Using her best Maya Angelou impersonation, Oprah Winfrey yesterday endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama for audiences in Iowa. With this first-ever foray into presidential politics, Winfrey is breaking new ground, her campaigns to defeat obesity and illiteracy behind her.
Pickton Verdict
Guilty of 6 counts of second-degree murder.
Keep discussion and links on topic, please. (And thanks for the heads up on my spelling error.)
So How Do They Publish Photos Of Missing Persons?
“Under privacy rules, a photo of a convict can’t be released unless he gives permission and signs a release form, said Corrections Canada, even if he breaks out of jail.”
I agree with Leo – The Prime Minister should immediately fire the Director General of Correctional Services Canada. But let’s not stop there. I’d select 50% of the so-called “criminologists” on staff at random, and fire them too. Perhaps then, the other 50% would be reminded who they’re working for.
h/t
Pelosi Lied
People got water up their nose;
When four members of Congress met “in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody” in 2002, they were given a virtual tour of “the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.” One of the members of this small group? Nancy Pelosi.
Among the techniques CIA officers described to the group, and thus Pelosi, was waterboarding.
More: “Next thing you know, someone’s going to say the Clinton co-presidency thought Saddam had a nuclear program and backed regime change.”
Reader Tips
Sunday tips thread.
Repent Islamophobe, Or We Kill You!
When the concept of “multiculturalism” was introduced to Canadians, most assumed it meant “more pavilions at Folkfest”;
The daughter of a British imam is living under police protection after receiving death threats from her father for converting to Christianity.
The 31-year-old, whose father is the leader of a mosque in Lancashire, has moved house an astonishing 45 times after relatives pledged to hunt her down and kill her.
The British-born university graduate, who uses the pseudonym Hannah for her own safety, said she renounced the Muslim faith to escape being forced into an arranged marriage when she was 16.
She has been in hiding for more than a decade but called in police only a few months ago after receiving a text message from her brother. In it, he said he would not be held responsible for his actions if she failed to return to Islam.
Officers have agreed to offer her protection in case of an attempt on her life.
[…]
A study this year found that 36 per cent of British Muslims between 16 and 24 believe those who convert to another religion should be punished by death.
“absolutely no bubble in technology”
Y2Kyoto: Gore Takes The Train
His luggage, a Mercedes.
(For our Norwegian readers.)
Libel Tourism
Just another proud part of the New Trudeaupia;
While everyone is busy humming “Let’s Not Be Beastly to the Muslims,” it is worth noting the word “Islamophobia” is a misnomer. A phobia describes an irrational fear, and it is axiomatic that fearing the effects of radical Islam is not irrational, but on the contrary very well-founded indeed, so that if you want to speak of a legitimate phobia-it’s a phobia I experience frequently-we should speak instead of Islamophobia-phobia, the fear of and revulsion towards Islamophobia.
More reaction here;
Consider the implications: By the logic of the CIC’s attack on Maclean’s magazine, the owners and operators of Canadian libraries and bookstores could also be charged with violating the human rights of Muslims by making not just Steyn’s article but also his entire book widely available to Canadians throughout the country.
In attacking Maclean’s magazine, the CIC is not acting alone. It has the support of the Ontario Federation of Labour. In a statement backing the CIC, OFL executive vice-president Terry Downey said: “We want to make sure there’s dignity and respect for all individuals in the province.”
[…]
the restrictions on speech in the codes were intended to apply only to communications that fostered discrimination on such bases as employment or housing. Instead, human rights tribunals have adopted such expansive interpretations of these speech restrictions that a newspaper or magazine could get into trouble for publishing even a truthful article about conflict in the Middle East, Bosnia, Rwanda or elsewhere that is likely to expose at least one of the parties to contempt.
Canada’s power-grabbing human rights commissioners evidently have scant regard for the freedoms they suppress or for the original understanding of the codes they are supposed to uphold. Otherwise, the British Columbia tribunal and the Canadian and Ontario human rights commissions would have promptly dismissed the CIC’s complaints against Maclean’s as entirely without merit.
That’s from the London Free Press. Now that Macleans has been targeted, they get interested. Better late than never, I suppose. But here’s the better CHRC story, if only one of those big budget investigative journalists could be bothered;
To date, Richard Warman has filed 26 complaints against named respondents with his former employer – the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Related – a “racist douchebag” imam gets mistaken for Mark Steyn.
The Bush Boom: Six Years And Counting
Yesterday one of those daily “financial report” blurbettes common to talk radio advised that Canada’s job making machine was continuing to create employment, despite the economic downturn in the US. It was no more that 15 seconds later that the same analyst offered that job growth figures just released in the US exceeded expectations, along with signifcant increases in wages.
