Rove’s Fat Socialist Weasel Suit?

Insufferable Twits 3 Comments

The campaign isn’t over for Michael Moore – for an Oscar nomination. This attempt at damage control is textbook Moore in its “subtlety”.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (Reuters) : “Fahrenheit 9/ 11” director Michael Moore on Monday rejected the idea that Hollywood had hurt John Kerry’s chances of winning the White House, insisting that he and other entertainers helped spare Democrats an even bigger defeat.
“For the last month, we’ve had to listen to a lot of conservative pundits talk about how Democrats need to run away from Hollywood,” Moore said. “It’s actually the opposite. Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.”
[…]
Citing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former President Ronald Reagan, Moore said, “America loves Hollywood. America loves the people in the movies and on TV. And the thing that the Republicans have already figured out is that America likes to vote for Hollywood…
“And I think we need to turn to Hollywood, because who wouldn’t vote for Tom Hanks or Paul Newman or Robert Redford or Oprah?”

Now, c’mon everybody, stop laughing and think. Has anyone ever seen Karl Rove and Michael Moore in the same room together?

Strong And Free

Blogging No Comments

Laurie Hawn has a new blog Strong And Free up.
He brings great credentials to the Canadian blogosphere. Vitor Marciano writes, “He is a retired CF18 jockey and squadron commander (actually he was the first Canadian to qualify in a CF18), the former 2ic at CFB Cold Lake, and the Conservative candidate who came within 700 votes of defeating Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan in the last election.
Also, check out Vitor’s What It Takes To Win.
Welcome, guys. I’ll be updating the sidebar accordingly.

Karzai Inaugeration

Political Animal No Comments

Glenn Reynolds suspects this “won’t get the attention it deserves”

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 7 — Three years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president, Hamid Karzai, was sworn in Tuesday in a dignified, heavily guarded ceremony attended by hundreds of Afghan and foreign guests, including Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

I don’t know about that. Watching CNN on Sunday, there was lots of pre-inaugeration coverage, all of it centered on the potential for violence.
But take heart, media pundits – it really doesn’t matter if your predicted disasters fail to materialize. Wait a few years, and then just make them up – judging by this example of historical “analogy” by Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, we can someday look forward to tales of a bleeding and shaken Karzai being dragged to safety by Dick Cheney …
Well – This didn’t take long! CTV news covers the inaugeration with this tidbit;

In the three years since the overthrow of the Taliban, Afghan’s have adopted a new constitution, and held their first Western-style vote, despite attacks by militants.

There were no “attacks by militants” during the adoption of the constitution, or at the polls on election day.

Sex Change In Iran

Little Known Facts No Comments

A reader sent along this item some weeks ago, and I didn’t use it at the time because I couldn’t think of an angle to approach it from . I still can’t. But it’s interesting, nonetheless.

Everything about Amir appears masculine: his broad chest, muscled arms, dark full beard and deep voice. But, in fact, Amir was a woman until four years ago, when, at the age of 25, he underwent the first of a series of operations that would change his life.
Since then he has had 20 operations and expects four more. And Amir, who as a woman was married twice to men – his second husband helped with the transition and remains a good friend – is now engaged to marry a woman.
[…]
After decades of repression, Iran’s Islamic government is recognizing people with sexual-identity disorders and allowing them to have sex-change operations and obtain new birth certificates.
Before the 1979 Islamic revolution, there was no particular policy regarding transsexuals. Iranians with the inclination, means and connections could obtain the necessary medical treatment and new identity documents. The new religious government, however, classed transsexuals and transvestites with gays and lesbians, who were condemned by Islam and faced the punishment of lashing under Iran’s penal code.
But these days, Iran’s Muslim clerics, who dominate the judiciary, are considerably better informed about transsexuality. Some clerics now even recommend sex- change operations to those who are troubled about their sex. The issue was discussed at a conference in Tehran in June that drew officials from other Gulf countries.
One cleric, Muhammad Mehdi Kariminia, is writing his thesis at the religious seminary of Qom on transsexuality.
“All the clerics and researchers at the seminary encouraged me to work on the subject,” he said in an interview. “They said that my research can help change the social stigma attached to these people and clarify religious decrees on the matter.”

