Canadian justice

Hunter at Climbing Out of the Dark hits a nerve with her thoughts on Canadian justice and related Liberal cynicism, hypocrisy and opportunism.

Cap and Trade explained

[via]

Pope Benedict anti-capitalist?

Pope Benedict will soon release a new pronoucement "In Charity In Truth" in which he's expected to condemn capitalist greed and suggest the need to "rethink the whole system".

Hunter at Climbing Out of the Dark says "Dear Pope, Butt Out". I couldn't agree more and say so in the comments.

Canada's private health care provider (case number 1,359,308)

A typical scenario in the Canadian medical system - sick babies being shipped to the USA for treatment.

What are we gonna do when Obama's finished wrecking our best source of private care?

[h/t BCF]

Climate debate - "the tide is shifting"

Kimberly Strassel in the WSJ:

.... As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

.... Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. ... The
backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia,
Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

... The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers.

.... The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans.

... Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing.

And check out the many, many great comments on Strasser's article.

Note that Canada’s not listed among the trend-setters. It’s too busy climbing on board Obama's cap-and-trade disaster-in-the-making.

[via - print edition]

The U.N. wants your thoughts on climate

A United Nations Climate Change Conference is slated for Copenhagen next December.

Conference organizers have set up a global collector for peoples' thoughts. So far most are from Gaia cultists, socialists, vegetarians and other assorted true believers. Al Gore has submitted his 'thought'. Only one, from Bjorn Lomborg, is anywhere near representative of another side of the issue.

Have your say.

Carbon hysteria will be the death of us

Last year BC Premier Gordon Campbell instituted North America's first carbon tax. Now the negative effects of that are beginning to be felt in healthcare:

The Lower Mainland's health authorities will have to dig more than $4 million a year out of their already stretched budgets to pay B.C.'s carbon tax and offset their carbon footprints.

... Fraser Health officials are grappling with a budget shortfall of more than $100 million and potential cuts to patient services, while low on their list, have not been ruled out.

I fully endorse Kate's message to Gordo and the rest of the "carbon cultists":

A personal message for our carbon cultist friends out there - when the costs of your government mandated climate scams begin to extend the government mandated wait lists for diagnosis and treatment, my only consolation will come from knowing that some [of] the family members who cease CO2 emission prematurely will be yours.

My local paper had a front page story today about Victoria health budget shortfalls but didn't mention the impact of carbon taxes and offsets.

"Be mean to Jennifer Lynch" T-shirt contest

Vote for your favourite slogan at Blazing Cat Fur.

Jennifer Lynch on the war path. Keeping an "enemies" file.

Lately, CHRC Commissar-in-Chief Jennifer Lynch has been railing against bloggers, the MSM and others for their attacks on her abusive "human rights" regime. In today's National Post Joseph Brean quotes her complaints of "misinformation, gross distortions, caricaturizations" and her admission to keeping a file on her critics:

"I have a file. I'm sure I have 1,200, certainly several hundred of these things...".

Brean also notes that in all her complaints against her critics she appears to be in complete denial of "the more sober criticisms ... from her mainstream critics" including:

...the lack of a legal defense of truth or scholarly or journalistic intent; the practice of accepting identical complaints simultaneously in different jurisdictions; controversial online investigative procedures such as joining white supremacist discussion groups to investigate targets; and the potential for human rights tribunals to be hijacked as political platforms. [Memo to Joseph Brean: good points but these criticisms (and more) were levelled first and then pursued relentlessly by the less "sober" blogging class long before so-called mainstream critics stepped up.]

Blazing Cat Fur suggests that bloggers submit an Access to Information request to find out who is on her file and with whom she may have shared it.

Also we should remember who appointed Ms Lynch to her Commissar job in the first place. Perhaps it's time to write the Minister again and ask him why he hasn't fired her.

Ezra Levant: "What an odious woman ..."
(P.S. Congrats to the Levants on the birth of their new baby!)

Jay Currie: "the CHRC is much more like the Stasi ..."

A flying car

The Terrafugia Transition



[via]

“Feelings” - Theme song of the left

Many, if not most, leftists in the pursuit of power no doubt fall for their own emotive tripe. But whether they do or not it’s safe to say that they rely heavily on emotional themes in their appeals for public support.

Barack Obama wants his Supreme Court Justices to be empathetic, to be sensitive to peoples’ "stories" (especially their own), in deciding cases.

Leftist utopian egalitarianism is promoted with the rhetoric of "social justice", victimhood and grievance.

And most recently Mayor David Miller and his supporters have taken to calling for voting rights for Toronto’s immigrant non-citizens. Edward Michael George is on to them (Miller et al), in spades:)

Listen to the fucking language coming out of these idiots' mouths:....

