Because you can’t make ends meet in a one politician family these days.
Harper Refuses To Protect Children From Parents
Liberal leadership candidate Carolyn Bennett, (Liberal MP for St. Pauls, Toronto) addresses Canada’s number one root cause of crime – parents.
“There’s actually no plan for early learning and child-care spaces. So it’s a good job they’re putting more money for prisons in the budget, because we’re going to need them if we don’t get this early childhood right.”
It’s times like this that I really regret not having the comments open – just to showcase the pop-criminology apologists just itching to jump in and defend her.
Patience
As you can see, comments are still turned off. I’ve contacted a couple of hired guns to get the upgrade installed, but this may take a few days to complete. According to my hosting company, the spambots are so aggressive at the moment, they’re taking servers down. It’s not just comments that are affected – SDA was hit with 450 spam trackbacks last night, so I will have to turn those off as well.
So, be patient – we’ll get things back under control shortly.
A Carnival Ride
*
update – Life was a bit lonely at the carnival until a bunch of right wingers stopped by!
Those Whacky Jihadis!
YMCFATWA!
They finally figured out the acronym.
1908-2006
Publius on the “last gentleman of the American left”;
Galbraith’s thesis in The Affluent Society was essentially a slick and updated presentation of Veblen’s attack on capitalism. More deeply it was a repetition of the New Testament’s contempt for wealth and call to seek redemption by giving one’s ill gotten gains to the poor. A Francis of Assisi who had tenure at Harvard and skied every year at Gstadd with his old pal William F. Buckley. It should be kept in mind that when Galbraith declared the American middle and upper classes were rich enough, and that their surplus wealth should be handed over to the “poor,” the American standard of living was about one-third of what it is today. In his seven decade career in public policy it seems quite literally never to have occurred to Galbraith that the big government policies he did so much to prompt, and was so talented at implementing, might perpetuate poverty rather than alleviate it.
Seismic Map
Uh oh.
Folks better be moving to higher ground.
Straight Face Ralphie
“We’re going to vote against this budget” – Liberal MP Ralph Goodale, 10:26 am, May 3, 2006 .
“We can get by these silly games of chicken, now that the Bloc has signalled they’ll be supporting the government…. they can’t afford an election right now “ – Liberal MP Ralph Goodale, 10:27 am, May 3, 2006
(from a just-concluded interview on John Gormley Live)
A Victory For “Progressive” European Human Rights
A court action in Holland by neighbors of Somali born Dutch MP and critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali argued that her mere presence in the apartment complex was a violation of the European Treaty for Human Rights.
Courts found for the plaintiffs ruling her presence to be a “severe violation of one’s private life”. She must vacate her home.
“Now, officially she is a pariah. She cannot live anymore in a house or apartment, only on military bases. The orthodox Islamists and the progressive multiculti activists succeeded in isolating this remarkable person from society. Shame upon my country.”
Pieter Dorsman has been following the story closely, of course;
It’s five days now since the contentious court ruling, but all I can see in the Dutch and international media landscape is a ghastly silence. The blogosphere picked it up, looked at it and moved the story forward, the rest of the world didn’t care.
More commentary from D.J. Teeboom, Pipeline News;
Sixty years have passed but not much has changed. People still ask the police to remove their persecuted neighbors instead of giving them shelter. And why not? People are followers and in this case they simply follow the behavior of their leaders. Holland is a country where everybody loves to talk about solidarity yet no solidarity was shown with the Danish cartoonists. They get upset here about baby seals getting killed in Canada without ever loosing any sleep over the tens of thousands of women who are murdered each year due to honor killings. Each year they promise us ‘never again’ and they can do it with a straight face while everybody knows that Rwandan and Darfuri genocides can go on unopposed. It’s not that the UN does nothing, it is much worse than that. Jan Pronk, now a UN official, negotiates with the Sudanese government while they are they ones who have hired the Janjaweed to exterminate the population of Darfur. Instead of treating that government as a bunch of criminals he legitimatizes them by negotiating with them. One leads by example and when our leaders behave like cowards it’s no wonder the people behave like that as well.
Who Are You?
A few months ago I asked a question in response to yet another article based on false assumptions about blogging;
Why does mainstream media continue to stereotype political bloggers and our readers as “tech savvy” twenty year olds?
A lenthy comments thread followed, revealing that the majority of readers here fall in the 35 – 50 year age range.
Now there’s a new BlogAds survey (taken in the US in fall of 2005) that concurs with our informal findings.
This overview page provides more detailed breakdown,
Budget Bullet Points
Up here. On personal tax;
– Reduce the GST from 7 per cent to 6 per cent at a cost of $8.6 billion over two years.