One part of me hopes that this may be a sign of more liberal attitudes towards women in this most repressive of Islamic societies… but another wonders if it isn’t just a clever ploy to confuse the living hell out of everyone.

2004 Warblogger Awards

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Cool! Didn’t even know I was “entered”.
And don’t forget – voting for the 2004 Weblog Awards continues until Dec. 12th – you may vote once very 24 hours.
Unfortunately, there have been some cheaters for Kevin and crew to contend with – they’ve had to tweak security as a result. The main objective of the awards competition is to introduce readers to a large collection of good blogs you might not have heard of before – so take the time to check them out!

Airport Screener Uniforms Disappear

Radioactive No Comments

Some of them have been found on Ebay, so we know there weren’t forgotten in a warehouse somewhere. CNN:

CBC television reported that one thousand uniforms and security badges were missing from federal airport screeners in 89 airports across the country during the first nine months of 2004.
Federal Transport Minister Jean Lapierre ordered a probe by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority and will receive a report on Monday. Lapierre said Jacques Duchesneau, president of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, will make public the results of the investigation.
The minister alerted Canada’s airport screeners to double-check airport employee identification in all 89 airports and said Canadians have nothing to worry about at this moment. After the attacks on September 11, Ottawa invested billions of dollars to improve airport security, although Americans often view Canada’s airport security as lax.

So does the Auditor General, though I don’t know why Canadian media is so utterly disinterested in her most recent report. I covered major portions of the findings here about 2 weeks ago.

Security clearances for airport workers

  • … the RCMP provides only information on whether a person has been charged or convicted of a criminal offence – information that does not identify for Transport Canada whether a person has associations with organized crime or is a refugee claimant. Based on the information it receives, Transport Canada determines whether a security clearance should be issued.
  • …based on our analysis about 5.5�percent of clearance holders hired between January 2001 and May 2003 had criminal records. While this is still lower than the Canadian average, the upward trend over the last two years is of concern.
  • Transport Canada officials told us that the clearance program focussed on a relatively narrow concept of “unlawful interference with civil aviation,” which concentrated on the risks of hijacking and sabotage. This concept has been derived from international conventions. The risks of drug smuggling and other criminal activity were not necessarily regarded as grounds for denial of a clearance.
  • We reviewed the investigation files at the five airports we visited. Police and Customs had identified 247 individuals with clearances to restricted areas who were involved in criminal conspiracies … The RCMP’s assessment of clearance holders indicates a greater problem than is indicated in the criminal conspiracy investigation files at airports. At the two airports where police and Customs had no active investigations, clearance holders included individuals who may have significant criminal associations.
  • In addition to identifying individuals with criminal associations, the RCMP identified 16 businesses operating at airports that were linked to criminal activity such as providing travel arrangements for organized crime, facilitating identity fraud, and selling stolen passes.
  • During our audit, various officials told us that there were legal barriers to wider sharing of criminal intelligence information. For example, some mentioned that individuals had a Charter right to freedom of association that precluded denial of a security clearance.

    • Nice thought – a thousand security screener uniforms in the hands of the Hells Angels or associates of “refugee claimants”.

    The Red Cross – Neutral No More?

    Terrorism 2 Comments

    Via Junkyard Blog this Wall Street Journal explanation as to what POW status and the Geneva Convention really mean. As opposed to the cherished misbelief in the media and elsewhere, any protective status that prisoners and combatants have in war, capture or interrogation is established by their actions and conduct. Break the rules, and the best you can hope for is that your captors will be inclined towards giving you the benefit of the doubt.
    But there is no good excuse for the recent accusations against US forces by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which should be perfectly aware of how these things work.

