You can follow the action at Blogging Tories homepage. Comments are open for discussion, jeering, and Jason Cherniak limericks!
Outremont… with 5 polls reporting, NDP leading Liberals with nearly 50% of the vote.
(Jason, calm yourself. It’s early.)
Outremont … with 10 polls reporting, NDP leading Liberals 45% of the vote…
(jason, put down the glass. You’ll regret it tomorrow.)
Outremont … with 45 polls reporting, NDP leading Liberals with 49% of the vote…
(Jason, it’s not the dog’s fault. Stop kicking him.)
In other Earth Saving political developments, the Green Party is leading the NeoRhino candidate by a margin of 4 to 1. Good times at Elizabeth May’s tonight!
Outremont … with 60 polls reporting, NDP leading Liberals with 48.5% of the vote …
(Jason, come away from that window. Have another drink.)
Speaking of drink – you may take one for every time someone being interviewed on CPAC says “Stephane Dion is our leader”.
Outremont … with 100 polls reporting, NDP leading Liberals with 48.5% of the vote…
(The phone at Jason’s keeps ringing. Could someone please blackberry him for me and check that he’s ok?)
In the “Liberal stronghold” of Outremont, with the entire Liberal Quebec caucus holding tight to the handrails as she submerges below the waves…. Jocelyn Coulon has conceded defeat – “I feel as though I’ve won tonight”.
(Jason… put down the gun.)
From the comments (along with many excellent limericks) – “Pinhead just switched to English, and thanked “all Liberal militants.” I kid you not.”
Support Our Troops Trust Fund
An initiative created by the National Citizens Coalition;
To date the Support Our Troops Fund has raised over $30,000 for the Chief of Defence (CDF) Military Families Fund. This unique program, created with the support of thousands of NCC members, enables the Canadian Forces to respond quickly to the extraordinary stresses faced by military families in times of crisis, providing a pro-active, front-line source of immediate assistance in urgent situations.
Click here to find out how you can contribute.
Venezuela’s “New Citizens”
Will learn to drive bulldozers.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to close or take over any private school that refuses to submit to the oversight of his socialist government as it develops a new curriculum and textbooks.
“Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants,” said Chavez, speaking on the first day of classes.
All schools, public and private, must admit state inspectors and submit to the government’s new educational system, or be closed and nationalized, with the state taking responsibility for the education of their children, Chavez said.
A new curriculum will be ready by the end of this school year, and new textbooks are being developed to help educate “the new citizen,” said Chavez’s brother and education minister Adan Chavez, who joined him a televised ceremony at the opening of a public school in the eastern town of El Tigre.
The president’s opponents accuse him of aiming to indoctrinate young Venezuelans with socialist ideology. But the education minister said the aim is to develop “critical thinking,” not to impose a single way of thought.
10 People
Who aren’t screwing up Canada. It’s last call for your nominations.
An Interview With A Mukhtar
INDC: Security has improved a lot; I was here in January and things were very bad. Why has security improved so much?
Mukhtar: The people of Fallujah, now they know the truth of the terrorists, the mujahadeen. Now they know that these people are not working for Fallujah; no, they are working against the people here. So they’ve changed their minds, all of their thinking about the terrorists. Fallujah was a city of peace for a long time. It’s the “city of mosques” and all the people are peaceful, hard workers.
INDC: Why was there so much conflict with the Americans initially?
Mukhtar: We thought America wanted to steal Iraq. And from our perspective as Muslims, you should fight against thieves. And all the people around the world … it’s the same in America … if Iraq went to America to take America, all the people would fight against Iraq. I think we can agree about that.
INDC: What do you think of Americans now?
Mukhtar: The Americans now are peaceful — more than us (laughs). They are helpful and give humanitarian support for the people here.
You can read the rest here.
Related – “American commanders in southern Iraq say Shiite sheiks are showing interest in joining forces with the U.S. military against extremists, in much the same way that Sunni clansmen in the western part of the country have worked with American forces against al-Qaida.”
