Category: Uncategorized

Pushing Back

Playing hardball … fuddle duddle eh!

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has advised The Canadian Press he intends to sue the national news agency for defamation for a headline it ran on a story featuring controversial comments he made on a home-movie videotape made more than 16 years ago.
“The headline of the article is false and defamatory of Premier Wall and, given the breadth of its publication, is likely to result in significant damage to Premier Wall’s reputation,” says the letter from the premier’s lawyers, dispatched Friday to The Canadian Press.
The headline, published Thursday, referred to the release of a video by Saskatchewan’s opposition NDP that showed disparaging comments from Wall, current Saskatchewan Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski, and others who were working on the 1991 provincial re-election campaign of then-Tory leader Grant Devine.

Update:
Brad Wall announced this morning that he will not proceed with the suit.
So much for growing some.

With a straight face

I was reading an insurance trade publication the other day, and came across an article entitled Climate change tops list of risks to insurers.”
OK, if you say so… This is the same industry that flinched hard over the prospect of a developed-world meltdown because of Y2K. Remember that?
Anyhow, a couple of passages from the article made made the corners of my mouth twitch when juxtaposed:

Potential climate change is the greatest strategic risk currently facing the property and casualty insurance industry, according to an Ernst & Young report.
***
The analysts identified five additional emerging risks (not part of the Top 10) that have the potential to become as significant during the next five years.
These include: over reliance on model-based risk management; threats to industry reputation; losing the war for talent; increasing exposure to global regulatory heterogeneity; and the possible emergence of entirely new risks. [my emphasis]

One wonders if the people who put the report together have any idea how much the climate-change predictions rely precisely upon the flawed model-based approach they caution against.
It would be funny, if only they had a sense of humour.

This IS Your Great Grandfather’s NDP

From the March 18th sitting of the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly:
Mr. (Darcy) Furber: — “It’s important not only to the people of Prince Albert and the North, but to all of Saskatchewan. My question to the Minister of Energy and Resources: with their government’s embarrassment of riches, what has he done, and more importantly, what has the member from Prince Albert Carlton done to ensure that there’s any money in tomorrow’s budget to make sure that pulp mill reopens?”
Darcy Furber is the NDP Opposition Forestry Critic…
The question was scripted by the same NDP brain trust that brought you the Premier’s driving scandal.
Only in Saskatchewan can this kind of remark from the NDP go virtually unnoticed. I suppose it’s understandable from a lunatic left NDP supporter, but from an actual 21st century Opposition critic in the leg?
Who ever said the old style 1930’s NDP/CCF rhetoric “money is evil” was dead?

Britain continues its descent

As Britain continues its slow but steady transformation into a dhimmi state, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that they are now starting to ban senior Israeli politicians like Moshe Feiglin:

The deputy leader of Israel’s Likud party, Moshe Feiglin, has been excluded from Britain by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith using powers invoked after the July 2005 London bombings — even though he had no plans to visit.

Among other controversial statements that offended Britain’s poor home secretary, he had the nerve to say this:

Arabs are not sons of the desert, but its father. They created the desert – everywhere they come vegetation stops and the wind blows everything away.

Okay, that’s not very flattering to Arabs, but as with Mark Steyn getting slapped with a human rights complaint for accurately quoting a Norwegian Imam, Moshe Feiglin is getting excluded from Britain – in part for quoting former British High Commissioner for Sinai, Sir Claude Jarvis.
Maybe that’s not so surprising as there are few things more loathed in modern, multi-culti Britain than reminders of the Britannic heritage and their history of the British Empire.
In any case, Moshe Feiglin responds:

Considering the moral depths to which your nation has sunk, I find your letter most complimentary. It is a great honor for me to join the illustrious list of former prime ministers of Israel, Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir, who also received similar letters from your offices.

In the article Moshe Feiglin claims he is giving a lecture in Canada at the end of the month, but I can’t find any announcement of the time or place. If anyone knows the details, leave them in the comments.