    The basic idea behind granting POW status is that soldiers who surrender or are captured are not to be punished so long as they have behaved according to certain rules — such as fighting in uniform and doing their best to direct their own attacks at enemy soldiers rather than civilians. Part of their protection from punishment is that they not be subject to coercive interrogation; they are required only to give name, rank and serial number. They may, however, be held for the duration of the conflict so that they do not return to the
    battlefield.
    The POW concept is certainly a great humanitarian advance, since the slaughter of captured enemies used to be routine and since it provides some incentive to fair battlefield conduct. But it is a concept in jeopardy thanks to its ostensible guardians at the ICRC. By demanding POW status for un-uniformed combatants who target civilians — in contravention of the plain language of the Geneva Conventions — the ICRC started the fight over Guantanamo by attempting to remove one of the few carrots we have to encourage humane behavior in war.
    Now it goes further and demands that these combatants get even more privileges than legitimate POWs. Has it occurred to no one in Geneva that indefinite detention can’t possibly be “tantamount to torture” for illegal combatants if it is the expected course of events for real POWs? The prospect of Guantanamo detainees returning to the battlefield is real, and more than two dozen of those already released have done so.
    The ICRC also objects to interrogation pressure that is typically no more abusive than the good cop-bad cop routines common in American police stations. And where the interrogation techniques go further, they include nothing worse than loud music, temperature extremes, and uncomfortable positions. To call such discomforts “a form of torture” is to rob the word of all meaning and implicitly elevate the behavior of truly odious regimes.
    Finally, from the damned-if-you-do file, we have the ICRC complaining that U.S. doctors took the care to examine the detainees’ health to determine if particular stress techniques might be too much for a given individual. This is alleged somehow to be a violation of “medical ethics” rather than the example of American humanity that it actually is.

    If the ICRC accusations sound more like political maneuvering than legitimate concern, there’s a reason. Junkyard’s B. Preston adds;

    One source of tension between the US and the ICRC concerns Protocol 1, a 1970s attempt to revise the Geneva Conventions. The US (along with several of our strongest allies) has explicitly rejected Protocol 1 because it includes non-state actors (i.e. terrorists) under Geneva’s protections. That would effectively grant protections to terrorists that they will never grant any of their hostages and would also keep us from gaining any useful intelligence from detained combatants. That intelligence saves lives and weakens the terrorists. It shortens the war, in our favor.
    At least part of the intention of the ICRC’s Gitmo report appears to be an attempt to force the US to ratify Protocol 1 by default, by pressuring us into granting the terrorists at Gitmo Protocol 1 status.

    The Red Cross’s one true strength has been a long-established and respected reputation for neutrality during world conflicts. If the politically motivated left continues to infect the ICRC and squander trust to score a few political hits for the global cause of anti-Americanism, this once hallowed organization risks not only the lives of their workers on the ground, but their very reason for being.
    I also suspect that some of the behavior of the ICRC may be fueled by instincts of self- preservation. The modern reality for the Red Cross is that terrorist groups tend not to care about noble concepts like neutrality unless there is some advantage to be realized. I feel for them, but that’s not an excuse for abandoning their most fundamental strength. If the Red Cross believes it can buy some insurance by advocating for terrorists as though they should be considered “equals” to legitimate military prisoners, they can expect to be disappointed. If they cannot depend on their historic neutrality to protect their people on the ground, conspiring to aid one side over the other is not likely to improve matters.

    Western Development Museum

    Gopher News No Comments

    Spent the evening at a company Christmas party, held at the Western Development Museum in Saskatoon. It’s been years since I was down there – which reminded me – I used to do a little pinstriping on farm equipment restorations for them from time to time. Hopefully, they’re still funded well enough to salvage those old beasts, and have just found someone whose better at it. I suck at pinstriping.
    No special reason for mentioning it, except that it’s a great spot to visit if you want to find something to do while in the Bridge City. The museum is set up as an indoor “street” from the turn of the century, the buildings filled with artifacts.
    The website is here. A great place to take kids right now – there’s a charming exhibit of old T. Eaton store mechanical Christmas displays.



