"What Difference Does It Make?"

Hillary Clinton asked "what difference does it make?" in response to questions about the murder of a US Ambassador in Benghazi. Bill Whittle:

Ontario headed for Greek-style meltdown?

Ontario's debt load larger than California's thanks to big-spending ways

Ontario’s debt load is higher than that of California, America’s most-indebted state, and could reach 66 per cent of GDP by 2019 unless the provincial government musters the courage to rein in spending

" ... Ontario simply cannot continue spending money it doesn’t have; otherwise it will soon be compared to Greece, not California.”

“If Ontario continues spending at its current rate, its net debt will increase to 66 per cent from 37 per cent in just seven years. It took Greece 10 years to experience a similar increase. ..."
 

Jonas is no libertarian

George Jonas:

I replied promptly: “No, I’m not a libertarian,” and then described briefly what I consider myself to be: an old-fashioned liberal, a type also called laissez-faire or 19th-century liberal. Or classical liberal. I’m what all liberals used to be before many, if not most, became supporters of the interventionist state. Nineteenth-century liberals didn’t leave liberalism, liberalism left them. To be a liberal isn’t complicated: One simply has to revert to being one.

... I’m what a liberal used to be.” It was a comment on liberals, not libertarians. It was also an expression of regret that, in just a few generations, Liberal parties of liberty have become illiberal parties of the social-engineering state.

The Case for Sun News

Pierre Karl Péladeau responds to Andrew Coyne's junk column trashing Sun News and it's application for an expanded license.

Unlike Coyne's dopey rant Peladeau's response is calm, factual and business-like. 
It's difficult to see how the CRTC could possibly justify rejecting Sun's reasonable quest for fair treatment. But we'll see. If it is rejected, again, I predict there'll be Hell to pay.

On Marxism, Obama and gun control

Self-admitted former "brain dead liberal", David Mamet:

Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.

For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability: the State will give to each according to his needs.” “Needs and abilities” are, of course, subjective. So the operative statement may be reduced to “the State shall take, the State shall give.”

... President Obama, in his reelection campaign, referred frequently to the “needs” of himself and his opponent, alleging that each has more money than he “needs.”

But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”? And note that the president did not say “I have more money than I need,” but “You and I have more than we need.” Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

And on to gun control ...

... it is ... only the Marxists who assert that the government, which is to say the busy, corrupted, and hypocritical fools most elected officials are (have you ever had lunch with one?) should regulate gun ownership based on its assessment of needs. ...

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Andrew Coyne: Sun News' "shameless" "gall"

Barking!

... There just aren’t words for this kind of gall. Even by the standards of the cultural sector, it’s breathtaking: proof, yet again, that the only thing you need to succeed in Canadian business is utter shamelessness, coupled with an invincible sense of entitlement to the public’s money....

Talk about shameless, breathtaking gall! Andrew Coyne, charter member of Group Think Media, smears Sun News for its temerity in seeking a level playing field in the TV news business. His main "argument" seems to be that during its startup period Sun supposedly shunned the mandatory carriage it is now seeking. Even if this were true, Big Deal! What are they guilty of? At worst business miscalculation, or maybe chutzpah as the new network in town. Anyway, now that Sun has, what do they call it ... oh, yes, "experience", and finds that it's accessibility to the TV audience is severely restricted compared to its competitors, its hardly surprising that they would seek to level the playing field, especially since it’s losing money.

Coyne’s second "argument" is that it would be better if the entire system were reformed to offer subsidies to no one. That seems like a reasonable if not laudable goal. No doubt the CRTC’s dopey rules need reform. But why should Sun lead that charge or wait for it to happen? In any case the dollar subsidy* that Sun is asking for is tiny compared to what the others have been getting from square one.  Shouldn’t it get the same as the others, automatically? Although that’s probably small beer compared with the "subsidy" Sun really needs - which is access to the same audience and on the same basis as the other Canadian news networks. That’s also something Sun News should have been granted from the get-go.

Meanwhile, Coyne should tell us, if he can, why he thinks Sun News shouldn’t be treated the same as the other networks. Contemptuous innuendo doesn’t count.

*Clarification: "subsidy" = cable subscriber fee (not taxpayer funded)

More:

Beyoncé lip-synched the Star Spangled Banner

Confirmed by the Marine Corps Band:

... a rep for the United States Marine Band says Beyonce was not even singing the song live. She was lip-syncing.  