CWB: $325 CDN – It’s “the new $350 US”
More “premium price” news from the Canadian Wheat Board;
“The prices we are asking in certain world markets are the highest that our barley marketers can remember in U.S. dollar terms,” Weisensel said. “This is an ideal situation for single-desk marketing as there are no competing sellers to push down the price, while the CWB is able to successfully price discriminate between markets in order to extract the highest return that each buyer is capable of paying for our high-quality barley. These premiums will be directly returned to Prairie farmers.” Sales of two-row malting barley made by the CWB since August 1 have averaged $325 Cdn a tonne, or more than $7 Cdn per bushel, as a landed freight-on-board (FOB) value.
In the past month, world barley prices have jumped $80 per tonne, which is a 25% increase, to a record $350[US] per tonne [$7.84 CDN per bushel] . The Ukraine previously accounted for 16% of world exports, but due to the poor crop this year export restrictions were imposed to ensure that there are sufficient domestic supplies to soften internal prices. In addition, Australia, which normally supplies one-third of world exports, is facing lower crop prospects and depleted old crop exportable supplies, according to USDA statistics.
(emphasis mine)
Update
Reader Tips
Monday morning tips thread.
Greenspan: No “War For Oil”
Well, here’s a shocker – Alan “The Iraq war is largely about oil” Greenspan says he’s been taken out of context. No kidding;
Greenspan clarified his remarks in an interview with the Washington Post, telling the newspaper that although securing global oil supplies was “not the administration’s motive,” he had presented the White House with a case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.
“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan said. “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ‘Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?,’ I would say it was essential.”
He said that in his discussions with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, “I have never heard them basically say, ‘We’ve got to protect the oil supplies of the world,’ but that would have been my motive.”
Greenspan wanted to communicate how important the Middle East is in terms of global finances. He himself made the case for removing Saddam Hussein to keep financial markets from collapsing from an attack on world oil supplies, such as the one Saddam conducted during the first Gulf War. He took that argument to the White House, which specifically rejected it — quite the opposite of what the quote implied when first reported.
The chances of this correction being carried by the same Canadian media that rebroadcast the original misquote lie somewhere between zero and “not f’ing likely”.
More on the news debacle here.
1. Pour Gasoline
Dion loyalists suspect Liberal organizers who support Mr. Ignatieff have been undermining the campaign, hoping that a loss would force Mr. Dion out of the leadership once Liberals realized that he couldn’t deliver seats in Quebec.
“I only know what I see, and I see some suspicious stuff,” said one Liberal worker on the ground.
2. Add match.
Y2Kyoto: The Year-Round Port Of Churchill
Warmer winters. Wetter* summers. I’m failing to see the downside in this;
As I’ve written before, the solar cycle appears to be reaching the end of its manic phase, and we should not be surprised by the onset of rather crisp global cooling over the coming decades. But even supposing the warming trend were to continue geometrically, in obedience to doomsday rhetoric, why on earth would a Canadian Conservative be alarmed?
For IF this were true, it would be Canada’s lucky day. We should be gloating! The world will be starving, while we are farming the Hudson Bay lowlands. The world will be parched, while we are guzzling the fresh glacial run-off. Bring on the sun!
Though, admittedly, future generations of prairie farmers may be deprived of that quintessential Canadian experience of frost in August.
Moreover, a quick atlas check persuades me that there is a fairly close demographic relation, both in Canada and USA, between height above sea level and the propensity to vote gliberal (i.e. Liberal and NDP, or Democrat). Such that, a sea level rise of just 50 feet would give us a Conservative majority up here, and put the Republicans back in charge of Congress down there, while guaranteeing that neither Hillary nor Chelsea Clinton ever becomes President. (The submergence of Prince Edward Island alone would cost our Liberals four seats.)
As I said – I’m failing to see the downside in this.
Not Waiting For The Asteroid
*
Related: “Wound. Self-inflicted.”
Reader Tips
A “sneer free” NYT article on Ayn Rand’s continuing influence on American business leaders.
GE’s Environment Push Hits Business Realities.
The only person I can think of likely to watch this much video footage of Garth Turner is Garth Turner;
… it takes a skilled orator to connect the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota, an overpass in Quebec and American military spending in Iraq.
Comments are open for your own.
Secret Raid On A Korean Nuclear Shipment?
Ten days after the jets reached home [from Syria], their mission was the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel believed it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea.
The Israeli government was not saying. “The security sources and IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] soldiers are demonstrating unusual courage,” said Ehud Olmert, the prime minister. “We naturally cannot always show the public our cards.”
