Take our money in exchange for goods, I guess. And finally, someone with the guts to point it out to them;

HALIFAX – Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned China today not to
threaten Canada on economic issues in the hope of getting his government to back off on human rights criticisms, including the case of Huseyin Celil.
Speaking with reporters in Halifax, Mr. Harper suggested China has more to lose if the economic relationship between the two countries becomes fractured.
“I would point out to any Chinese official that just as a matter of fact, China had a huge trade surplus with this country so it would be in the interest of the Chinese government to make sure any dealings on trade are fair and above board,” he said.

Brace yourselves for mewling from the “progressives” on benches opposite that the government is displaying an alarming lack of moral cowardice.

Not so long ago, I took a swipe at Rick Mercer. (And he deserved it)
Today, though, it’s a round of applause. Well done, Mr. Mercer – well done.

And her mother watches, is it still kiddie porn?
*

Bad, bad Catholic!

So if Obama becomes president, you can thank Jack Ryan’s penis. Which he’d probably like, actually. So don’t.

On a related topic – how many Americans who voted for Bill Clinton are likely to vote for Hillary? All of them? I don’t think so, either.
Now, how many Americans who didn’t vote for Bill Clinton are likely to vote for Hillary, and send the Great Obfuscinator back[1] to the White House via her skirtails?
Yeah. That’s I think, too.
I’m also thinking that if it looks like she’s on route to winning the nomination[2], the usual suspects will begin scouting for the next “Ross Perot”.

Footnotes:
1. All bets are off if she has the good sense to divorce him before then.
2. Winning the nomination will require Hillary survive the mud splatter from taking out the media’s current Goldenbrown Boy. That’s going to take some skill.

An interview with a Fallujah policeman.

Because. under the skin, there’s no such thing as “race”;

And today, on the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., our minds can’t help but (re)turn to ideas of race relations, if only to gauge how far we’ve come in the thirty-four years since Dr. King’s assasination. As one university newspaper columnist put it, on King’s birthday, we should be doing nothing if not striving to “learn the culture behind the color.”
AND THERE’S REALLY nothing surprising in this challenge; after all, “learning the culture behind the color” merely echoes (however simplistically) the widespread challenge of many contemporary race theorists who would prefer us to think of “race” as “culture”—as a phenomenon born out of a variety of complex social convergences—and not as a product of any essential* (biological) difference.* That is, contemporary racial theory remains committed to the idea of racial identity, even as it strives to proceed without the appeal to biology that once gave racial identity its primary force.
THE QUESTION, then, is this: if “race” is now “culture,” and “culture” is an anti-essentialistic social construct, how can we account for our “differences”? Clearly, pigmentation is not full proof; after all, many of those who think of themselves as black don’t “look black,” just as many of those who think of themselves as white may not “look white” (historically, this failure of perception to secure racial identity manifests itself in this country in the 19th and early-20th-century phenomenon of “passing”). Which would suggest that the answer, if it is the aim to continue the project of racial identity, must rest elsewhere—with the constructionist’s notion of culture.
BUT IF CULTURE IS DEFINED as the set of beliefs and practices adopted or performed by a specific group of people, then the idea of using “culture” as a means of determining race is equally problematic. Under such conditions, all that is required to adopt a particular racial identity is to believe in the things that “they” believe in, to practice the things that “they” practice. Which means that once we stop believing those beliefs or practicing those practices, we’ve ceased to belong to that culture, ceased to belong to that race.

RTWT (and the comments).

Polygamy follows “multiple parentage” as night follows day. It likewise followed from “same-sex marriage” — for if the institution cannot be restricted to one man, and one woman, how otherwise can it be restricted? At the time Paul Martin’s Liberal government was rubber-stamping the decision of the same Ontario Appeals Court, to create same-sex marriage in Canada, we received blustering assurances that marriage would always be restricted to “two persons” — even as the bureaucrats in Mr Martin’s own justice department were telling him that legal recognition for polygamous marriage was being made inevitable. Last week’s “three parent” court decision simply hurries that process along.