The rep said that the multi-platinum singer decided to perform to a pre-recorded track at the last minute.  

“We performed, live, the band. But we received last-minute word that Beyonce was going to use the pre-recorded vocal track. Those were the instructions we were given. We don’t know what the reason why.”  

Sources also tell Fox News that Beyoncé was a no-show at the inauguration performance rehearsal on the Capitol steps.

 Like we didn't know that EVERYTHING about the Democrats is fake.

Update (Jan 23): Michael Coren just reminded his viewers that the last head of state Beyoncé sang for was Muammar Gaddafi.  And what happened to Gaddafi?  He was sodomized and murdered by "Arab Spring" rebels who were heavily backed by Obama.  Watch your back(side) Barack!

Worst president since Jimmy Carter

According to a new Gallup poll:

When people say that Barack Obama is the worst president since Jimmy Carter, they’re not kidding; a new Gallup Poll taken between January 7-10 shows that when Americans were asked whether they had a positive view of the country, only 39% agreed. This is the lowest percentage since August 1979, when Carter was president, inflation was out of control and the economy was hurtling toward the abyss. The percentage of those who believe that things will be better in five years is only 48%, the lowest since that same time period under Carter. Another 40% said things will be worse.

The negative numbers for Obama’s stewardship of America are historically low. Normally to a sitting president this would be a cause for concern, but this president has shown he doesn’t care one whit whether people are optimistic or not as long as he can transform the country into his dream socialist state.

This boslters the theory that Obama's re-election must have been a collective act of ... affirmative action.

Parsing Obama's inaugural speech

John O’Sullivan:

... Some inaugural speeches ... are hard to hear because they are so meaningless that the mind drifts off elsewhere. Most turn into a real political assertion at some point, usually suggesting that the banalities of the first half of the speech will be realized in policies proposed in the second half. This is usually the moment when vapidity turns into outright flimflammery. In today’s Inaugural, this moment came quite early, about four minutes into it ...

... If we ignore the rhetorical falsities and dig for the real meaning underneath them, the speech becomes almost fascinating.

Political police

Politically correct, politically partisan, idle police:


This leads nowhere good.

Update (Jan 22):
Ezra Levant:  "... Maybe cops think this is the way to make friends of their enemies. But in doing so, they’re making enemies out of their friends."

Algerian seige - Canadian Islamists among terrorists?

Daily Telegraph:

Reports in Algeria suggested that two of the 30 kidnappers were Canadian nationals. Survivors of the siege also claimed that one of the terrorists has a "North American accent".
 
A spokesman for Canada's ... DFAIT confirmed to The Daily Telegraph that representatives from the department had been in touch with the Algerian authorities to try to establish whether Canadians were among the terrorists. ...

Reuters:

An Algerian security source had earlier told Reuters that documents found on the bodies of two militants had identified them as Canadians: "A Canadian was among the militants. He was coordinating the attack," [Algerian PM] Sellal said, ... That Canadian's name was given only as Chedad.

Meanwhile:

David Cameron criticised the BBC for describing the perpetrators of the Algeria hostage attack as “militants” instead of condemning them as “terrorists”. ...

Predictably, the CBC is similarly inclined to use weasel words, unlike the National Post.
 

Clinton warns Dems: "Don't look down your nose at gun owners"

The Blaze:

“Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them,” Clinton reportedly said. “A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things…”

“Do not be self-congratulatory about how brave you [are] for being for this” gun control push, he said. “The only brave people are the people who are going to lose their jobs if they vote with you.”
 

Update: From the comments (via hunter at Climbing out of the Dark):

"... we've seen about a 40% increase in firearms crime since the ban was introduced..."

Ezra greets IdleNoMore's pathetic anti-Sun protest

The mob looked and sounded like it was recruited from the "movement's" (or just the street's) most pathetic denizens.  Trying to conduct a coherent interview with any of them was impossible.

Kathy Shaidle:

Many of them were indistinguishable from the panhandlers who clutter up the streets: ... Others are under the impression that — you’ll never guess — “Jews own the media,” and say so on camera.

... this protest was heavily promoted by the Ontario Federation of Labor ...[who] relied upon (paid?) glorified homeless people to act as their brown shirts, to protest SUN’s right to bring the Mafia-like corruption on reserves to light. ...