The Syrians were also keeping mum. “I cannot reveal the details,” said Farouk al-Sharaa, the vice-president. “All I can say is the military and political echelon is looking into a series of responses as we speak. Results are forthcoming.”
Except for the unnamed “sources”. As usual, there’s no shutting them up.
h/t
“Why have you – personally – not gone to Afghanistan?”
I’ll give credit where it’s due – hats off to Mansbridge for this.
Don’t be surprised to see Dion hit the ground in Kandahar as early as Tuesday – just to put as much distance between himself and Outremont as humanly possible.
More… Debacle… disaster.
STOP THE PRESSES: It’s sabotage!
Star Power: Dion, Dryden, Trudeau rally before 50 chanting party supporters!
h/t
“The Indian was striking him on the head with a two-by-four while he was unconscious.” (Updated)
According to the Globe & Mail, the noble savagelets defending themselves from an unconscious man did so while police stood by and did nothing;
Joe Gualtieri said that his brother survived only because the gang of youths who were hitting his unconscious brother’s head with a piece of wood – possibly an oak rail from the house – ran away when one of Sam’s sons shouted: “He’s dead, he’s dead.”
Mr. Gualtieri was attacked after a Thursday protest stopped construction at the Stirling South building development in Caledonia, southwest of Hamilton. The 90-unit subdivision, on eight hectares, is about one kilometre from the disputed Douglas Creek development, which has been occupied by protesters from the nearby Six Nations reserve since February, 2006.
In an interview shortly after Sam Gualtieri underwent an MRI in a Hamilton hospital yesterday, his brother said Mr. Gualtieri was attacked when he went back to see what was happening at the house.
Joe Gualtieri said Ontario Provincial Police officers on the site “stood there, and they did not intervene” until after the beating, when the attackers had fled.
[…]
The confederacy has adopted a policy of seeking development agreements with those building on the Haldimand Tract, a strip of land 9½ kilometres either side of the Grand River, and its lawyer Aaron Detlor has been in Caledonia negotiating with Mr. Kragten.
Haldimand Mayor Marie Traynor described the proposed development fee as “like the old-time Mafia, isn’t it? That’s what people have been telling me. That’s how they see it, and I have to agree. If you give me some money, I’ll leave you alone.”
The Price Of Prince Albert: The Sound Of Chains Yanking
CJME/CKOM NewsTalk Radio Afternoon Program with host Alec Docking
Sept. 14th, 2007
***begin transcript***
ALEC DOCKING (Program Host): We are still talking about the Prince Albert Pulp Mill….
Yesterday we got a copy of the Memorandum of Understanding which lays out the plan to reopen the mill. A lot of people have looked at that and say it’s pretty tenuous stuff at this point. There are certainly no guarantees that anything will happen because there are a lot of ifs, ands and buts. But if everything did fall into place we would then be in a position where we would see the mill reopening. So let’s just say that everything does get done. They do all the due diligence.
Let’s go back to the announcement. Here is the Premier and what he said will happen in terms of getting the people back on the job at the pulp mill.
PREMIER LORNE CALVERT: Our main focus will be to get the pulp mill up and running as early as late summer, early fall 2008.
ALEC DOCKING (Program Host): Alright. So that is the Premier’s word.
And then reporters being what reporters are, they go back to Domtar to say let’s just go through this. What about the optimism that is being expressed by the Premier? Well, maybe not so quite so optimistic. According to Domtar’s Vice-President Michel Rathier who we spoke to just a few hours ago. Here’s what he said:
MICHEL RATHIER (Domtar): We feel that it is premature at this time to give people false hope and say to them by next summer you’re going to start working again. It’s not possible and Domtar does not work that way.
ALEC DOCKING (Program Host): From Domtar at the highest level: We don’t want to give false hope. It’s not possible. We don’t work that way.
So he’s dashing any possibility then — according to this executive with Domtar — the company that is to reopen and run the pulp mill. He says it can’t be done.
Then just in the last half hour or thereabouts, a news release comes from the government saying woo, wait a minute. Domtar is clarifying their statements. They made a mistake. They’re not really meaning what you just heard.
So let’s listen carefully as we talk again to Michel Rathier a few moments ago.
This is what you said earlier this afternoon, now the government is saying you are saying something different. Can you tell you what you’re really saying?