... while I have no doubt that all of this is just so much cynical political maneuvering, I know too that somewhere in the back of these twits' minds there's this semi-formed notion that Toronto's "non-citizens" consist of a bunch of undernourished but impishly delightful pickpockets and chimney-sweeps clutching empty porridge bowls and singing in chorus "It's clear / we're / going to get along!" if only we'd listen....

... why is Janet Davis talking about going "to the heart of ensuring social inclusion" rather than just "ensuring social inclusion"? And why is David Miller stressing the fact that his mother was "single" in addition to being an "immigrant"? ...

Because they know that no matter how much question-begging puke about feelings they fling at us, we'll lap it up like dogs.

Indeed. And on the same subject today Rudyard Griffiths agrees that Miller is an idiot:

Toronto Mayor David Miller revived one of his favourite hobbyhorses, voting rights for non-citizens, and promptly provoked yet another conflict with his city's voters. ... Voting rights for non-citizens isn't simply a dumb idea -- it is downright pernicious.

But before hyperventilating about a crisis of democratic under-representation among immigrants, the Mayor should take a deep breath and remember ...

... Canada already has some of the least demanding citizenship laws of any advanced country.

... By removing municipal voting from the paltry bundle of rights that accrue to full citizens, Mayor Miller, and his progressive allies, risk exacerbating the very social divisions that their reforms are designed to heal.

... Worse still, a surging permanent resident population that could not vote in federal or provincial elections would introduce an ugly racial divide into our politics...

And on a closing note (with apologies to Morris Albert):

Feelings, for all my life I'll feel it.

... Feelings, wo-o-o feelings,

Feelings ...

(repeat)

Iggy ramps up the suspense

... Saying repeatedly he does not want an election, Mr. Ignatieff said he would have no choice but to try to trigger one if he does not receive some answers or commitments to his demands ...


The suspense is unbearable!

The AGW debate - another good sign

The editorial in today’s Victoria Times Colonist actually summarizes a study that challenges the prevailing AGW orthodoxy:

... now, a group of respected academics has published a study challenging the majority view. (You can read their report, Climate Change Reconsidered, at
http://www.nipccreport.org/.)

More than 9,000 scholars with doctorates in scientific disciplines have signed a petition of support.

The group disputes not only the theory of climate change, but many of the facts underlying it.

On the matter of sea ice and glaciers, they note that ice coverage in Antarctica has actually increased, while Arctic levels appear to have stabilized. They see little evidence that recent reductions in glacier size are outside the historical trend.

They found no increase in precipitation worldwide, and no overall rise or decline in river levels. They claim that droughts and floods are no more common, or severe, than before, and that wind speeds and storm intensities are unchanged.

These observations appear to contradict some basic predictions of climate change theory.

But their most contentious claims have to do with global temperature trends. They believe the observed increase of just under 1º C in the 20th century has no predictive value.

They point out that during previous warm periods over the last millennium, temperatures rose 2º or 3º C. Moreover, they claim satellite data show the upward shift of recent years has slowed dramatically in the current decade.

Finally, they reject the UN view that global warming has caused heightened mortality.

They argue that moderate temperature increases actually reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and respiratory ailments.

It is impossible for most laymen to weigh the merit of these claims. Much of the argument turns on highly technical areas of oceanography and atmospheric science.

But this is more than an academic dispute. Across the globe, governments are taking unprecedented steps to change the foundations of industrial production.

These measures involve significant costs, which the consumer must bear.

Good stuff. The main flaw in the editorial is that it prefaced the above with a capsule statement of it’s former (false) position that (up to now, only) "A few isolated critics have raised difficulties. Some were cranks, and few had standing in the scientific community". Nothing could further from the truth. The scientists who contributed to this study are the same ones who for years have been waxing skeptical about AGW theory and evidence.

But still, before now the TC has been a dedicated purveyor of AGW alarmism with stories featuring the likes of the Sierra Club and David Suzuki and almost always calling upon it’s chief political scientist and climate alarmist, Andrew Weaver, for comment. So this editorial represents a significant shift in the TC's position and is another sign the climate debate in general is shifting in the right direction - that is towards an actual honest debate.

The “runaway greenhouse effect”: James Hansen vs Gavin Schmidt

References to "tipping points" and the specter of a "runaway greenhouse effect" or "runaway global warming" can be found EVERYWHERE in AGW alarmist writings. It’s on blogs, it’s in the news and, most importantly, some of the most prominent climate scientists invoke it. There’s no denying it’s a favourite bogey-man and scare tactic.

