in Ottawa,”

Well said.

To a more deserving group of people.

“THE VIEW helped make Star a Star…” – Barbara Walters

And all this time I thought she was already famous for proving that Really Stupid People[tm] can pass the New York Bar.

“It is accepted that works may not be displayed in the way that the artist might have intended.”

“How much are we paying these clowns?” (PDF)

It’s not enough, I tell you!

From a National Post article (on the long list of Liberal leadership candidates busy borrowing cash).

NEW LIBERAL CRITIC: Belinda Stronach
TORY TARGET: No minister with same role
MINISTRY: Competitiveness and the New Economy

h/t to commentor “dude”, who observes that “here’s some humour to found in the Minister of Complex Files taking up the role of critic to… nobody.”
Yes, there is.

Why Barbaro? Why not this stupid nag?

Hey, Joey. Do you like movies about gladiators?
Hey, Joey. Have you ever seen a grown man naked?
Hey, Joey. Have you ever seen the inside of a Turkish prison?

Michael Totten concludes his series.