MICHEL RATHIER (Domtar): What I said this morning I was not misquoted. But I’m the one who just slightly shifted comments here and all my understanding, this is an error on my part. And the discrepancies is not that huge once you hear the information. My understanding was that after a year’s work we would be in a position to say, to firm up an opening date. In fact, it is within that year’s work and after that year’s work that we expect and we are all expecting to align all the stars, if you want, and all the planets are well aligned and then yes after that year’s work there is potential for reopening the facility.
ALEC DOCKING (Program Host): Alright. Did you get all that? So his clarification is: No I was not misquoted. But I had to clarify because maybe I didn’t have anything lined up right. He said earlier it’s going to take a year’s work before we can make those decisions. Now he says it’s going to take a year’s work and (chuckles) then we’ll make the decision.
Okay, I guess the clarification would be now if everything is falling into place and absolutely every star aligned itself, then after the year you could be then in a position to be reopening the pulp mill.
Which would put it in the context in which the Premier spoke earlier or would it? Because once you’ve done all the work, do you then turn on a switch, everybody is back at work or does it take several months anyway which puts it well past the timeframe the Premier spoke of.
The other question one has to ask, why would there be a sudden clarification when his clarification doesn’t sound a heck of a lot different than he said this morning? Do you smell any sign whatsoever of any government pressure being placed upon Domtar?
Hmmm, just a speculation on my part.
It’s 4:19.
***end transcript***
More commentary –
Weyerhaeuser’s Fine Paper business merged into Domtar. Domtar bought everything in Saskatchewan that Weyerhaeuser owned. That included the rights to the PA Forestry Management Area (FMA), the paper mill, the pulp mill and the Big River saw mill.
Domtar is currently responsible for the environmental clean-up of those sites, yet we’ll be picking it up. Domtar will strip Big River of anything of value, yet we’ll be buying it. Domtar will double the output of Wapawekka Saw Mill, yet we’ll be paying for it.
The environmental clean-up must have been the lynch-pin for Domtar (not that the money is bad). Weyerhaeuser has been in the sights of the Rainforest Action Network and the Saskatchewan Environmental Society for years. I can only imagine the costs to the Province that will be necessary to clean up Weyerhaeuser’s mess.
Reader Tips
Rio never disappoints.
How the nanny state is killing Manitobans.
A special ruling for a special religion. (link fixed)
The RCMP get a lesson on “nebulous” firearm law.
Football games, yard work, and good weather mean light blogging for the next couple of days. Add yours in the comments, and then get out an enjoy your weekend!
“I find it interesting that [I] would be sitting down with bloggers.”
For those who missed it, Charles Adler interviews Bill Ardolino on his perceptions of the progress in Iraq.
And in answer to you who ask why we value the opinions of Bill Ardolino over those of Ottawa embed James Travers – Bill Ardolino interviews President George W. Bush;
President Bush met with a group bloggers today in an almost hour-long discussion of the war on terror. Eight individuals attended the meeting at the White House, while Bill Roggio and I video conferenced in from Camp Victory in Baghdad. Bush commenced the event with his oft-stated thoughts on the overall importance and strategies in various fronts of the war, with a focus on Iraq and Afghanistan, and then opened up the format to questions and discussion. My question focused on how national political reconciliation will affect progress in the Anbar Province and Fallujah specifically, and the President’s answer honestly surprised me in its length, level of detail and grasp of events on the ground.
That’s why.
RTWT, and hit his tip jar.
See also – Biill Roggio’s Q&A from the same meeting.
Update – Also there; NZ Bear of the Victory Caucus, Castle Argghhh!, Matt Burden of Blackfive Mrs. Greyhawk of Mudville Gazette, (standing in for the deployed Greyhawk), Steve Schippert of Threats Watch, Ward Carroll of Military.Com, A Soldier’s Perspective, and Mohammed of Iraq the Model.
Jeff Goldstein notes;
Had Ardolino been able to land these kinds of guests while we were doing our radio gig, I think we could have made some serious coin from it.
This Is Not Fair!
Outremont:
38% NDP, 32% Lib, 14% BQ
Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot:
49% BQ, 32% CPC, 6% NDP, 5% Lib
Roberval-Lake-Saint-Jean:
43% CPC, 37% BQ, 12% Lib, 4% NDP
Source
Chantal Hebert – “a disaster-in-the-making..”
Reader Tips
Tips thread for today.