On the other hand many AGW true believers know full well that predictions of a runaway greenhouse effect are over-the-top alarmism with little theoretical or evidentiary basis. On occasion an AGW skeptic will point to evidence that shows such predictions are unfounded. The response of the AGW huckster is to berate the skeptic for bringing the subject up and to deny anyone thinks it a problem.

An example of the latter can be found in this RealClimate comment thread:

Comment by Don Healy (19 August 2008 at 11:31 AM) : [...] ... Another question that comes to mind is if earth did not experience a runaway greenhouse effect when CO2 levels were 4000 ppm or higher in earlier geologic history, what has changed to create such alarm at levels ten times lower? Just some random thoughts from one whose background is in forestry and plant physiology.

[Response: No one is predicting a runaway greenhouse effect in that sense (this is one of those trivial talking points alluded to the post). ... Please be serious. - gavin]

Note: "gavin" is Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA/GISS and co-founder of the RealClimate blog along with Michael Mann et al.

An example of the former (alarmism) is in this article featuring prominent climate scientist alarmist James Hansen (Director of Research at NASA/GISS and, presumably, Gavin Schmidt’s boss) shrieking about a runaway greenhouse effect:

"If we burn all of the coal [on the planet], there is a good chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse effect," he said. That runaway greenhouse effect could become unstoppable, eventually boiling the oceans and destroying all life on earth in what Hansen called the "Venus Syndrome," after the conditions that exist on the planet next-closest to the sun.

"We already probably have CO2 past the tipping level that would cause some effects like the loss of arctic sea ice,"

So we have two colleagues (boss and underling) at the same government organization positing two wildly different views about a runaway greenhouse effect. Though Gavin Schmidt sensibly downplays the credibility of the notion of runaway global warming he’s absolutely wrong when he says no one is predicting it - his boss is, for one. And Schmidt weasel-worded his reply saying no one is predicting it "in that sense". If not "that sense", what sense? He doesn’t say, but perhaps he means the sense that his boss, James Hansen, is using - the alarmist propaganda sense.

Lisa Raitt and the AECL isotope “business”

Christie Blatchford has the right take on Industry Minister Lisa Raitt’s accidentally recorded ( deliberately exposed by the media) private remarks about the on-going Atomic Energy Canada Ltd medical isotopes crisis:

MPs and various opposition leaders were calling Ms. Raitt's remarks "disparaging" and "irresponsible" and demanding she apologize and/or be fired.

...and Liberal pundit Warren Kinsella ... was describing the minister's comments as "disgusting" and "deplorable."

I was ready to beg for mercy before 9 a.m., but by late afternoon ... I wanted to slit my wrists.

[At CTV] Ms. Rinaldo was asking Ms. Taber about the propriety of what Ms. Raitt had said on the tape ... and Ms. Taber replied, "I would hope, even in private conversation, we wouldn't hear … ministers talking about other portfolios in such a cavalier way."

Even in private? Are you bloody kidding me? ... You should hear what women say in private – about friends they love, about colleagues they admire, let alone about men they might like to shag, strangers, or say, bosses. You should hear what editors say at news meetings

... The Canadian media made of the proverbial molehill this sad little mountain,

... What a nation of ninnies we have become.

In other words it’s a non-issue so, politicians, press and pundits please stop being such hypocritical twits and just shut your pie-holes.

Meanwhile, at the Financial Post Terence Corcoran pegs the real issue, AECL’s inability to reliably produce medical isotopes, as yet another example of ‘government enterprise’ gone south:

... Money has never solved AECL's problems, and never will. The present value of all federal cash thrown at AECL over the decades exceeds $30-billion.

... numbers are hard to find thanks to opaque federal reporting standards.

... AECL's isotope business ... is a giant money loser, with Ottawa subsidizing isotopes that are used by medical service providers in the United States and elsewhere.

... the political storm in Ottawa over isotopes as a great health-care issue does nothing to help Canadians understand the quagmire surrounding AECL and the isotope industry.

... The global isotope market, especially the North American branch of it, is a tangled mess of health-care regulations, drug-approval bottlenecks, price controls and politically driven decision making.

... Drug approval processes in Canada and the United States -- requiring hundreds of millions of dollars per approval--discourage new products.

... Once drugs are approved, government agencies that set prices for use of isotope-based treatments and scans set prices low to keep costs to governments down.

... when Mr. Layton and Mr. Ignatieff decry the shortages of isotopes, they might want to ask what role government policy has had creating the shortage, first by controlling and limiting the market for isotope use, which in turns sends the wrong signal to isotope producers.

... So now the world is facing a global isotope shortage, brought on by a series of government-installed barriers to their adoption, production and sale.

As for most ‘government enterprise’, it’s situation normal - all f**ked up.