That’s pretty typical. If you were walled off in a room somewhere in Chilliwack, with only the CBC and CTV as your sources, you could be forgiven for wondering if America will ever be released from a 7 year recession;
The pessimistas are a persistent bunch. In 2006, they were certain a recession was just around the corner. They were wrong. Instead, the economy posted two consecutive quarters of near or above four-percent growth.
[…]
Here are the facts: Americans are working. The 4.7 percent unemployment number remains at an historical low. On a three-month rolling basis, the U.S. economy has added over 100,000 jobs. Meanwhile, the household job count shows that an average of 303,000 jobs have been added in the last three months. This is noteworthy because it suggests that the job market is turning around.
Hours worked are growing more than 1-percent annually, while workers’ wages are running 3.8 percent, a full percentage point ahead of inflation. As for this week’s productivity report, it was nothing short of spectacular: the 6.3 percent productivity gain was the best in four years. A rise in productivity is good for growth. It’s good for profits. And it’s good for low inflation.
Speaking of inflation, business inflation is down from 3.5 percent just over a year ago to 1.5 percent today. Meanwhile, oil prices have retreated to $88. And, to top it all off, last night we received a tremendous new number showing household net wealth has headed even higher. It stands at a record $59 trillion dollars. That’s more than seven percent above a year ago.
The more things change…
In the 1980s, there was a consensus among the members of the national media that Ronald Reagan was going to fail and that he was going to bring on economic disaster. But…the economy didn’t collapse. In fact, it soared to unprecedented levels.
The media stubbornly refused to admit that “Reaganomics” was responsible. The drumbeat of negative opposition to the president’s policies continued through the 1980s. By 1986…the ratio of negative to positive stories was seven to one. In other words, as the economy was improving, media reports on the economy were becoming increasingly negative.
One of the most common allegations in these reports was that the poor got poorer under Reagan, even though the actual number of poor declined from 14 to 13 percent during his administration, and the average income for the lowest one-fifth of Americans rose from $7,008 to $9,431.
Inflation declined 48%, from 8.9 to 4.6%. Unemployment declined 45%, from 7.5 to 5.2.%. Interest rates declined 71.9%, from 21 to 5.9%. Twenty-one million new jobs were created. The so-called “greedy ’80s” witnessed the largest peacetime economic expansion in our nation’s history, yet the media remained deaf, dumb and blind.
I’ve long maintained that most of what you hear in media about the relative strengths of our economies can be dispelled by driving from Winnipeg to Fargo.
The Sound Of Settled Science
In this first map of it’s kind, one can clearly see the how the quality distribution of the 460 out of 1221 stations surveyed so far looks […] results clearly show that the majority of USHCN stations surveyed so far have compromised measurement environments. The question then is this; have these mircosite biases been adequately accounted for in the surface temperature record?
Reader Tips
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“As a reciprocal gesture”
The Daily Telegraph is “considering installing a small etching of Warwick Fairfax in its tea-room”.
In the latest hilarious stuff-up at its so-called “newsroom of the future”, the Herald has installed massive pillars at its new Pyrmont office depicting a huge etched image of the News Corporation chief.
Mr Murdoch, of course, has much better taste in newspapers – he owns this one for starters.
And the fractuous Herald staff, whose dislike of Mr Murdoch is eclipsed only by their hostility towards their own bosses, Fairfax and Rural Press, are furious.
There are about 25 of the Murdoch pillars throughout the editorial floor, where Herald managers are making much of the company’s attempts to become an integrated media company. The company spent millions on its move from Darling Park to Pyrmont, and one source said outside consultants were paid “a vast sum” to design the pillars to “make some sort of statement about modern media.”
Y2Kyoto: The Sound Of Silenced Science
The United Nations has rejected all attempts by a group of dissenting scientists seeking to present information at the climate change conference taking place in Bali, Indonesia.
The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) has been denied the opportunity to present at panel discussions, side events, and exhibits; its members were denied press credentials. The group consists of distinguished scientists from Africa, Australia, India, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The scientists, citing pivotal evidence on climate change published in peer-reviewed journals, have expressed their opposition to the UN’s alarmist theory of anthropogenic global warming.
Ross McKitrick served as an external reviewer for the IPCC report in 2005;
Scientists who attribute warming to greenhouse gases argue that their climate models cannot reproduce the surface trends from natural variability alone. They then attribute it to greenhouse gases, since (they assume) all other human influences have been removed from the data by the adjustment models. If that has not happened, however, they cannot claim to be able to identify the role of greenhouse gases. Despite the vast number of studies involved, and the large number of contributors to the IPCC reports, the core message of the IPCC hinges on the assumption that their main surface climate data set is uncontaminated. And by the time they began writing the recent Fourth Assessment Report, they had before them a set of papers proving the data are contaminated. […] Confronted with published evidence of an anthropogenic (but non-greenhouse) explanation for warming, they dismissed it with an unproven conjecture of natural causes. Who’s the “denialist” now?