– Create a new Canada Employment Credit worth up to $1000. This will cost $2.7 billion over two years.
– Reduce the lowest tax rate from 16 per cent to 15.5 per cent. This will cost $3 billion dollars over two years.
– The basic personal exemption, the amount you can earn tax free, will increase slightly to $8,839. This change will cost $1.58 billion over two years.
– Changes to the rules to allow for the family transfer of fishing property at cost of $120 million over two years.
Emphasis mine, because for some time now, I’ve wondered how it came to be that leaving money in the hands of those who earned it came to be redefined as a “government cost”.
Shouldn’t it be “taxpayer saving”?
From the comments, Chris caught this bit of prose fresh from the “throw a plate of rhetorical spaghetti on the floor” school of journalism;
Now, my favourite part of the CTV’s story is when they say:
“But in an unexpected turn of events, the budget also reneges on the Tories’ pledge to completely eliminate the Liberal’s planned income-tax relief.”
B*$t@rd$! Reneging on a pledge not to cancel tax cuts. What jerks.
More reaction from Stephen Taylor.
Dep’t of Finance 2006 budget page.
Battle Of The Telephone Poles
Campaigning at Norway House Cree Nation;
My people have forewarned me that this contest is even dirtier than previous elections. As a witness to those messy affairs, I find that hard to fathom. Prior to arriving, I receive a frantic call from one of the elders. �Can you please stay with Marcel Balfour,� she pleads, �there are rumours they are planning to have him beat up.�
[…]
On Wednesday, March 15, one day before the vote, the talk among friends and acquaintances is all about who may win the election. It turns out the old Northern store building has been stocked up with new furniture and appliances, and band members have been hauling things home all day. �Didn�t chief Louis Stevenson just use the same election ploy over at Peguis?� they joked. �Nah, Indian Affairs said it wasn�t vote-buying, so there!�
The reports expand: �Band members have been coming out of the office all day with money!� someone remarks. �Now is the time to get money from them,� another says. �After all it is our money, anyway.� This, I remember, has been going on for many past elections here. Nor do I find it unusual to discover the tires on my car have been slashed.
“Politics as usual” on the rez – or maybe not.
Osama Bin Kodak
In the mind of almost-always-Oscar-ignored Richard Dreyfuss, two 110 story office towers collapsing in the streets of Manhattan at the hands of Islamic terrorists don’t create a need to react – pictures do
“The falling Twin Towers — pictures that produced anger, a lot of anger that were sent instantly around the world, they created a need to react.”
“People in Kansas could see the Twin Towers fall at exactly the same instant as in Nigeria and Cairo. Such an instantaneous knowledge of a situation leads to an instantaneous reaction which creates demand for an instantaneous, reflexive response.
As Dreyfuss explains;
“You have to encourage prose, analysis and detail — otherwise people will go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan without really knowing why.”
Translation: “You have to ask yourself why they hate us, then understand that (other) white Americans deserve to die.”
Dreyfuss is eager to point out that he is not anti-technology: “I’m not in love with technology and speed but I don’t want to sound like a luddite.
Little danger of that – “idiot” trumps “luddite” every time.
What’s He Up To?
Mu’ammar Qadhafi has never struck me as being particularly devout. In this interview with Al Jazeera though, he shares his thoughts on theology, the Danish cartoons and the future of Europe. It’s “rah-rah Islam” from beginning to end;
Mu’ammar Al-Qadhafi: “Some people believe that Muhammad is the prophet of the Arabs or Muslims alone. This is a mistake. Muhammad is the prophet of all people.”
[�]
“He superseded all previous religions. If Jesus were alive when Muhammad was sent, he would have followed him. All people must be Muslims.”
[…]
“We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe – without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.
[…]
“Europe is in a predicament, and so is America. They should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims.”
Qadhafi is playing here to a domestic audience – is he concerned that Libya’s recent capitulation to the west may have placed his military dictatorship on the “to do” list of Islamists?
I decided to ask Michael Totten privately about this, and his response points to a book by Judith Miller, written in the 1980’s.
It’s hard to say why that guy does what he does and says what he says. Libya is one of the most opaque countries in the world. That said, I think your assumption is probably the best one. He is very afraid of lslamists.
I know Judith Miller is persona-non-grata right now with pretty much everyone, but she wrote a fascinating 50-page essay about Libya and Uncle Moammar in her book “God Has 99 Names.” He told her, back when Clinton was president, that he was desperately trying to get Clinton to “save the world” from the Islamists. It makes for fascinating pre-911 reading.
