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.

Thin skinned "albino rights" activist files complaint with BC "Human Rights" Tribunal

Kelly McParland:

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has agreed to hear a complaint against a restaurant chain that sells a beer called Albino Rhino, because a woman who suffers albinism considers it offensive.

... Ikponwosa Ero, a 31-year-old immigrant from Nigeria, says Earls restaurants Albino rhino and wings combo is no different than offering an “Alzheimer’s appetizer,” or “Down syndrome daiquiri.”

... Earls [has] been selling Albino rhino beer for 25 years without complaint

This is beyond ridiculous. Though it's no surprise that the BCHRT is hearing the complaint.  They're just doing what grievance mongers and enablers are inclined to do.

Both Ero, a professional albino rights activist, and the BCHRT deserve maximum ridicule.  And judging from the comments on McParland's column they're getting it.

Not a bad column by McParland but he's way too accomodating:

... both parties in the dispute have valid enough arguments [No they don't.]

... Earls also has a reasonable case. [... ie. Ero has a "reasonable" case.  No she doesn't.]

... could Earls have maybe avoided some bad publicity and needless legal expense by agreeing to quietly relabel the suds “white rhino” over an extended period? Would it have been so difficult? [B.S. Why should Earl's modify a perfectly respectable brand of 25 years to satisfy one professional complainer's unreasonable complaint.]

Kudos to Earls for not knuckling under.

Richard Feynman's lesson for AGW true believers

[Via]

Connecticut massacre - "meaningful action"

One mother's thoughts about what to do:

... it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness ...

See also Christie Blatchford's column which makes reference to the novel and film "We Need to Talk About Kevin".

Update (Dec 17): Five-Point Action Plan for President Obama to Reduce Violence by the Mentally Ill

Connecticut school massacre - gun control, etc

In his remarks yesterday about the massacre of  school children in Connecticut, Barack Obama stopped just short of explicitly mentioning gun control, saying:

"... we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics." [Best of luck with that.]

Not that he had to be explicit, since just about everyone else who was so inclined brought it up within a matter of seconds after the news broke.  It's Godwin's law for gun control. Predictably "everyone .. so inclined" includes many foreigners from Britain, Europe, Canada and even China.

Speaking of China, those who believe that gun control is "the answer" to preventing these horrific events should keep in mind that killers hell-bent on killing will resort to any means:

A series of uncoordinated mass stabbings, hammer attacks, and cleaver attacks in the People's Republic of China began in March 2010. The spate of attacks left at least 21 dead and some 90 injured. Analysts have blamed mental health problems caused by rapid social change for the rise in these kind of mass murder and murder-suicide incidents.

Consider also the deadliest mass murder in a school in U.S. history. With no guns involved:

... 38 elementary school children, two teachers, four other adults and the bomber himself; at least 58 people were injured. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–11 years of age[1]) attending the Bath Consolidated School.

[h/t]

A side note.  Obama's tearful address began with: 

"We've endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. And each time I learn the news, I react not as a president, but as anybody else would as a parent. And that was especially true today. I know there's not a parent in America who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do." [With all due repect, the parents of the dead and injured might feel somewhat more overwhelming grief.]

IPCC AR5 draft leaked

IPCC AR5 draft leaked, contains game-changing admission of enhanced solar forcing – as well as a lack of warming to match model projections, and reversal on ‘extreme weather’.

Matt Damon's anti-fracking propaganda flick reviewed

A review by Phelim McAleer:

... Damon and Krasinski have produced a flawed movie not because they don’t understand movie-making but because they don’t understand Americans.

... a bigger reason why “Promised Land” fails in the second half. Damon and Krasinski don’t really like or trust most Americans, and it comes across. The residents are either good (and thus on the side of the environmental movement) or stupid and greedy, people who’d sell their grandmother for money.

... Damon and Krasinski believe that renting your property to a regulated and insured American company is the equivalent of selling your daughter to a whorehouse.

Middle America will probably respond to these attitudes by staying away from “Promised Land”; Tinseltown may well respond with multiple Oscars.

Also, Damon denies knowing that the Arab Emirates funded his film:

Soaring F-35 hysterics

The supposedly skyrocketing cost of the F-35 program has been hyped for weeks and months by the media and opposition parties.  Jerry Agar injects some reality:

A play about Walter Duranty and Pim Fortuyn

PJTV:  "Bill Whittle interviews authors Sheryl Longin and PJTV's own Roger L. Simon about their new play, “The Party Line.” This drama intermingles the lives of Walter Duranty -- the New York Times' Moscow correspondent during the 1920s and 1930s -- and Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician assassinated in 2002 on the brink of becoming prime minister of that country. Duranty whitewashed Stalin’s mass murder of the Ukrainians, and he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Fortuyn raised the dangers of radical Islam, and he was ultimately assassinated for his views."  A parallel is drawn between the 'Penthouse Bolsheviks' of Duranty's time and the 'Limousine Liberals' of today.

Environmental shakedown artists

A business model similar to Acme Window Smashing and Glazing

Earlier this week, the Polaris Institute, a left-wing NGO, released a report that purported to demonstrate, via public lobbying records, “how some of the biggest companies in the world are using well-oiled lobby machinery to directly manipulate policy making in Canada.”

... Meanwhile, Polaris’s claims beg a question: If oil companies are so all-powerful in the political process, why are the oil sands under siege? How was it that Keystone XL was blocked? Why is Northern Gateway’s future looking so rocky?

The simple answer is hugely effective campaigns of misinformation supported by organizations such as Polaris.