Only slightly less pathetic were the lazy, useless, politically correct cops who tried to remove Ezra "because it was easier".

Harper ventures into venture capital (with our money)

William Watson: Harper’s big Dragon

It was a bit of a shock Tuesday to see the prime minister of Canada standing on the set of Dragons’ Den/Dans l’oeil du dragon, the CBC’s game-show caricature of capitalism.

... the federal government has in mind $400-million (which ... the NDP finance critic categorized as “peanuts”...)

... The government going into the venture capital business clearly marks the end of any idea of the Conservative Party of Canada as a market-oriented institution.

... Instead of getting into the business itself wouldn’t it be better for the government to try to figure out whether anything it’s doing is causing shyness among potential Canadian investors? One obvious possibility is that there’s no room for them. We already have the CMHC, the EDC, the CCC, the BDC, the various regional lending agencies, and so on. Maybe capitalists simply feel crowded out.

... Governments giving hundreds of millions of dollars of free cash to investment bankers to play with: Where is the Occupy movement when you need it? 

I wondered if the U.S. government did anything similar, other than blow a 1/2 $billion on Solyndra, that is.  The answer is "yes, but".  It's handled through the Small Business Administration's Small Business Investment Companies (SBIC) Program. The SBA says:

"... SBICs are privately owned and managed investment funds, licensed and regulated by SBA, that use their own capital plus funds borrowed with an SBA guarantee ...
... NO TAX DOLLARS ARE APPROPRIATED ... " (emphasis mine)
 

George Jonas on Indians and residential schools

Political correctness, white liberal guilt and shaky logic are not what one expects from George Jonas.  He gets off to a bad start but reaches a reasonable conclusion.

Jonas: "It’s important to note that the residential school programs were disgraceful ...[even]from the perspective of their own [times]."

Then he contradicts himself with: "The reason we didn’t view our own conduct in this light at the time was due to civilizational arrogance ..."

While the latter bit ("civilizational arrogance") rings true, the former is unsupportable nonsense. Boarding schools were hardly a novel concept in the 1800's and early 1900's. In fact they were common. So were the methods of discipline. Regimentation and corporal punishment were pretty much the norm in British schools both at home and in the colonies (and from my own experience, in public schools in the 1950s and beyond). That it was applied in Indian residential schools is hardly surprising and certainly wouldn’t have been thought "disgraceful" by anyone at the time. Sexual abuse is another matter but it would have been considered criminal then and more severely punished than it is today.

Jonas’, in arguing from the perspective of his own supposedly ‘more enlightened’ times is guilty of ...what? Temporal arrogance? It would be interesting to hear from those who ran the schools back then but, luckily for George, they’re not here to defend themselves.

That's mainly in the first part of his column.  But he works his way to a reasonable, politically incorrect conclusion:

The ultimate solution, if there is one: ... A good version of the same model of which the residential schools were a bad ... example. The alternative, which is having the government maintain some sort of Paleolithic Garden of Eden for natives in post-industrial Canada, isn’t just unaffordable but unworkable. Unless people join the century in which they live, they will be alienated and displaced. For aboriginals no less than everyone else, Canada must be a first nation.

Piers Morgan v. Ben Shapiro

Morgan: "How dare you accuse me of standing on the graves of children that died there, how dare you! (sniff)"

Idle No More riddled with contradictions

Terry Glavin:

... On the one side, we have Canada, a genocidal, racist, colonial settler state that just wants to rape the land and poison the water. On the other, we have sacred indigenous nations that just want to protect Turtle Island and be spiritual about everything. Now, pick a side.

Thank you, Idle No More. Joining a “revolution” has never been so easy.

...

Sorry, but the choice isn’t between the Folk Devil Stephen Harper and those graceful blue creatures from Avatar. It’s between play-acting in period costume and actual and real political engagement. Unless it’s the latter, Idle No More will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

Great read!

More on this by Terry.

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Piers Morgan on guns - he's full of crap

So, what else is new?

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The "Secret Santa" blows the whistle on the IPCC

Donna Laframboise:

A week before Christmas, three data sticks containing 661 files and amounting to nearly one gigabyte of material came into my possession. They were created by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Friends of Science: "... Whistleblower Files End Climate Change Catastrophe Cult"

... (IPCC) internal files ... reveal more attempts by agenda-driven activists to skew the science on climate change. In 2012 the UK met weather office revealed no global warming for at least 16 years while IPCC admits global warming predictions were way off and there is no trend in extreme weather.