*

A guest post by Larry Weber

---

Even though it was over 32 years ago, I remember this incident like it was yesterday. My baseball coach was standing toe to toe with an umpire on the third base line. As the argument over the call became more heated, with one swooping motion, his baseball hat came off his head and flung to the ground with such vigor that dust spread from the spot where it landed.
My coach then proceeded to pick his hat up, dust it off with a flick of his wrist and while maintaining the upper hand in the argument, throw it down in disgust once again, within inches of the first landing, except this time he would stomp on that hat with his right foot for emphasis. And before that umpire could toss my coach from the field, he picked up his hat, dusted it off again, turned his back to the umpire and walked off the field into the bleachers, without saying another word. He knew how to win, even when his team wasn’t.
For me, this story began much earlier than that day on the ball field and this story is reminiscent of the goodwill and effort of all coaches in small town Saskatchewan; however, this man was the exception to every non-written rule about coaching. He did not have the required coaching certificates of today – he did not need them because above all, he was a motivator. He was the personification of a winner as he not only created hockey and baseball players, he shaped boys into men.
Besides baseball, I was also privileged to have this man as my hockey coach from the time I first laced on skates and waddled like a duck with a hockey stick, within the confines of the brand new Edam Vawn Playdium. I wasn’t much of a skater back then; too tall, too gangly and too meek. I don’t think my feet and brain started synchronizing until I was 13 years old, although some would say today that it still has not changed. I don’t remember much of his coaching before I was a teenager although I do remember he was synonymous with the hockey rink. While my early years in sports were uneventful, in the formidable years while I was 13 to 16 years old, this man would have an enormous impact shaping the life of this teenaged boy from the Prairies.
I still remember the first “vocal lashing” I received in a hockey dressing room. Our room at the time was next to the hallowed dressing room occupied by the “Edam Three Stars” and as all local minor players still do, I pined for the opportunity to play for the red and white.
During this particular practice, our coach was readying our team for the upcoming Provincial hockey playoffs. After a 90 minute skate where we continually did lines, circles and ended with laps upon laps, we retired to the dressing room. As our team was slowly taking off our equipment, our coach came into the room and stopped right at my feet as I was unlacing my skates. My head was lowered when I saw his feet and I dared not look up.
“Geezus H… (Those of you who knew him, will know the rest of the line) Weber, look at you, you didn’t even break into a sweat!” as he continued to look for a bead of perspiration anywhere, “What do I have to do to get you to sweat?” I learned that day that anything less than 100% was not appropriate, even if it was only a practice.
While hockey was a winter pastime for our coach, his true sports love was baseball and that became evident when the grass turned green each spring. I was 13 years old when I began playing organized baseball and when coach approached my parents to play in Edam rather than with the local team in Vawn. Our local team was organized only to play in the sports day held annually. I was a pitcher but knew nothing about baseball. Up to that point in time, my throwing skills were honed throwing rocks at mud hens in our dugout – lots of rocks.
His patience with me was unwavering. Learning to pitch from the stretch and set was soon second nature, as was the devotion that our coach had to our baseball team.
Edam entered the Provincial Bantam playoffs that year and advanced to the final four in Fillmore, SK and again the following year in Churchbridge, SK and then to Leader, SK in the Midget finals, the year after that. It was in Leader that 10 baseball players from the tiny village of Edam, SK – population 290, and surrounding areas, made local history. In 1976, Edam won the Midget Provincial Playoffs. In the Provincial Midget baseball playoffs in 1976 there were no population divisions and in order to win, Edam was required to beat teams from Saskatoon, Regina and the host team from Leader.
The untold story of this team is how this coach’s passion was transferred to his players and for one weekend in Leader, SK, the little team that could, did everything our coach asked of us. We learned that special weekend that you can overcome any obstacle if you have passion and drive. Our coach never gave up on us – and we watched how he out-coached and out-maneuvered each team we came up against. Other teams were more talented – but they did not match our coach’s heart.
Although I have had many coaches and mentors during my tenure on this planet – I will always have only one coach.
It is with deep sadness that my coach, Paul McCaffrey of Edam, Saskatchewan, died December 21, 2006. At his request, there was no funeral – no fanfare and no final goodbyes. Heaven forbid someone might actually fuss about him.
It should come as no surprise that years ago, the ballpark in Edam, SK was renamed “The Paul McCaffrey Ball Park”. Like the baseball diamond that grew from a corn field in Iowa, Saskatchewan has its own Field of Dreams – albeit born from Paul’s field of rye.
Those of you volunteering your time coaching today – know that it may take years for your advice and guidance to sink into children’s and teenagers’ thought process – but it will, and I am a walking example of that.
For all who pass “The Paul McCaffrey Ball Park” on Highway 26 in northwest Saskatchewan, let the record show that above all, passion is one of the greatest gifts you can instill in your children.
Farewell Coach and in my version of Field of Dreams, please take time to have a game of catch, with my Dad.
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
Denis Diderot
French author & philosopher (1713 – 1784)

