By the time I post this, SDA will have crossed the 500,000 visit threshold.
Thanks, everyone!
How Does Warren Know?
Warren Kinsella made quite the assertion yesterday.
“This is true. He is correct. Thank you.”
What was he confirming to be the truth?
WINDSOR, Ont. (CP) – Prime Minister Paul Martin says anyone found culpable in the sponsorship scandal should be punished severely but he doesn’t believe his predecessor, Jean Chretien, knew anything about it.
“I don’t believe that the former prime minister was knowledgeable,” Martin said Tuesday.
Paul Martin states that he doesn’t “believe” Jean Chretien “knew anything” about the corruption in the sponsorship program.
Warren Kinsella, staunch Chretien ally – the same Warren Kinsella who, as chief of staff for Public Works Minister David Dingwall, sent a memo advising the deputy minister to hire Chuck Guite – goes a significant distance further, by declaring that belief to be “correct”.
Now, think about that for a moment.
As close as he was to his former Prime Minister, Warren Kinsella has never claimed psychic abilities. Nor has was he at Chretien’s side 24 hours a day, listening in to every telephone call made and taken. No facts have been brought into evidence via Gomery or anyone else that have exonerated Jean Chretien. Quite the opposite – as the testimony continues, the scandal edges ever closer to the PMO.
At this stage of the investigation, the ability to state without qualification what Jean Chretien knew or didn’t remains the domain of a privilaged few – those who had a unique perspective on the money laundering scheme.
I’ll leave it to the reader to ponder what that perspective might be.
Martin Distances Himself From Promise To NDP
Paul Martin was on John Gormley Live this morning – briefly. He’s learned to fill airtime with drawn out repetition to put off speaking to callers or facing new questions.
Early in the interview, he acknowledged that even with the support of Jack Layton, his government’s fate rests on the independants in parliament. Gormley did pin him down on one question, though – if the NDP demands for $4.6 billion in spending on social programs and the environment were valid, why wasn’t the spending in the budget in the first place?
Martin replied that the NDP extortion was “simply an acceleration of the existing liberal government agenda” that adding it to the budget now was just “bringing it forward”…
Then – he added that the $4.6 billion “won’t be spent unless we can be assured that at least 2 billion in debt can be brought down”.
I wonder if Jack Layton knows this?
Human Experiments In North Korea
CBC;
One man, a 55-year-old chemist, claimed he was in charge of an experiment to test the effect of deadly nerve gas on political prisoners.
“He said he was involved in the killing of two people – one who did not expire for 2� hours, and the second didn’t die till 3� hours had passed,” Cooper told CBC for a documentary airing Wednesday night on the radio program Dispatches.
Other defectors told him of “mass starvations, gruesome experimentations, and yes, as we now are beginning to learn and to confirm, gas chambers,” he said.
Soon Ok Lee, a North Korean now living in the United States, said she spent years in a political prison camp before escaping.
“When I was in jail, there was at least once or twice in the prison camp, chemical testing on humans that I witnessed,” she said.
Via NealeNews
Tommy Douglas, Not Dead Enough: The Mini Series
As if infecting an entire province with the politics of envy (and the economic rot it produces) wasn’t enough – Canada’s best known eugenicist has crawled from the NDP mausoleum to claw another $600K from the taxpayers to celebrate the accomplishment.
Documents obtained by the CBC show the government was advised that the production might have been filmed in Manitoba, if Saskatchewan hadn’t stepped in with the money.
Ultimately, the province provided a $600,000 grant and filming is taking place in Saskatchewan.
The Saskatchewan Party’s Donna Harpauer is criticizing the government’s role in saving the production. She believes Minds Eye Pictures was manipulating the government for more money.
Facts About Saskatchewan:
“I think it was a threat, quite frankly,” she says. “This isn’t the first time that Minds Eye has asked for money at the last minute, and we’ve given them money. So, you know, when do we say ‘no more’? It sounds like a perfectly political decision, and nothing more.”
The internal documents, provided to the CBC under freedom of information rules, show Minds Eye first asked for a centennial grant in February 2004, months before the government’s centennial office was fully functional. The original request did not say the production was in any trouble. However, when government officials initially recommended against approval, the prospect of failure was then raised.
According to the internal government documents, the movie’s producer was having difficulty arranging financing for the project. Minds Eye needed another $500,000 to meet its $8 million budget for the mini-series.
The documents, prepared in August 2004, say if Saskatchewan didn’t provide the money, Manitoba likely would. But the filming would be done in Manitoba.
Government officials warned filming a Saskatchewan story in Manitoba would generate a lot of negative publicity. But the documents say the government could justify saving the production by calling it a centennial project.
NDP MLA Glen Hagel, the Saskatchewan centennial chair, says it was important to shoot the Tommy Douglas Story at home because it tells a story that’s important to many people with roots in Saskatchewan.
A million Albertans want a mini-series about Tommy Douglas? Who knew?