... “In October 13, 2012 the Daily Mail reported that the UK Met Hadley weather office revealed there had not been any global warming for 16 years despite a substantial rise in carbon dioxide (CO2).”

... two weeks later on December 13, 2012 Alec Rawls leaked 14 draft chapters of the upcoming IPCC report on-line....confirmed the catastrophic warming scenarios of the previous IPCC climate models were way off, far too high, by several factors. ... Further, the IPCC itself stated that there was no trend toward more extreme weather, confirming the Oct. 31, 2012 Wall Street Journal statement by Roger Pielke Jr.

... “And finally, the IPCC admitted and then evaded recognition that the sun is a major factor in climate change,”

... “A trillion dollars has been wasted on carbon reduction schemes in the past decade,” ...  “Generations of children have been terrified and taught absurd anti-scientific group-think, economies have been bankrupted in the ‘rush to low-carbon renewables’ – such as Ontario, the UK, Spain, California – falsely believing people can ‘save the planet’ by reducing carbon dioxide.

The irresponsible rhetoric of Manitoba Grand Chief Derek ("Big Mouth") Nepinak

Further to yesterday's post on this, here's John Robson with Ezra Levant:

Indians "have the power to bring the economy to its knees"

Sounds like a threat of war to me.

Listening to AFN Chief Atleo and other chiefs this morning they adopted the attitude that Indians are 100% victims. There was no mention whatever of their own responsibility for the mess their people are in. There was no mention at all of governance, corruption and accountability issues.   In fact they are standing up for Theresa Spence, their most recent posterchild for incompetence and corruption. They went on about poverty the lack of schools, safe drinking water,.... All whitey's fault.

Over $100 million from the feds and another $350 million from the diamond mine flowed into Attiwapiskat over the past 6 years. That's $1.5 million for each of 300 home on the reserve. And there's no money for schools and safe water? Bullcrap!

Those AFN chiefs had best own up to their own governance failures. And if PM Harper has any balls he'll remind them of that fact tomorrow.

Métis ruling - going from God-awful to worse

Why are these people smiling?






If you look carefully at the eyes you'll see $ signs.

"... Vancouver Metis Leonard Laboucan said while his family has survived for generations without financial support from the government, he hopes the future will be easier for his three-year-old son Kyell."
 

No kidding! But what kind of "justice" is this? Why should Kyell's future be made automatically "easier" than a neighbouring child who was not born with that drop of Indian blood?

The Federal Court has taken a horrible situation (race based entitlements) and made it immeasurably worse. Now, based on a claimed quantum of aboriginal blood an additional 600,000+ rent seekers will be bellying up to the trough (with their lawyers) for their "fair share" of freebies paid for with taxes extracted at gun-point from the rest of us.

Let's hope that the federal government successfully challenges this ruling.

Attiwapi-scandal - where's the RCMP?

Ezra Levant:

Audit nightmare: The RCMP, not Harper, should be meeting with Chief Spence.


Attiwapi-scandal:


What the Media Party is ignoring:


Ezra's analysis and reporting on the Attiwapiskat scandal have been superb.  The rest of the media, with few exceptions, worse than useless.

Ian Thomson's persecutors

In my previous post on this I expressed the wish that the Crown attorneys who went after Ian Thomson be named and properly rebuked for their maliciousness.  Karen Selick advises the following (in the comments):

The name of the prosecutor is Robert Mahler. He is shown on the Ontario "sunshine list" ...   as an Assistant Crown Attorney and in 2012 the taxpayers of Ontario paid him $193,125 plus benefits.

Also, it seems fairly certain that the office of the Attorney General made the decision to prosecute.

Donate to Ian Thomson's defence fund.

Name and shame the prosecutors

Matt Gurney on Ian Thompson's acquittal:

It took two and a half years, but Port Colborne, Ont., resident Ian Thomson is finally done defending himself. First he fought the men who tried to murder him. Then, his own government.

Mr. Thomson was charged with ... two charges of careless storage of a firearm, one for each of the pistols he had removed from his gun safe ...  it’s hard to imagine a more cut-and-dry case of lawful self defence than firing on men trying to burn down your home while you’re inside it. But the Crown insisted on pursuing the charges of careless storage.