click for full size.

Rush Limbaugh – Jan. 2003;

“Let’s say we discover the gene that says the kid’s gonna be gay. […] The gay community would do the fastest 180 and become pro-life faster than anybody you’ve ever seen.”

Peter Tatchell, gay rights campaigner – Dec. 2006;

“These experiments echo Nazi research in the early 1940s which aimed at eradicating homosexuality. They stink of eugenics”

Via Catprint;

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history

The bottom line is that the outdoorsman in me has always been more comfortable pursuing game with a fishing pole rather than a gun or a bow. Just seemed like a fairer fight, I suppose.

More

Every so often one reads something that contains such obvious truth, that is communicated with such clarity and efficiency, that it comes to serve as an ideological anchoring point. This is one such piece for me, first published in 2001. I’ve been meaning to share it for some time now.

Multiculturalists insist that we change how we teach our children, in order to reshape how they think. Specifically, they must stop thinking of Western and American civilization as superior to other civilizations. The doctrine underlying this position is cultural relativism — the denial that any culture can be said to be better or worse than any other. Cultural relativists take the principle of equality, which in the American political tradition is applied to individuals in terms of rights, and apply it instead to cultures in terms of their value.
One approach taken by multiculturalists to extinguish feelings of cultural superiority is to revise reading lists in our schools to minimize the influence of those they deride as “dead white males.” A few years ago the novelist Saul Bellow set off a controversy when he said, “Find me the Tolstoy of the Zulus, or the Proust of the Papuans, and I would be happy to read him.” In the storm of outrage that followed, Bellow was accused of racism. But the charge was unjustified. Bellow was not saying, after all, that the Zulus and Papuans are incapable of producing great novelists. He was saying that as far as he knew, they hadn’t. But just by raising the possibility that some cultures have contributed more, if you will, to the dining table of civilization, he had violated one of the chief tenets of multiculturalism.
[…]
In carrying forth their case, cultural relativists must account for the obvious fact that for the last half millennium, it has been one culture — the culture of the West and now of America — that has dominated the world. Prior to 1500, China was the preeminent civilization and Western civilization — then called Christendom — was a relative backwater. How did this backwater conquer the world? Multiculturalists explain it in terms of oppression. Western civilization, they say, became so powerful because it is so evil. The study of Western civilization, they insist, should focus on colonialism and slavery, the distinctive mechanisms of Western oppression. But colonialism and slavery are not distinctively Western at all. They are universal.
The British conquered India and ruled it for 300 years. But before the British there were the Persians, the Mongols, the Afghans, and Alexander the Great. Indeed, the British were the sixth or seventh colonial invader to occupy a large part of Indian territory. As for slavery, it has existed in all cultures. It was prevalent in ancient India, in China, in Greece and Rome, and in Africa. American Indians practiced slavery long before Columbus set foot here. In point of fact, what is uniquely Western is not slavery, but abolition. The movement to end slavery developed only in Western civilization. While people everywhere oppose slavery for themselves, never outside the West have slave-owners and potential slave-owners proclaimed principles condemning it, and expended blood and treasure ending it.

From the speech “Multiculturalism: Fact or Threat?” by Dinesh D’Souza, given on May 22, 2001 in Boise, Idaho. The rest is here. The little periodical it first appeared in, Hillsdale College’s Imprimis, is truly unparalleled in the quality of content per square inch of copy. And it’s free!

An ex-Mountie finds the way to forgiveness.
h/t

When I was an infant, William Boetcker’s “Conservative creed”* dangled in a mobile over my crib.