Changing the subject just a little.. and I don’t mean to cause trouble… do you suppose that any of those intrepid CBC investigative reporters have ever scratched their heads to ask how dusty old Douglas managed to pull off the most votes in the CBC Greatest Canadian contest?
Carrie Hallums Cooper Interview
“There is more coverage about the Michael Jackson Trial than I’ll ever want to see and other trivial matters…. Things like that make the evening news, but nothing about my father, for example, who has been held hostage now for over 6 � months. I find this to be an
outrage.”–Carrie Hallums Cooper
Go read her interview with Rust Shackleford.
Canada’s Foreign Policy Fairy Tale
Damian Brooks has read the overview of Canada’s newly released International Policy Statement . For the most part, he’s impressed with what he sees.
Me? I’m settling into Grimm’s Fairy Tales while others wait for the $400 million in Canadian tsunami aid announced 4 months ago.
I was approached by angry and frustrated young Canadian soldiers asking me if I would donate some money, along with theirs, so they could buy parts for the 1960s motors they were working on.
They also asked me if I would take pictures of them giving their groundsheets to the people in a displaced persons’ camp. I refused. I know from experience what would happen to their careers when the bureaucrats in Ottawa found out.
All 200 of us realized very quickly that the money promised on Jan. 3 by the Prime Minister of Canada was not going to arrive, even though the interest alone on the original $80 million would have accomplished miracles.
What we received instead were arrogant and nasty members of the non-governmental organization community, led by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The NGOs made it very clear that they did not like working with the military. This was not going to be a joint effort.
The DART asked CIDA for spark plugs, points, condensers, alternators and distributors to get the Sri Lankan fishermen back on the water. The answer from the CIDA representative: “I’ve sent a request to Ottawa.”
Three and a half weeks into the Canadian mandate, a meagre $50,000 was released with great pomp. It probably represented two days’ interest on the amount of money CIDA is sitting on.
Average Canadians donated their money to get tsunami victims immediate help, not years later. The Sri Lankans have been told by their own media that Canadians have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help them. Four months later the bureaucrats in Hull are playing God, not just with taxpayers’ dollars, but with donated money that came with no strings attached–windfall for CIDA and its contractors.
Where is the $425 million? The NGOs and CIDA have an automatic response: “We’re here for the long term.” In other words, don’t ask, because it’s none of your business.
Meanwhile, the people of Sri Lanka are in exactly the same condition they were in one week after their lives were shattered by a wave 32 feet high travelling at 500 miles an hour. If you were among the millions of Canadians who donated to tsunami relief, aren’t you curious about what happened to your money?
Me, curious? Not really. I just know it’s the last donation I’ll ever give to an organization that promises matching Canadian government funding.
Patterns Emerge
Angry In The GWN is running the donations of LIberal judicial appointees in Quebec through the “Unofficial Canadian Political Contributions Search Tool“.
What We Pay Them For
Good morning, Government of Canada employees:
(from the past 100 visitors to the site)
Host: infowebex.acoa-apeca.gc.ca
Host: csc-scc.gc.ca
Host: oci-bec.gc.ca
Host: mail.npb-cnlc.gc.ca
Host: stop.justice.gc.ca
heh.. someone has a sense of humour.. “stop.justice….”
GTIS NETBLK-CDAGOVN-C (NET-198-103-0-0-1)
198.103.0.0 – 198.103.255.255
And you ought to see the output of this
kate@deleted:~/www/deleted.com/logs$ grep 198.103 access.log
Man, oh man… someone doesn’t have enough to do. (No, I’m not going to upload that data file for your befuddlement pleasure – just take my word for it that a lot of government employees are doing a lot of blog surfing on “company” time):
(For the geeks who understand that, here’s a bit of (unrelated) humour that came my way this morning. )
Anchors Away
Greg Staples is running the numbers, now that both Kilgour and Cadman have announced they’ll vote to defeat the government;
Liberal + NDP + MP Parrish = 151
Conservative + Bloc Quebecois + MP Kilgour + MP Cadman = 155
As he notes, even with two Conservatives too ill to travel, it renders Jack Layton’s attention seeking ploy irrelevant. Damian Brooks makes a good point in the comments – with so many prominant Libranos heading down the gangplank and hoping to swim to safe diplomatic and patronage posts, how many back-bench Liberals will abandon ship?
Ferndale Prison Blues
I hear the train a’comin’
Comin round the bend
Ain’t seen the sunshine since
I don’t know when
But I’m stuck in Ferndale Prison
Time keeps draggin’ on
And I hear that lonesome whistle
I hang my head and moan.
Nelson/Ahenakew Petition
A petition has been launched by the Dust My Broom blog;
Plane Spotting
Brad, at SaskDesk is one nosy sonnaofabitch …
Sitting on the apron at the Shell Aerocentre of the Regina International Airport today were the following planes:
Dassault Falcon 2000 – Registration N898CT (Click for FAA ownership search)
Gulfstream G-IV – Registration N1620
The FAA registration shows that the Gulfstream belongs to Cox Enterprises Inc., based in Atlanta, Georgia. According to their website, they are big – Cox Enterprises is one of the nation’s leading media companies and providers of automotive services. We are a Top 10 national player, based on revenues, in every major business category where we compete. The company’s core businesses are Cox Communications, Manheim, Cox Newspapers, Cox Television, Cox Radio and AutoTrader.com…..