    Who Failed Delores Bird?

    Gopher News 21 Comments

    Edmonton Sun:

    SASKATOON — Police were investigating the death of an 11- year-old girl who roamed the streets last weekend looking for a place to sleep. Delores Bird was found dead Saturday night in an apartment suite in a sordid area of Saskatoon’s west side.
    Her uncle, Ralph Bird, who lives in the suite next to where the girl’s body was found, said she died after a night of drinking and taking pills.
    “Why didn’t she come here first? I wouldn’t have let her go. I would have sat her down and told her, ‘Don’t drink anymore,’ ” he said, squeezing his eyes to hold back tears.
    The girl’s mother was reportedly away for the weekend.

    All week the media punditry, social activists, and local politicians have been churning out meaningless pap, debating this tragedy in a soul-searching exercise of ‘how we failed Delores Bird’. Soon, I expect, someone will announce an inquiry. There will be experts and witnesses, scholars penning profoundly meaningless papers, and community activists demanding funds for more Programs Of Enablement.

    “We all must take responsibility for these children … can’t force children into rehab, they must come to it on their own … listen to the children … ask them how we can help … teach better parenting skills… more support for poor families … a failure of all society”.

    Bullshit. These enlightened attitudes towards “families in poverty” of the past three decades have failed. Welfare and treaty based payments have turned childbearing into a cottage industry. Youth crime has not abated – it has worsened, in both scope and severity. In addition to unabated rates of property crime, we have Indian gangs running the streets of Saskatoon. They have graduated from stealing cars and vandalism to home invasions, stabbings, sawed off shotguns. Your grand social schemes are killing people and failing children.
    The question of how we failed Delores Bird can be answered in the question no one has asked.
    When are criminal charges going to be laid against the mother?
    That’s who failed Delores Bird. If the person responsible for the care of this little girl isn’t guilty of criminal neglect, I don’t know who is.
    Our social systems and institutions hold a deeply racist attitude towards First Nations families, and it is most strongly expressed in lowered expectations, lesser demands for parental responsibility. When families permit or perpetrate abuse and neglect, they are considered mere extensions of their victims.
    The extended victim status is pervasive and long standing – for a different example, I offer Neil Stonechild’s mother. She has openly blamed police and society for the death of her 17 year old, alcoholic, gun-dealing son. She recieved an apology from the city police chief. No one asked “what the hell for?”, or why Stella Bignell wasn’t standing beside him, issuing a few apologies of her own for failures of parenthood, the harm inflicted on his victims, the cost to those institutions that tried to assist after the fact.
    These same local and provincial governments that presume a moral obligation and legislative authority to “protect” rational adults from the health effects of second hand smoke are frozen by “cultural sensitivity” when it comes to their obligation to protect the most vulnerable citizens in our society.
    And while they dither, 4 year olds wander the streets alone and 12 year olds are turning tricks. Neglected, underfed, unschooled – the official reaction is hand wringing about how we can “best support them” or “help their parents to learn better parenting skills”. Throw more money. Build a new community center so they can “play basketball” through the wee hours of the morning while their parents are MIA.
    I don’t think so. If they are going to have a chance in life, we cannot leave small children in the hands of dead end parents. Culture and sensitivity, be damned. These people are not alcoholic glue sniffers because they live in poverty – They live in poverty because they are alcoholic glue sniffers. Their dysfunction is so profound that it is folly to leave these kids at their mercy while they “learn better parenting skills”. The rate of success in such experiments is far too low, and much too temporary. The first priority should be getting these kids into a safe environment – foster home, extended family, treatment centers. Build new residental schools, if that’s what it takes and tell the detractors to go to hell.
    Then, start sending a legal message to deadbeat parents in stark terms. Rescue these little kids from the streets the first time they are spotted. Charge the parents or guardians for neglect.
    Related: In Toronto, another 11 year old victim.