As I said, Qadhafi has never struck me as devout.
Inspiring Thoughts
Amnesty Marches
It’s big.
 |
For a roundup on the illegal-immigrant amnesty marches, check Drudge for mainstream reports and Instapundit, Hotair and Michelle Malkin for updates and links to blog commentary. As an aside – it’s hard not to notice the complete and utter absence of the word “illegal” on local radio news. |
More: Tim Graham notices too
While the graphic on screen touted a “Sea of Humanity” at the pro-illegal immigration rallies yesterday, NBC’s reporter used the phrase “those whom critics call ‘illegals.'” This is a great example of how the PC police at minority-journalist groups have created a silly argot that places the reporter a ten-foot-pole away from reality. It sounds like “those whom smoking critics call ‘smokers.'”
Sometimes There Are Consequences
The LA Times has cut loose Pulitzer winning reporter Michael Hiltzik in response to the well-publicized Patterico bust *.
“Hiltzik did not commit any ethical violations in his newspaper column, and an internal inquiry found no inaccurate reporting in his postings in his blog or on the Web,” the editor’s note said. “But employing pseudonyms constitutes deception and violates a central tenet of The Times’ ethics guidelines: Staff members must not misrepresent themselves and must not conceal their affiliation with The Times.”
And sometimes there are editors who treat their readers like idiots.
Clarification – A profile of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that appeared in last Saturday’s Focus section referred to a story about the Iranian President in the current issue of The New Republic. After an investigation by The Globe and Mail, it appears that notes by the author were mistakenly inserted into the story without proper attribution. The Globe has apologized to The New Republic and regrets the error.
If that’s all they could come up with after an “investigation”, one must conclude that the Globe and Mail employs the most incurious editorial staff on the face of the planet. Robert Aterman;
The Mop’s response to the matter of the striking similarity between the recent Paul William Roberts (Globe and Mail) and Matthias K�ntzel (New Republic) profiles of Ahmadinejad … [is]… bunk. The PWR article is around 2,000 words. Of that about a third is given over to Ahmadinejad�s biography. Almost all of this section is a lightly paraphrased (and in parts exactly identical) version of the original article by K�ntzel. This represents pretty much the entire informative content of the article; the rest is Roberts� opinioneering. It is hard to see how this can be described as �notes by the author.� Nor is it believable that this was �mistakenly inserted.� This isn�t a line or a paragraph, but over 700 words, absent which the article would include essentially no factual content.
The Roberts column appeared April 22nd and there’s no sign of formal disciplinary action that I’m aware of – but perhaps I’ve just not been looking hard enough. Perhaps one of our lurking “media moles” can answer the question – does Paul William Roberts still write for the Globe and Mail?
Or anyone else?
Harper Conservatives Sure To Trumpet Secretive NORAD Deal
Joel Johannesen fisks the habitually disingenuous Toronto Star;
[T]he top secret hidden agenda Harper-led Conservative Government of Canada relented and allowed this secret news release to be �unwrapped� by �sources� such that all Canadians will find out and know about it even without waiting for a phone call to be returned.
This was noticed at Daimnation, too.
What Goes Up
The Winnipeg Sun brings us this happy ending;
Schenk scaled a 32-foot-long ladder and managed to clamber onto a thick branch — which neighbours estimated to be at least 40 feet off the ground — begging the cat to come into his arms.
“This guy’s too old to be doing this,” said a neighbour named Jim as worried residents and emergency workers watched the man cling to the tree.
Schenk eventually got a hold on Max. A loudly meowing cat in hand, Schenk began clambering down the tree’s thick trunk before inching his way down the ladder as worried neighbours, firefighters and paramedics watched.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I confess to shedding a quiet tear every time I see a cat skeleton in a tree.
“This is now Iran’s front line with Israel”
�I say this to my guys every morning: Everything could explode at any moment. Just after I said it this morning a bus load of pensioners showed up on a field trip. An old woman brought us some food. It�s crazy. They shouldn�t be here. You shouldn�t be here.�
�What�s happening here is very unusual,” Zvika, the Israeli Defense Forces Spokesman, said. But he wouldn’t tell me what, exactly, was so unusual. Shortly after I left the country, a story broke in the Daily Telegraph that explained it.
Iran has moved into South Lebanon. Intelligence agents are helping Hezbollah construct watch towers fitted with one-way bullet-proof windows right next to Israeli army positions.
Here’s what one officer said:
This is now Iran’s front line with Israel. The Iranians are using Hizbollah to spy on us so that they can collect information for future attacks. And there is very little we can do about it.
Michael Totten, reporting from Israel.
(Part 1)
Update – Part 3