Update:The announcement for Moshe Feiglin’s March 27th visit to Toronto is here. Thanks to the person who left the info in the comments.

Ann Sticks the Knife In … and Twists

Coulter has an uncanny ability to hit moving targets … don’t ever give her a big stationary bull’s eye:

According to the wiretaps, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was delighted to be getting the prostitute “Kristen” again. At least he knew her name. It took Monica Lewinsky’s boyfriend six sexual encounters to remember her name (raising his lifetime average to 8.2).
You know that queasy feeling you get thinking about Bill Clinton back in the White House again? Now you remember why. Hillary Clinton couldn’t feel worse about the Spitzer case if she were an actual New Yorker.
[…]
It’s absurd to talk about Spitzer’s problem being “hypocrisy” — as if everything would be fine if only he had previously advocated legalized prostitution.
It’s absurd to talk about “alpha males” and political power — an alpha male does not bring his family shame and disaster. Who was more alpha than Ronald Reagan? Think he ever had a “whore problem”? This is more like a dog who wee-wees on your leg.

And then, there’s Kristen.

Limps per Capita

Every city has one … the place where “progressives” go to feed:

The joke I have among friends is that there is one statistic not covered by official sources, but which can be seen anytime one drives down 20th Street or parts of 22nd Street in Saskatoon. These streets have the highest “limp” rate in Canada … that is, I’ve never seen so many people who limp, hobble, or shuffle along in my life. I feel sorry for some of them, as they are the blamelessly dispossessed such as schizophrenics or physically disabled through no fault of their own. But … and it’s a big “but”; many are victims of vice … drinking, fighting, crime, and impaired operation of vehicles. If you’ve worked or lived among this “class”, you find out pretty fast that most “limps” go hand in hand with the battle scars and rap-sheet.

“Confessed Unlawful Activities” – Breaking News

(Bumped to top – welcome, JohnGormleyLive listeners)
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely…” – Baron Acton (1834–1902)
In a disclosure eerily reminiscent of the Devine caucus fraud scandal, Saskatchewan residents were shocked today by a political firestorm brought forth by NDP Justice critic Frank Quenell in the Saskatchewan Legislature.

Premier Brad Wall was in New York today (undoubtedly meeting with Eliot Spitzer’s spin doctors as to how to handle the political fallout), and was unavailable for comment.
SDA will keep you posted as this story winds it’s way through the court system.

This is what passes for a documentary?

An hour-long advertisement for Stein and Lang’s one-sided pre-emptive re-write of history. It should have been called REVEALED: The Liberals’ Oh-So-Convenient Attempt To Cover Their Disgustingly Cynical and Self-Interested Tails On How We Went To War.
Given the production company’s previous work, I was expecting so much more than Scott Reid and John McCallum scurrying for cracks in the wall when the light was turned on.
(Ed note: Don’t miss reading the rest of this post at the link provided. – Kate)

Shangri-La La Land

For decades now “progressives” have been regaling us with tales of Europe. It used to be that pointing to “Europe” was the default position whenever Canadian socialist utopians got backed into a corner. “In England you know, they … ,” was the response whenever unions, over-taxation, and above all, healthcare, were debated. Sometimes you’d think Swedes or Dutch were little blond angels sent down from NDP heaven just to show the rest of us in Canuckland how it’s supposed to be done. Ah, the good’ol days.
So it is, that “progressive” Shangri-La now uses ambulances as waiting rooms outside emergency units and in some countries wait-times rival Saskatchewan’s. When it comes to short wait times and socialized medicine, “progressives” in Canada are running out of examples to point to.