    “Closets Exist For A Reason”

    Little Known Facts 3 Comments

    Via a reader tip, this American Thinker portrait of sex “researcher” Alfred Kinsey – and the long term societal consequences of his fraud.

    While Kinsey made no effort to correct for incidentally skewed data, he purposely skewed data and made every effort to make it appear correct. Amazingly, outrageously, unbelievably, fourteen-hundred of Kinsey’s male subjects were prison inmates and sexual offenders whom he classified as normal. Why? Kinsey’s rationalization was that the only difference between these reprobates and average men was that the former got caught.

    After that, it was only logical to consult prostitutes to obtain data on female sexuality.

    As shameful as the scientific fraud is, it pales in comparison to Kinsey’s blatantly immoral and criminal behavior with respect to children. Kinsey conducted research that supposedly demonstrated that young boys – as young as two months of age – could experience multiple orgasms. He claimed that the maximum number observed in a twenty-four hour period was 26 climaxes . . . in a thirteen-year-old and a four-year-old. Now, to again quote the Intercollegiate Review, “So mesmerized were Americans by the authority of science, with a capital S, that it took forty years for anyone to wonder how data is collected on the sexual responses of children as young as five.”

    There’s more.

    2004 Weblog Awards, Day Two

    Blogging 5 Comments


    And things are starting to get ugly.
    Bill has 10 reasons why you shouldn’t vote forJim Geraghty, who has responded in kind.
    Meanwhile, sources tell me that a certain 9 fingered former porn star is actively campaigning for my defeat.
    Against this minor setback, another endorsement – from Dr. Rusty Shackleford. Maresee! And good luck with Project Fatwa.
    If you haven’t voted today, click here! You can follow that link to the other categories.
    update – In other developments, “gnotalex” at the Blog Quebecois is going P.Diddy on us.
    More thanks to Sortapundit for the nod.

    Rumsfeld Stays

    Military 4 Comments

    Donald Rumsfeld is staying on in the position of US Secretary of Defense. The architect of the modernization and transformation of the US military, a survivor of the attack on the Pentagon on 911, Rumsfeld has conducted two successful – and by all historical standards, virtually bloodless – wars, and in so doing, helped to liberate over 50 million people from tyranny.
    The leader of Canadian Party Of Peace (TM) could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson said that she believed he was “out buying balloons.”

    Free Hutu In Paris

    Roadkill 1 Comment

    As revelations about the Oil-For-Blood compete with news about the sex abuse scandal by staff in Congo, comes this latest tidbit out of Kofi Annanland;

    Today, Mbarushimana remains a free man, living in Paris. But there are troubling questions about his conduct in Rwanda a decade ago and the actions of the United Nations.��
    “They killed on his orders,” says Tony Greig, an investigator with the International Criminal Tribunal. “They manned road blocks, they killed people, they got rewarded with cows and beer.”
    Greig says eyewitnesses directly linked Mbarushimana to more than 30 murders, including killings of fellow U.N. workers.
    […]
    So what did the United Nations do?
    After learning of the allegations in 1999, the U.N. kept Mbarushimana on its payroll. In fact, when he was arrested for genocide, he was working for the U.N. in Kosovo – on a project to stop genocide.

    Details of UNScam – the connection of Clinton pardonee Marc Rich, payments to Kofi Annan’s son, among others – are conveniently tracked at Friends of Saddam.
    Via Instapundit

    Hints From Heloise

    Little Known Facts 4 Comments

    A magnetic screwdriver is an invaluable tool when draining carbs on your bike. It will prevent the necessity of using your fingers to dig about gasoline soaked surfaces in the gloom of an unlit garage in December, trying for the 4th time to find the tiny bolt that has again fallen into the bowels of your engine, while trying to replace it blind, from a virtually impossible angle.
    Urgh.