Inside the Gated Community community *, this qualifies as controversial stuff.

Our legislation will reverse the onus so that people charged with serious gun crimes will have to demonstrate to the courts why they should not stay in custody until their trial.
Too many Canadians are victims of criminals who are out on bail.
Just this month, a 23-year-old Toronto man accused of shooting four people – four people – in London, was granted bail.
Rejecting the Crown’s argument that the man was a threat to public safety, the judge, acting under the current law, ordered him to stay home with his mother.
He promptly vanished.

For the rest of us plebes, it simply makes sense. Jacks Newswatch concurs.

The issue was bail hearings and I’m here to tell you now that I have watched as more than my fair share of “neer do wells” have “talked the talk” and “walked the walk” as I took the shackles off them — “many” thanks to a JP that failed to understand that protection of the public comes first. I also escorted them back into court a week later for a bail violation.

Via Newsbeat 1.

I can remember being in Seoul — oh, I don’t know, six, eight, 10, 12 months ago, and I was in the top of a tall building, and the Korean — maybe it was longer now, maybe 10 or 12 months — the Korean parliament was just voting on whether or not they should send any troops into Iraq to help the coalition. And I was on about the eighth or 10th floor, and there was a reception and people were milling around, having a drink and talking, and a woman reporter — I don’t know, 40, 45 years old — came up to me and said, “May I ask you some questions?” I said, “Sure.” And she said, “Why in the world should Korea — the Korean people send their young people halfway across the world to Iraq to get killed or wounded?” And I looked at her and thought to myself, “She obviously doesn’t know much about the Korean War.” And I thought — I had just come from laying a wreath at the Korean War Memorial there and seeing the name of a friend from high school who was killed there actually on the last day of the war — and I said to her, “Look out there. Look at what this country’s done. Look at the opportunity people have. Look at you. That would not have happened if people had asked that question in the United States and said, ‘Why in the world should we send American troops over to Korea, halfway around the world, to get killed or wounded?'” And it’s important that she understand that. It’s important that we all understand that.

An email response sent along by reader Bob, from Saskatchewan MP David Anderson (Cypress Hills – Grasslands). Dated Nov. 15

RE: Call For State Funeral for Last Great War Veteran
Dear Bob,
Thank you for your e-mail. Canada’s New Government is very proud of our three known surviving veterans from the First World War. John Babcock, Lloyd Clement and Percy Dwight Wilson are three remarkable men.
These brave men remain a living link to what has been called our Greatest Generation. Canadians are indebted to these heroes for the sacrifices they made and for their remarkable bravery displayed on behalf of Canada. We should not forget these men, and the others of their generation, who gave so much for their country.
Veterans Affairs Minister, Greg Thompson had the privilege and honour of meeting all three men, and was moved by their continued devotion to their country. They remain as committed to Canada as they did when they wore the uniform.
Canada’s New Government is developing a strategy to mark the passing of Canada’s last surviving First World War Veterans in consultation with Veterans’ organizations, the Department of National Defence and Canadian Heritage.
Thank you for your comments; I will pass them on to Veterans Affairs Minister, Greg Thompson.
Sincerely,
David Anderson, MP

Previous.
Meanwhile, over at the Saskatchewan NDP convention, the ever-opportunistic Jack Layton is proposing … a state funeral for the last surviving WWI veteran!
The Layton Lightbulb Moment seems a recent one, too – at time of posting, a search of the NDP website reveals no results on the topic. There’s nothing mentioned under “today’s headlines”, either.
Neither this CP item, nor audio clips on local radio indicate Layton has given credit where it is due – to the folks at the Dominion Institute whose petition started the ball rolling.

A BBC interview with Iraqi Prime MInister Nouri Maliki (runs 20 minutes) that comes highly recommended, via Mario Loyola ;

The encouraging thing here is how convincingly Maliki talks about imposing “the authority of the state,” and he shows a pretty nuanced view of the danger the militias pose outside state control, and the role they can play if properly regulated. He also makes a point I had never thought of, which is that the United States and the Coalition have an obligation under Security Council resolutions to maintain security in Iraq until Iraqi security forces can take over. And by the way, he has every intention of seeing Saddam hang before the end of the year.

Go to this page for the link.