Flashback – Exerpts: Memorandum by Professor Paul Reiter;
The scientific literature on mosquito-borne diseases is voluminous, yet the text references in the chapter were restricted to a handful of articles, many of them relatively obscure, and nearly all suggesting an increase in prevalence of disease in a warmer climate. The paucity of information was hardly surprising: not one of the lead authors had ever written a research paper on the subject! Moreover, two of the authors, both physicians, had spent their entire career as environmental activists. One of these activists has published “professional” articles as an “expert” on 32 different subjects, ranging from mercury poisoning to land mines, globalization to allergies and West Nile virus to AIDS.
And from the suppressed to the absurd;
China is being heralded as a leader on environmental initiatives at an international conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia.
This isn’t science. This is Alice in Baliland.
And the guppies who bob in our media fishbowl will simply blink, gulp, and swim on.
My Big Fat Infidel Wedding
Trust the bride to choose a dress from the Beheaded Line.
(Tangentially related)
Liberal Hope Bubble News: This Just Breaking…
Karlheinz Schreiber takes a turn for the credible;
Conservative MP Russ Hiebert: Can you tell the committee the name of the justice minister who signed your surrender order for extradition to Germany on Oct. 31, 2004?
Karlheinz Schreiber: From my recollection this was Mr. [Irwin] Cotler.
Conservative MP Russ Hiebert: Could you tell me which political party Mr. Cotler is a member of?
Karlheinz Schreiber: Liberal party.
Conservative MP Russ Hiebert: So is it your testimony that the Liberal party is also part of this quote ‘conspiracy and cover-up’?
Karlheinz Schreiber: Yes, they initiated the whole thing against me in Germany in 1995.
Heh.
Allah Bless Canada
Church and state, together at last;
The Canadian Islamic Congress […] know damn well themselves about the power of demographics as they keep track of Muslim populations in Canada and plan accordingly.
Prior to the 2004 elections the Canadian Islamic Congress issued a report (Elections 2004: Towards Informed and Commited Voting – pdf ) to their members. They had recognized their new found political clout due to changing demographics (example – second largest voting bloc in Ottawa) from compiled census data and noted that Muslims represented a swing vote in 101 electoral districts.
The Canadian Islamic Congress graded each of the 301 elected MP’s according to various domestic and international issues which included closer ties to Muslim countries, review’s of the anti-terrorism legislation and getting rid of security certificates. Members were urged to vote for those with the highest grade.
You aren’t allowed to mention this in polite company because, as every good progressive* will remind you – Islam is a race.
Read the rest at DMB.
Greater Trudeapia Area
Wednesday’s early morning shootings on Sheppard Avenue happened just steps from where 11-year-old Ephraim Brown was killed last summer when he was hit by a stray bullet from a gang gun battle. Toronto has seen 80 homicides so far this year, with 15 of them occurring in or around Mr. Mammoliti’s ward.
“There’s a crisis in the city, so if need be why not bring in the soldiers and arrest and detain the terrorists that call themselves gang members?” Mr. Mammoliti said. “Gang members have declared war on each other and they’re terrorizing our neighbourhoods, so let’s treat them as terrorist organizations.”
Jamaican soldiers will join police on patrols on the Caribbean island in a new strategy to fight rising violence, the prime minister said.
Nearly 60 homicides over the last week have pushed the number of victims this year beyond 1,430, police spokesman Karl Angell said. Most of the violence has been linked to gangs in the capital, Kingston, and the rural parishes of St. Catherine, Clarendon and St. James.
More – a crime map (via reader JM).
Reader Tips
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Y2Kyoto: Don’t Just Stand There With Your Finger* In Your Ear
EVEN before he gets to Bali for crucial climate change talks, Kevin Rudd has found himself embroiled in the complex world of global warming politics.
The Prime Minister yesterday attempted to clarify a statement from the Australian delegation in Bali, which said Australia “fully supports” an earlier decision for developed countries to examine cutting greenhouse emissions by between 25 per cent and 40 per cent by 2020.
That stance suggested Australia was prepared to radically cut its emissions, forcing Mr Rudd and his Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, to issue statements stressing that Australia was not yet committing itself to any 2020 targets.
Mr Rudd said some countries had indicated “they do not necessarily accept those targets, nor do they accept those targets as binding targets for themselves”. He added: “That is also the position of the Australian Government.”
Canadian media broadcast widely about the new Australian government “signing on” to Kyoto. This, not so much.
*