    Better Than Equal

    Insufferable Twits 1 Comment

    CTV news reports that Paralympian Chantal Petitclerc (wheelchair racing) has been named top Canadian track and field athlete by Athletics Canada.

    O Canada rang out when she won a demonstration race during the summer Olympiad.
    At the time, Petiticlerc was thrilled to be congratulated by none other than [top-ranked Canadian female hurdler] Felicien in an exchange that made her feel like an equal.

    The thrill seems to have worn off in recent weeks since learning that she will share the award with her congratulator…

    But now, she says it’s obvious wheelchair athletes aren’t held in the same regard as their able-bodied counterparts.
    “It’s always a little shocking to see what Paralympic medals and world records are worth, to really see it,” Petitclerc told The Globe in an interview.
    “After Athens, you feel you’ve come a certain way and had a certain achievement and your sport has grown and been recognized, that you’re finally there. And this is shocking.”

    I don’t know about that. Petitclerc seems to have achieved one sought-after pinnacle in sports – ownership of a world class ego. That’s got to count for something.

    Lost In Space

    Radioactive 3 Comments

    Faced with an open challenge from George Bush to sign on to the missile defense shield, Paul “Weeble Wobbles But He Won’t Fall Down” Martin is on the defensive from opposition pounding and concern for maintaining solidarity in the red wing of his minority government. He’s standing firm in his decision to continue to consider.
    Last night, at a Liberal fund raiser, Martin countered critics by announcing that Canada does not need the help of the USA to defend herself, thankyou very much , and that we are capable of providing security for our part of North America. The only explanation I have for this outburst of absurdity is medical. I hope someone is talking to him about seeing a doctor – head first.
    While Monty Paul’s Flying Circus loses their collective minds over a program that is going ahead with or without our approval – we can only pray that someone in Ottawa is paying attention to the potential of tax reform in the US to go nuclear.
    In case you haven’t heard – the world’s largest economy is considering elimination of income, payroll, corporate and estate taxes, and replacing them with an across the board federal sales tax of 23%. The estimated 600 billion currently spent to collect and manage these taxes would be virtually eliminated, along with the need for the IRS. The underground and criminal economy that historically evades income tax would be brought into the revenue stream.
    The saving to business by the elimination of corporate taxes should result in a drop in wholesale pricing, making US manufactured goods more competitive. The implications for Canadian manufacturing alone are profound. Without corporate taxation, there would be tremendous incentive for business to remain in, or relocate to, the US.
    With the beckoning glow of an income tax free America, there wouldn’t be time to worry about an outright exodus of highly skilled Canadian professionals – we’ll need a national strategy to keep our truck drivers.
    A couple of western provinces won’t be far behind.

    2004 Weblog Awards

    Blogging 9 Comments

    175wde_WeblogAwards04_No04.2.jpg

    Kevin Aylward and crew at Wizbang have been sifting through thousands of nominations in a variety of categories, and the polls are now opening for the 2004 Weblog Awards. Main rule – one vote per day, per poll.
    Yours truly is on the list for Best Canadian Blog.
    Also nominated: the blog quebecois; Abject Learning; D’Arcy Norman; Being American in T.O.; All AgitProp, All The Time; Going Canuk; EclecticBlogs; A Journey Through Time; Daimnation!; Darren Barefoot; marmalade.ca; Michele; The Quipping Queen; Stageleft. You can access them all by going to the link.
    Good company, and thanks to The Commissar nominated for Best of Top 100 and Jeff Goldstein (whose Protein Wisdom is nomated in the tough Best Humour category) for the nomination. Go vote for them. And me.
    update – thanks to Bill at the popular INDC Journal for the endorsement – he was already my pick for Best New Blog. Canadian Mark Steyn is in second place behind the Wall Street Journal’s “Best of the Web” in the Media/Journalist division. Ghost of a Flea is in the tough Culture category.

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