Good for (these) Victorians

Not all Left Coast denizens have swallowed the Kool-Aid.
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Take that Andrew Weaver, you putz!

Climatism’s useful idiots

The recent hacking of the email from the UK’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) revealed the fraudulent and other nefarious activities of several influential climate "researchers" and warm-mongers. Some of the people involved already had shady records. Michael Mann’s global temperature "hockey stick" had been debunked long ago by Steven MacIntyre and Ross McKittrick. And Steven MacIntyre has for months been documenting his ongoing and unsuccessful attempts to get the CRU’s rudely uncooperative Phil Jones to release climate data. So, to many of us, what the hacked e-mail revealed was not a huge surprise. But getting confirmation of it in the miscreants’ own words is hugely important - it is (or should be) a media bombshell.

It’s really beyond irksome that the media and other climate hysteria boosters, even in the face of massive incontrovertible evidence of gross malfeasance on the part of climatism’s key players, are ignoring, obfuscating, downplaying and otherwise denying there’s anything interesting to report. For example, last night CTV News happily reported from the Commonwealth Conference in Trinidad that Stephen Harper has been bullied into pissing away $10 billion more of taxpayers’ cash to assist developing nations in combating climate change, but says not a word, absolutely NOTHING, about Climategate. And a search of the CTV web pages turns up only one short puff piece quoting a US climate "scientist’s" views:

[Kevin] Trenberth says the hackers took data out of context.

Yes, sure "out of context."

And at the CBC, as Lawrence Solomon will attest, it’s business as usual:

As The Wall Street Journal Europe put it, "The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start." The impression left by the performance of Anna Maria Tremonti and The Current is that they — wittingly or not — have been helping to rig the game in Canada.

Just like the Western dupes that the Soviets once toured through their Potemkin villages so they could report back to their readers about the Soviet Utopia, we have useful idiots, now in the service of climatism.

Taxing our savings

One of the least talked about effects of implementing the HST is the impact on investments. Management fees charged by financial companies are now subject only to the %5 GST. If/when HST comes into effect there'll be another 7% (BC) or 8% (Ont) tacked onto fees for managing mutual funds and other investments. Management fees in Canada are already extremely high ranging from 1% to upwards of 3% of assets under mangement.

As this article explains the HST will hurt investors and their nest eggs:

... For a long-term investor, it will be the difference between an Audi and a Taurus, or golfing in Florida versus watching the Battle of the Blades on CBC.

We're talking multi-billions here. Why hasn't the issue been better publicized?

... There are compelling arguments and precedent for not further taxing Canadian's retirement capital, but unfortunately they've fallen on deaf ears because of bad timing and the wrong messenger.

... The timing relates to budget deficits. .... the response from a higher authority has been clear and consistent: “This is going to happen because we need the money. Focus on implementation and we'll talk about the inequities later.” Recessions are a bad time for rational arguments and good policy.

... the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) [has] done a good job of laying out the arguments why the HST is bad for Canadian investors. But IFIC is an organization whose membership is made up of too many firms that charge world-leading fees, and have been reluctant to share the benefits of their scale with clients. IFIC's association with Bay Street's fat cats has hurt its credibility when arguing against HST....

Read on.

They tax our income. Then they tax our spending. Now they propose to tax our savings. It's time to seriously start considering a move to Alberta, or the Caymans.

NASA needs to clean its own house

NASA scientists have been busy debunking the new end-of-theworld movie '2012'.
Lorrie Goldstein thinks they could put their time to better use cleaning up their own act first:

... Now, if only NASA's space cadets could get their own doomsday climatologist -- James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies -- to stop preaching end-of-the-world hysteria about man-made global warming, they might do some good.

... Hansen, ... the first climatologist to start banging the Armageddon drum on global warming 20 years ago, keeps racing around the world hysterically preaching we only have a few years left to save the Earth ...

... how does a NASA "scientist" get to run around preaching democracy isn't working, get arrested for civil disobedience and lecture the U.S. Congress that energy company executives should be tried for "high crimes" against humanity?

If NASA is so concerned about hysterical claims of Armageddon scaring children, it should worry less about science-fiction movies and more about cleaning up its own house.

Right on, Lorrie!

Al Gore explains geothermal energy

What a moron!

The economy is so bad ...

