Senate "scandal" - much ado about not much

Conrad Black on the Duffy/ Wright affair:

- This week’s by-election results ...  suggest that voters are not too much concerned ...

- The PM’s chief of staff advanced his own money that was cycled on a fast track to the national treasury. It was the reverse of embezzlement. ...

- there is something very peculiar about a system that, as in the Duffy case, allows an RCMP corporal to publish such an inflammatory series of allegations against a distinguished figure of the private and public sector such as Nigel Wright. ...

- especially unbecoming, and has failed to impress anyone an all political sides, has been the swift evolution of Harper’s and Gerstein’s and others Conservatives’ references to Nigel Wright [throwing him under the bus]  ...

- overall, this remains pretty thin gruel as a scandal. ...

 Ezra Levant has similar thoughts:

"biting the Invisible Hand that feeds them"

Peter Foster reviews the latest in "The Hunger Games" movie series and finds:

... [the movie] hasn’t quite produced the flood of anti-capitalist flapdoodle that the first did, but one of its stars, Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, still hopes that it might send U.S. youth to the barricades.

One of the more intriguing aspects of our relatively free Western society is that it allows people such as Mr. Sutherland to become fabulously rich while biting the Invisible Hand that feeds them.

Donald Sutherland, another Hollywood Canuk in the dumb and dumber set.

Conrad Black's defence of Mayor Rob Ford

The salvation of Ford: Conrad Black on why Rob Ford can win again

... nothing has come to light that disqualifies him from fulfilling the mandate his electors gave him, and I do not believe that the City Council has any legal capacity to redefine the powers of the mayor ...

... Mayor Ford’s detractors should realize that instead of hounding him from office, they have probably, by their bestial self-righteous excess and implicit mockery of a large echelon of the population that identifies with the mayor, made him more popular than ever. They have mocked human foibles a great many voters share, without shame, if not proudly. ... The law of unintended consequences asserts itself again, and it will be interesting to see whom it strikes.

Conrad at his best. Love it!  Though I'd say that in addition to that "implicit mockery" there was a lot of explicit mockery and insult of Ford voters by many including Post columnists J Kay and A. Coyne.

See also, Peter Foster's: Unravelling the Fordian Knot

Consensus on global warming crisis

Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis:

... Now that we have access to hard surveys of scientists themselves, it is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.

David Cameron orders: "Ditch the green crap"

In yet another sign of a return to climate sanity:

David Cameron has ordered ministers to ditch the ‘green crap’ blamed for driving up energy bills and making business uncompetitive, it is claimed. 

The Prime Minister, who once pledged to lead the ‘greenest government ever’, has publicly promised to ‘roll back’ green taxes, which add more than £110 a year to average fuel bills. 

But a senior Tory source said Mr Cameron’s message in private is far blunter.  The source said: ‘He’s telling everyone, “We’ve got to get rid of all this green crap.” He’s absolutely focused on it.’

Politicians are waking up, one at a time - and none too soon.

[Via]

Update: On the other hand, James Delingpole writes: "On green issues no one talks more 'crap' than David Cameron"

 ... Let us not forget that only last week Cameron was explicitly linking Typhoon Haiyan to "climate change." 

... David Cameron talking about cutting green crap is like King Herod talking about improved babycare for male children in Judaea.

How modern climate hysteria resembles that of the Little Ice Age

Dr. Sally Baliunas discusses the history of people's reactions to extreme weather. Those skeptical of the official line are not well treated:

How fossil fuels are greening the planet

Matt Ridley explains why the greening of the planet in recent decades appears to be happening because of, not despite, our reliance on fossil fuels:



[Via]