... On Friday, an Ontario judge acquitted Mr. Thomson of both those charges.

... First and foremost, Mr. Thomson did nothing wrong and should never have been charged in the first place.

... best of all, a message has been sent to overreaching Crown attorneys.

Good news for Ian Thompson. But I'd like to know why it is that in news stories like this the prosecutors are referred to only as the anonymous, Kafkaesque "Crown" or "prosecution". Why are these mutts not named and shamed as a real deterrent to other prosecutors similarly inclined to abuse the justice system? Not to mention paying Thompson for costs and aggravation or having their asses sued off.

Update:  According to Karen Selick:

... his problems may not yet be over. The Crown apparently said even before the decision was rendered that if Thomson were not convicted, the government would appeal. It seems the Crown wants Thomson to go to jail for storing his gun and his ammunition in the manner necessary to save his life. [What complete arseholes!  All the more reason to name them.]
 

 

Al Gore's values

Hypocrisy would have to be high up on the list, then his bank account. 
Rex Murphy:

... in the service of broadening his already impressive propaganda effort, [Al Gore] acquired — from CBC no less — a digital channel, renamed it Current TV, and hired as lead star the belligerent and bellowing Keith Olberman ...

Now comes the latest news that Al has sold Current, for the magnificent sum of $500-million, $100-million of which is his alone, ... to al Jazeera — which is to say, effectively to the ruler of Qatar ...  Qatar is about oil, oil and more oil. It is a global warmer’s hell.

In a related story, when Glenn Beck offered to buy the channel from Gore, he was rebuffed ("within 15 minutes") because:

"the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view,"  

..."[Gore] didn’t sell to the highest bidder. We were not allowed to the table. He didn’t sell to the highest bidder. He looked for, who do I ideologically align with," Beck said.

So, global warming alarmist Al Gore's values are aligned with those of Al-Jazeera and it's petro-state dictator.  As Ann Coulter never tires of pointing out "[liberals] are either traitors or idiots..." ["Treason" - p16].  Al is both.

Fact checking idle Indians

All-purpose scapegoat, "climate change"

Paul Driessen:

... Sandy was “unprecedented,” the result of “weather on steroids,” various “experts” insist. “It’s global warming, stupid,” intoned Bloomberg BusinessWeek. ...

“Superstorm” Sandy killed more than 100 people, destroyed thousands of homes ...

Sandy was "unprecedented" only if you completely ignore the past:

... A 1775 hurricane killed 4,000 people in Newfoundland; an 1873 monster left 600 dead in Nova Scotia; others pummeled Canada’s Maritime Provinces in 1866, 1886, 1893, 1939, 1959, 1963 and 2003.

Manhattan got pounded in 1667 and by the Great Storm of 1693. They were followed by more behemoths in 1788, 1821, 1893, 1944, 1954 and 1992. Other “confluences of severe weather events” brought killer storms like the four-day Great Blizzard of 1888. The 1893 storm largely eradicated Hog Island, and the 1938 “Long Island Express” hit Long Island as a Category 3 hurricane with wind gusts up to 180 mph.

... Hurricane Sandy, November 2012 marked the quietest long-term hurricane period since the Civil War, with only one major hurricane strike on the U.S. mainland in seven years. This is global warming and unprecedented weather on steroids?

Meanwhile, Michael Bloomberg flogs his PlaNYC 2030 [in which "climate change" and  UN Agenda 21 (via ICLEI) figure large]:

... [city officials] thought nothing of placing generators in the basements of hospitals and skyscrapers built in areas that are barely above sea level.  ... Sandy’s nine-foot surges (plus five feet of high tide) flooded those basements, rendering generators useless, and leaving buildings cold and dark.

... The mayor has also obsessed about urban sprawl. However, when new developments mean high rents, high taxes and photo-op groundbreakings, he has a different philosophy.

... No wonder Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Cuomo and other politicos prefer to talk about global warming, rising seas and worsening weather — to deflect attention and blame from decisions that have put more people in the path of greater danger.

... How nice it must be to have convenient scapegoats like “dangerous man-made global warming” and insurance companies. [Actually insurance companies have been all too willing to use "climate change" as an excuse for raising rates.]