The other plane is owned by Nortom Inc.
What could they be doing in Regina? Surely they didn’t fly all the way here to check on their Regina Val-Pak operation. Something to think about.
Well, it isn’t duck season.
The Cheer Heard ‘Round The Nation
“Rex Murphy: The story goes around that at the next day’s caucus meeting — Mr. Chretien, I, my judgement, ah, wasn’t the most hospitable witness — but that you were supposed to be leading a cheer for Mr. Chretien the next morning in the caucus. That’s been reported widely and a number of people have called in here today. (a) Did you? and (b) If you did, why did you do so?
Paul Martin: No, I, I think — first of all, you, I think you understand as well as I do that, that there’s nobody at those caucus meetings except Members of Parliament, so anybody reporting on them is reporting, you know, second, third, fourth-hand. Ah, but fundamentally, ah, what happened is that, that caucus, ah, ah, did react, ah, to the fact that a former prime minister had just testified, and that’s a very very rare occasion to testify in front of a commission such as this. And that was, that’s what, that’s all that happened, there were a number of issues discussed, but they, they just simply said: former prime minister testified. I mean, the fact is that I testified as well, and, and ah, I took it very very seriously and I think that we would all take it very seriously under those circumstances. It fundamentally comes back to this — integrity in public life requires I’m telling the truth.”
He’s made a believer out of some people.
I believe Martin when he says he deeply respects Gomery. I believe he showed his respect when he led the Liberal caucus in a standing ovation for Jean Chretien’s display of open contempt for Gomery. I believe Martin wants no stone left unturned. I believed that when he ordered Liberal MPs to shut down the Public Accounts Committee’s investigations last year, before the last election. I believe if the Liberals get a majority government again, they wouldn’t shut down the committee again, or interfere with Gomery, as they have with other inquiries.
I believe Martin when he says he’s glad that Sheila Fraser, the auditor general, issued her report. I believe Liberal MPs and spin doctors were acting without Martin’s approval when they personally attacked Fraser.
I believe Martin when he says he was happy to fire Alfonso Gagliano. I don’t think it’s odd that last summer he recorded a video birthday greeting for Gagliano, saying “I wish I could be there Alfonso. You may be a terrible golfer, but you’re a tremendous political leader. Congratulations.”
Heh.
Reader Tips
‘Tis the season for anhydrous ammonia tanks.
Back later.
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They Just Can’t Help Themselves
Just in case you were of the mistaken impression that the Liberals were hard at work restoring integrity to government…
A power struggle with Defence Minister Bill Graham has provoked the military’s acting ombudsman to resign just weeks into her job. Barbara Finlay, who was appointed acting ombudsman by Graham when Andre Marin resigned April 1, stepped down last week.
Spokeswoman Barbara Theobalds said Finlay quit after she received a letter from Graham April 14 confirming her appointment and asking that she forward sensitive complaints to the minister’s office.
Martin Admits Criminals Still In Government
“I didn’t have to call the commission. I could have done what most politicians would do – just try to avoid it,” he said. “I just feel so strongly about the integrity of the political process that I was prepared to run the risk of damaging my own political prospects.”
Martin, who asked for more time in office during an address to the nation Thursday night, said he received “tons” of advice telling him not to have the inquiry – to “hide this thing” and to “put it under the rug.”
A startling admission from a Prime Minister who has not yet announced any mass firings or ejections from his party or caucus.
So tell us, Mr. Prime Minister – Who are these people? What are their names?”
Onward Christian Athletes
VancouverWinter Olympics chooses Christian symbol for logo.
Publication Ban Resurfaces
As Gomery begins to hear testimony from Chuck Guit� and Paul Coffin, Captain Ed is gearing up to report on it.
Politicians will know the specific testimony of the two witnesses at the end of each day, if not almost in real time. Some media sources will watch and hear Guit� and Coffin tell everything they know about Adscam and the politicians who profited most from it on live TV feeds that they will be barred from rebroadcast. The only people left in the dark will be those Canadians who have seen their money stolen by the people they trusted to wield power lawfully.
As part of the ‘imperfection’ mentioned tangentially in the Montreal Gazette, I had hoped that the brouhaha over my publication of Brault’s testimony would have convinced Justice Gomery of the folly of publication bans. Apparently not. If my original source can get me reliable information on the testimony under the ban, I will republish it again here.
Sentences Never Before Uttered In The History Of Mankind
Have you ever played the “Sentences Never Before Uttered In The History Of Mankind” game? It’s not a game uin the “play for points against an adversary” sense, but one of those pointless time-wasting mind games you might use to entertain yourself on a long drive. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, here goes.
See?