... But corporations have also funded their ENGO persecutors by buying them off as “consultants” and kowtowing to a business model analogous to that of the Acme Window Smashing and Glazing company: create environmental hysteria, then offer your services on how to deal with hysteria. [Where "dealing with hysteria" means creating more of it and further abusing corporations who (stupidly) cough up even more funding].

Nexen and Progress sales approved.

Harper government approves foreign takeover bids:

... the Harper government declared Friday in approving CNOOC’s $15.1-billion takeover of Nexen, while warning that state-owned enterprise takeovers of oilsands companies will only be permitted on “an exceptional basis only.”

... also approved a $6-billion takeover bid by Malaysian national energy company Petronas for Calgary-based natural gas producer Progress Energy Resources.

Terence Corcoran: Rocky road ahead for foreign investments in Canada

Monckton booted from Doha(haha) climate confab

From Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Doha, Qatar

I have been a bad boy. At the U.N. climate conference in Doha, I addressed a plenary session of national negotiating delegates though only accredited as an observer.

... The microphone was just in front of me. All I had to do was press the button. I pressed it. ...

Quietly, politely, authoritatively, I told the delegates three inconvenient truths they would not hear from anyone else:

• There has been no global warming for 16 of the 18 years of these wearisome, self-congratulatory yadayadathons.

• It is at least ten times more cost-effective to see how much global warming happens and then adapt in a focused way to what little harm it may cause than to spend a single red cent futilely attempting to mitigate it today.

• An independent scientific enquiry should establish whether the U.N.’s climate conferences are still heading in the right direction.

As I delivered the last of my three points, there were keening shrieks of rage from the delegates. They had not heard any of this before. They could not believe it. Outrage! ...

... I was amiably accompanied out into the balmy night, where an impressive indaba of stony-faced U.N. officials were alternately murmuring into cellphones and murmuring into cellphones. ...

Heh. Outstanding show, Lord Monckton!

Steyn and Hannity discuss the "fiscal cliff"

P*ssing on the poor - Calif. Teachers' video pushes class warfare

This animated video fairy tale (narrated by Ed Asner) purporting to "explain poverty" has one segment depicting a rich fat cat peeing on the less fortunate. Classy!  Obama will be proud.



[From The Blaze]

Big Data: Is Hayek Dead?

Proponents of “Big Data” hail it as a “managerial revolution”. What would Friedrich Hayek have said?

Terence Corcoran:

... Many decades ago, The Economist declared "Keynes is dead,"

... As we know, Keynes was resurrected ...

... Given the state of government policy around the world, it's beginning to look like it's time to ask the question: Is Hayek dead?

... Hayek's warning was aimed at the menace of central planning, but it likely also applies to big data corporate planning. Regardless of volume and quality, he said, data and statistics are about the past and are notoriously incapable of predicting even the smallest of changes in economic behaviour. Big data may have uses, but a management revolution based on terabytes of data and YouTube views? Let's hope Hayek isn't dead yet.

This also brings to mind “climate change”. Whether applied to directing an economy or managing “climate change” (which inevitably leads to attempts at directing the global economy) central planning is fatally flawed.  Both climate change and economics have in common: 

Huge complexity   |
Faulty theory       |
Faulty data          |  >> Disastrous policy
Faulty models       |

Hayek is alive and well.

How Mark Carney wooed his wife

From a wag in the comments to a Telegraph story on Mark Carney:

... By all accounts she's one of the world's great champagne socialists, so I presume the words "I am a banker and have ambitions to make myself exceedingly rich" were sufficient for her to immedately drop her knickers. ...

Speaking of "champagne socialists", the Telegraph had reported:

Mrs Carney, who is the vice–president of Canada 2020, a Left–wing think-tank, is the sister of Lady Rotherwick, whose estate in Oxfordshire plays host to the Cornbury rock festival, which has been attended by David Cameron at least four times.

Andrew Weaver's political science

In past posts I've referred to prominent UVic climate 'science' Prof Andrew Weaver's field as 'political' science.

Well, now I see he's made it official.

Mark Carney walks on water because ...

... he's best buds with a fawning pack of Canadian media party suck-ups.  BC Blue compiles the evidence from the Twitterverse and beyond (here and here).  Implicated are the National Post's John Ivison, Maclean's Paul Wells, CP's Bruce Cheadle ... and more.

Why does the Jewish-owned media hate Israel?

Lawrence Solomon in his NatPo piece, The Jewish press and Israel, refers to a tweet from Rupert Murdoch which asks: Why Is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?

Naturally Murdoch got leftist blow-back:

Many in the left-wing press immediately pounced on Murdoch’s comment, claiming, as a Guardian writer did, that Murdoch had “slipped into an anti-Semitic usage.”

A CNN commentator called Murdoch’s tweet “beyond outrageous to offensive, truly offensive … reviving the old canard about Jews controlling the media.”

Solomon defends Murdoch: noting that many of the largest, most influential media outlets (including NYT, LATimes, Chicago Trib, NBC, CBS, Viacom, MTV and ABC) are a) Jewish-owned and b) anti-Israel.

Anti-Semites who believe Jewish ownership leads the press to show favouritism toward Jews haven’t been paying attention. The New York Times during the 1930s and 1940s played down the Nazi atrocities, burying stories of concentration camps and Jewish mass murders in small stories in the paper’s interior. In recent decades, the Times has been consistently anti-Israel.

... Anti-Semites looking for media coverage sympathetic to Israel would be hard-pressed to find it in the Jewish-led press (Mort Zuckerman’s New York Daily News and U.S. News and World Report being notable exceptions). The narrative the anti-Semites are most comfortable with, ironically, comes from Jews.