Jon Voight: "...this false prophet Obama"

[h/t Dr Roy]

Omar Khadr’s story - so wholesome, so benign

Blazing Car Fur draws our attention to a recent version of Omar Khadr’s story. It’s a fanciful exercise in whitewashing the notorious Khadr family history:

Omar Khadr identified ... as a Canadian

father ... master's degree from the University of Ottawa

... [the Kahdr kids] like children of Canadian diplomats ... whose work took the family overseas for long stretches of time.

... Born into a family of two Canadian NGO workers

... attending first grade at the same Mississauga private school

... an orphanage [Omar’s father] had built in the refugee camps surrounding Peshawar

... Canadian from a devout family

... Omar was virtually indistinguishable from any other young teenager

... Blah, blah, blah

It all sounds so benign and wholesome. But other renditions exposing "Canada’s First Family of Terror" and "Canada’s Family of Convenience" remind us of the Khadr’s bin Laden and al Qaeda links, what they were actually doing "overseas" and what that "NGO" was up to.

Long story short, this is part of an on-going effort to rehabilitate the Khadr image and to get Omar out of Gitmo and back to Canada as another victim of the Canadian government’s collaboration with the evil Bush’s America - big lawsuit to follow. And don’t be surprised if the Obama administration helps the Khadrs get what they want.

Lowering the bar

Disgusting! Downtown Victoria on a Friday night:

... The square is also where city workers ... are chaining a portable urinal to a lamppost, having just unloaded it from a truck. They do this every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, dropping the grey plastic pillars at four locations downtown.

Around 4 a.m., once the last of the strays have weaved home from the bars, they haul the urinals away again.

The portables are four-holers, with places to stand on each side. Few seem deterred by the fact that the standees are wide open to view by passersby, at least from behind. The city truck hasn't even pulled out of the square when the first customer unzips.

Within five minutes there are seven more, including two homeless men, a pedi-cab driver and a group of young bucks whose dolled-up dates are less than impressed. A steady parade of club-goers flows past, some gawking, some not.

The city estimates the urinals are utilized 24,000 times a year, at a cost of $70,000.

On Thursday, Victoria council unveiled plans for a permanent $40,000 outdoor urinal that will provide more privacy, a curving screen giving it the look of Toronto City Hall.

Me, I say if they really want to stop public urination, they don't need cops with ticket books, they need grandmothers with wooden spoons. Or, better yet, grannies with Tasers. [That’s funny but, realistically, the cops should be doing their damn jobs - arresting or ticketing offenders (and publishing their names), which might lead to ...]

... a change in attitude by drunken doofuses who think a night out is an excuse to discard all common decency.

[...]

Victoria has been, as are no doubt many other cities, encouraging bad behaviour on its streets. Vagrancy, panhandling, drug and alcohol use, public urination and you-name-it are met with outrage by most of the citizenry. But the "authorities" response, more often than not, isn’t to discourage the behaviour but to tacitly approve by either ignoring or actively enabling it. Vagrancy and panhandling are ‘tolerated’, needle disposals and exchanges are provided for users and instead of ticketing and arresting drunks and yobs for pissing in public the city spends many thousands of dollars providing disgusting street urinals. It’s idiocy.

D-Day, Normandy Invasion

On D-Day, sixty-five years ago today, over 150,000 incredibly brave Allied soldiers went ashore on the coast of France initiating the assault phase of Operation Overlord, the Invasion of Normandy.







Over 14,000 Canadian soldiers landed at Juno Beach with 340 killed and 574 wounded.









Support our troops! Whenever, wherever. And write to the troops.

Obama in Cairo

[via Hot Air]

David Frum does a good analysis too.

Update:

Mark Steyn: "Obama's message of weakness"

And via Blazing Cat Fur: The radical left's postmodern reaction

More "wise Latina" foolishness

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has voiced her dopey "wise Latina" sentiments before. Rich Lowry points to a version from a speech in 1999:

... I accept the proposition that a difference will be made by the presence of women on the bench and that my experiences will affect the facts that I choose to see as a judge.

She said under questioning yesterday that her words declaring the superiority of non-white female judges were merely "aspirational". That seems unlikely.

The Iranian candidate?

From the NYT via The Corner:

In an interview ... on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.”

Jonah Goldberg:

Can anyone imagine George W. Bush saying something like this and not being instantly corrected and/or mocked for it by the MSM?

[via]

NO! to Government Motors

Local poll:
Somehow I think southern Ontario voters might have a different opinion.










Meanwhile President BO has appointed a 31 year old law student to oversee the dismantling of GM. Brian Deese is not finished law school, has no MBA, no auto industry experience, no business experience of any kind. A perfect pick - he's even less qualified than Obama.