more

The Little Country That Could


Photo: Danish Jews Escape to Sweden (WW2)
A little known fact about Denmark is that during World Two, she stubbornly protected her Jewish population. Other occupied lands turned over their Jews and even assisted the Nazis, so much so, that Himmler commented about France that his own SS couldn’t have done a better job. In the land of my ancestors, Czechoslovakia, the Slovaks in particular were ardent Jew-hunters.
But not the Danish; they continued their liberal human rights traditions even when faced with the full brutality of Adolf’s Reich. Now, in 2008, it would seem that the tradition is continuing and the Danes provide a lonely voice in a sea of “progressive” milque-toast values. They understand full well the menace they (we) face:

Today the Danish Board of Foreign Policy Matters unanimously have cancelled a planned trip to Iran after the Iranian ambassador demanded an apology for the reprinting of the Mohammed cartoons. That is, every single member from the far right to the far left has collectively made it crystal clear to the Iranians that under no conditions will they try to interfere with the press, or even worse, make an apology. And since this is an ultimatum from the Iranians, the trip is cancelled!
As they say: “No one is going to tell us what to print in our own newspapers. If anyone should make an apology it should be the Iranians for all their repeated violations against human rights etc.”
I cannot tell you how happy I am to see this kind of collective spirit among Danish politicians.

Only if the rest of Western civilization would learn from the Danish example, we might be spared the next great conflict between barbarism and the democratic liberal West. First though, the “progressive” class has to somehow be injected with a dose of reality, and made to see how dangerous its well-meaning, but naive, multi-culti-we-are-the-world religion is.
crossposted @ Celestial Junk
Update: And then, there was Finland.
Update 2: Bomb and Slaughter Them.
Update 3: Youths Celebrate the Motoons.

Meanwhile, back in Canada…

“Last week when I was on the Hill mingling with some MPs from both the Liberal and the Tory parties, I asked an MP for an opinion on the freedom of speech/ Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn human rights complaints. This particular MP was appalled by it. I asked this individual for a public comment. After a few moments thought, the MP decided not to.
“Then this person mused–alas, I did not have a notebook or my recorder out so I can’t recall the exact words–that some MPs might be afraid to speak out on this issue, afraid their families might be targeted.

‘I don’t hate Muslims. I hate Islam,’ says Holland’s rising political star

The Dutch politician, who sees himself as heir to a recent string of assassinated or hounded mavericks who have turned Holland upside down, has been doing a crash course in Koranic study. Likening the Islamic sacred text to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, he wants the ‘fascist Koran’ outlawed in Holland, the constitution rewritten to make that possible, all immigration from Muslim countries halted, Muslim immigrants paid to leave and all Muslim ‘criminals’ stripped of Dutch citizenship and deported ‘back where they came from’.”

Note that, from the Guardian’s viewpoint, the troublemaking infidels were the ones who “turned Holland upside down,” not Van Gogh’s or Pim Fortuyn’s assassins or the harrassers of Hirsi Ali.

“But if Wilders shares positions and aims with others on the far right in Europe, he is also a very specific Dutch phenomenon, viewing himself as a libertarian provocateur like the late Pim Fortuyn or Theo van Gogh, railing against ‘Islamisation’ as a threat to what used to be the easy-going Dutch model of tolerance.
“‘My allies are not Le Pen or Haider,’ he emphasises. ‘We’ll never join up with the fascists and Mussolinis of Italy. I’m very afraid of being linked with the wrong rightist fascist groups.’ Dutch iconoclasm, Scandinavian insistence on free expression, the right to provoke are what drive him, he says.”

More creeping sharia in Canada

“Long-distance telephone marriages can be dialled up under sharia law and then used to sponsor loved ones into Canada, Muslim leaders say.
Two Muslim leaders have told the Toronto Sun telephone marriages are permissible under Islamic law and require two witnesses and imams here and abroad to conduct the vows, which may have the bride in Pakistan and the groom in Toronto.”

And if these couples are first cousins, which is a commonplace in the UK, their chances of producing unhealthy children increases exponentially.
But so what? Health care is “free”, eh?

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