Some New Year’s wishes

With the arrival of 2013 I hope we’ve seen the last of these annoying topics/people:
"Fiscal cliff": Obama, Dems, Republicans and the media - drop dead!
"Idle No More": Indians - please, be idle no more - get a job and STFU!
"Bullying" and "Amanda Todd": the Vancouver Sun - enough already!
"Gangnam Style": Psy, please get lost!"Justin Trudeau" and his media groupies: go away!
"Mark Carney" and his media sycophants: ditto!
...
...
That’s just for starters.

"Idle No More" - "Occupy" for Indians?

The Black Rod breaks it down for us:

... Admit it.  You have no idea what the  Idle  No More protests were about except that it was a bunch of aboriginals complaining about something --again. 

This time we can't even blame the mainstream media for failing to  clearly  explain what's motivating the protestors. That's because Idle No More is  a  goulash of rehashed complaints (housing, poverty, blah blah) mixed  with  trendy new complaints (the environment, we hate oil, we're all  gonna die) tied  with ribbons of quasi-legal jargon and Marxist spin ...

... to save the world, the aboriginals behind Idle No more want to stop Bill C-45, and along with it to force the government to recognize that Canada belongs to the Indians and anyone else who is here are "settlers"  

... Here's the best part in the Idle No More manifesto:

"The spirit and intent of the Treaty agreements meant that First Nations peoples would share the land, but retain their inherent rights to lands and resources."

... Nothing about this statement is true. In Manitoba at least. ...

As for "Occupy", "Idle No More" has the full support and approval of the rabble.ca and the usual suspects (eg. Naomi Klein, Judy Rebik).  That's proof positive that this "movement" cannot lead to anything even remotely constructive.

[via]

Merry Christmas!

Justin Trudeau - naive dhimmi or partisan panderer?

Decide for yourself - here's the full text of young Justin's speech to the Reviving the Islamic Spirit conference in Toronto last night:

As-salamu Alaykum.

... mostly, I am here today because I believe in you.

I believe in the contributions you have made to our country.  ... 

...

I'd say both.

Blazing Cat Fur.  Oh Shiny Pony! 

A supremely muddled Supreme Court

Barbara Kay on the Supremes' ruling on witnesses wearing the niqab in court:

... Unfortunately, the ruling ... leaves the door open for exceptions to the rule in other cases. For this reason, I would have preferred that the dissenting opinions of Justices Louis Lebel and Marshall Rotstein — that the veil is never to be worn during testimony — had been the majority view.   

... This is an excellent moment for the government to step up to the plate and, with this ruling as impetus, create a law that prohibits face cover for all those giving testimony in court, with no religious exemptions at all.

Right on, Barbara! In fact I'm now closer to the view that wearing the niqab in public, anywhere, be banned entirely.  Allowing niqabs leads to Supreme Court "decisions" like this one.

Christmas prayers for pessimists

Peter Foster offers Christmas prayers for a few of the perennial pessimists, gloomsters and doomsters who try to darken our lives:

... I am thinking of those who are inclined — particularly at this season — to condemn capitalism’s cornucopia as so much crass consumerism, culpable materialism, superfluous gift-giving, and planet abuse.

... poor little George Monbiot ... who recently wrote a Christmas cavil with the upbeat headline “The Gift of Death.”  ... Georgie Porgie doesn’t make girls cry by forcing kisses upon them but by berating their shopping habits. ...

... Next up for our prayers is Harvard’s Michael Sandel, who seems blind to all but the wackiest fringes of modern Western society ... The deepest recesses of Prof. Sandel’s troubled psyche were exposed by an article he wrote earlier this year: “If I Ruled the World.”

... Canadian Mennonite Aiden Enns, co-founder of the “Buy Nothing Christmas” campaign. ... Mr. Enns firmly established himself as another Eeyore who sees doughnuts only as holes.

... Malthusian Jeremiah Jeff Rubin — author of downer tomes such as Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller and The End of Growth. ... Mr. Rubin hankers for more poverty and less choice ...

Well done, Peter!

The NRA - sneer along with Jonathan Kay

Jonathan Kay’s column "The NRA’s monstrously stupid plan to put gun-toting guards in every school" was printed as an editorial in today’s National Post. [Here’s the NRA statement.]

As is typical of many of Jonathan Kay’s "arguments", he relies heavily on sneering, sanctimony and strawmen.

Kay writes: "...the National Rifle Association (NRA) has come forward with a truly batty idea for keeping American schools safe: posting a gun-armed sentry in every schoolhouse in the nation."
[Batty? At first glance, it seems quite practical and affordable.]

Kay: "... [the NRA’s notion that] protecting America can be accomplished simply by getting as much firepower as possible into the hands of "good guys." The very notion that a population can be divided into "good" and "bad" in any useful way is itself problematic, since many of the country’s most notorious killers were unknown to police before striking."
[Don’t be so obtuse, Jon. The NRA isn’t proposing to identify ALL the good guys and ALL the bad guys. The people the NRA identifies as possible armed guards seems like a pretty good first-cut suggestion for who could effectively greet would be killers when they show up at the schoolhouse door (self-identify).]
 
Kay: "Mr. LaPierre envisages an alternate plan that relies on citizen volunteers instead of police. ... The people most likely to volunteer for such a program are ... the sort of hotheads who we often see on cable news, pleading "stand your ground" defences after shooting first, and asking questions later."
[Another dopey strawman. The NRA isn’t proposing to do the selection of guards from a list of volunteers. Almost certainly that would be done by the local school officials and police who know their communities.]
 
Finally, the NRA’s statement was not intended as the be-all, end-all solution to the problem but an answer to the question: What can be done, "... starting right now ..." to protect school kids from the immediate threat (copy-cats, etc)? "There’ll be time for talk and debate later."

Jonathan Kay’s column is a hyperbolic, knee-jerk reaction to a reasonable proposal from an organization he detests to begin with.