The economy is so bad that I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

It's so bad, I ordered a burger at McDonalds and the kid behind the counter asked, "Can you afford fries with that?"

The economy is so bad that CEO's are now playing miniature golf.

The economy is so bad if the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you call them and ask if they meant you or them.

The economy is so bad Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.

The economy is so bad McDonalds is selling the 1/4 ouncer.

The economy is so bad parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children's names.

The economy is so bad a truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico.

The economy is so bad Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.

The economy is so bad Motel Six won't leave the light on anymore.

The economy is so bad the Mafia is laying off judges.

The economy is so bad Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.

[h/t Vinney]

Canada just lost its private healthcare system

The Dems just passed Obamacare in a 220/215 vote in the House. So now where will Canadians go for private healthcare once the Americans start rationing theirs?

Stephen Harper’s stalker, Yann Martel

According to an interview with author Yann ("Life of Pi") Martel:

... Every two weeks for the past two years, Mr. Martel has mailed a book to the Prime Minister's Office. He tucks a letter to Mr. Harper inside the front cover explaining his selections...

... Mr. Martel has received only the most perfunctory letters from the Prime Minister's Office thanking him for his packages -- five letters in total, none of them signed by Mr. Harper himself-- a minimal response compared with the nearly 70 letters Mr. Martel has mailed.

Harper’s non-responsiveness sets Martel’s imagination (not to mention
condescension) working:

"Obviously, Harper is a very bright man. Obviously he can process information, he can understand political and economic ideas. But with books you explore the other. You develop your sensitivity for the experience of others," said Mr. Martel. "Books make imaginative leaps into other lives. If he doesn't have that, that means he's only led his own narrow, intellectual life."

And the absence of information about his reading habits makes Harper ... "scary" (of course) and cues yet more condescension:

He is not interested in debating the merits of reading fiction, which I find scary," Mr. Martel said ... "The reading of fiction is an essential tool of reflection."

No doubt Martel thinks he’s doing something useful but he comes off more as an obsessive, hectoring kook. It’s not much wonder Mr. Harper doesn’t respond. In fact, he should consider getting a restraining order.

The killings at Fort Hood

And speaking of Muslims, a lot has been said about US Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan's murderous rampage at Fort Hood, Texas last Thursday. Predictably much of the media coverage studiously and lamely avoided discussing the relevance of the killer's devotion to Islam. Mark Steyn thinks it's more than just the media, that the Shooter exposes a hole in the U.S. terror strategy:

... a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the "war on terror."

... [Hasan's] superior officers and other authorities knew about his beliefs but seemed to think it was just a bit of harmless multicultural diversity – as if believing that "the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor" (i.e., his fellow American soldiers) and writing Internet paeans to the "noble" "heroism" of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war ...

... we're scrupulously nonjudgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy ...

... that's the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy – in Afghanistan and in Texas.

Maher Arar update

Ezra Levant has an excellent update ("Maher Arar is a liar") on Arar's on-going attempt(s) to shake down governments:

... Maher Arar, the huckster who lied his way into $10.5 million of our tax dollars, has had less luck with the U.S. legal system than he had with ours. A U.S. appeals court threw out his nuisance claim against the U.S. government.

... had Arar actually gone to trial here, his case would have been thrown out, too. Arar's testimony would have been torn to shreds...

... Arar did not have good luck with our legal system. He had good luck with a politicized inquiry that bore his name -- the Arar Inquiry -- but in which he never testified. Of course he didn't: he doesn't want to answer questions.

Update: Ezra responds to comments from a well-wisher:

Ezra Levant[,] You need to be sued right into the poorhouse. You need be be sued so your parents are living on the street. You need to be sued so your grandchildren will still be making payments.

Ezra's reply: I take it you think I'm defaming Arar. But truth is a defence. Have you bothered to look into the facts of his case? From his gun; to his lies about being whipped with a thick cord; to his refusal to be examined by an independent physician, etc., etc.? Do you really think a man who made out like a bandit would risk all of that by putting himself through litigation? And I mean real litigation, where he would actually have to answer questions, not fake litigation, such as a human rights commission, or his laughable "inquiry" in which he didn't even testify. Are you so naive as to think he'd jeopardize his life of luxury for that? Of course he wouldn't. He doesn't want to lose a lawsuit, to pay his lawyers and mine. And, more importantly, he doesn't want to lose the myth he has created: that he is a victim.