Tiger's sorry

Tiger Woods says he's sorry. And I believe him. It's obvious he has a lot to be sorry for, especially getting caught. But, since "... he has been linked to 19 mistresses ..." getting caught was all but inevitable.

The question remains: What is he not sorry for?

Some good news for Conrad Black

From CTV News:

... The important development related to [Black's] chances of winning his appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court and it came from a surprising source. Falling just short of waving a white surrender flag, the same United State Attorneys Office for the Northern District of Illinois that launched Black's prosecution signalled its shaken belief that his fraud convictions might be vacated. ...

... The alarm bell has been sounded in prosecutors' offices across America that the honest services fraud statute may be on life support. ...

... If the fraud statute is ruled to be unconstitutional, Black's remaining three fraud counts will invariably fall. And what of the obstruction of justice charge that would remain? The court might be persuaded that if it isn't vacated, Conrad Black will be left with a single conviction for a crime committed in another country in relation to a set of circumstances that were determined by the court to be non-criminal. The absurdity of that logic leading to a dubious conviction could possibly lead the Supreme Court to vacate the charge of obstruction of justice as well.

[Via Mark Steyn at 'the corner']

The Williams case: Could it get any more bizarro?

Maybe.

And the media are keeping up their their usual dismal standards:

Lew MacKenzie.
Babbling Brooks.

[Via and]

Alberta's "Oily Dirt" and carbon capture & storage

Halfwise posts some interesting thoughts on the politics of Alberta's "dirty" oil and subsidies of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology:

... if anyone tries to tell me the Oil Sands represent Dirty Oil I respond "You are mistaken, it is actually Oily Dirt."

... In the provincial budget that was presented on Feb 9, the Conservative government included $100 million for this year's component of the CCS program, (down from $300 million previously planned)...

... the Wildrose Alliance has gone public with a critique of the budget that includes scrapping the CCS initiatives altogether.

... You could argue from ideology as to whether Hoover Dam was a make-work project or not, but the twin realities of its hydro power and Lake Mead's water management benefits are inarguable. CCS on the other hand involves a lot of real work to achieve climate benefits that are literally not measurable, if indeed they exist at all.

... If you were a politician, which side of this issue would come down on? Spend money you don't have? Or risk being tarred with the brush of AGW alarmist criticism?...

Go Wild Rose Alliance!

Oh, and don't miss this post on "Alert Levels Around the Globe". For example:

... The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." ...

ClimateGate: An exceptional interview on the BBC

Here's the BBC's Andrew Neil in a hard hitting interview with former IPCC chair Robert Watson (now Chief Scientist for the UK Dept of Environment):
.


Now that interview must be the exception that proves the rule on the MSM's uselessness in covering climate change. Could we expect to see anything like it on the CBC, or any Canadian network for that matter?

Here's some background on Robert Watson who was given the boot from the IPCC in 2002.

Video on BBC site.

[H/t]

Never mind prorogation, let’s do it Texas style

Texas has a part-time legislature of 181 citizen legislators who meet for 140 days every second year. Texans consider government a threat to liberty and prosperity:

Texans figure the $7,200 a year they pay their state lawmakers is plenty. "They've got more government in Texas than they want at $600 per month," [said] Texas Gov. Rick Perry ...

... "When you have a full-time legislature, they just feel pretty inclined to be doing something. So they are going to dream up new laws, new regulations and new statutes -- and generally all of those cost money," Perry said.

Texas has been hit by the recession too but it’s unemployment rate at around 8% is two points lower than the national average. And perhaps more important, it has one of the lowest debts ($50B compared with the nearly bankrupt California’s debt of around $640B).

Compare:

Texas - population 22 million, GDP $1.2 trillion, income taxes $0
Canada - population 32 million, GDP $1.3 trillion, income taxes $big

While there’s more to running a country than a state, the Texas model would be worth aiming for. And the provinces should certainly take a close look.

Danny Williams’ (non) confidence in CanuckCare

Newfoundland Premier Danny (Big Mouth) Williams decided to go to the USA for his heart surgery. This recent story out of Victoria documents an example that illustrates the likely reason he did so:

... Jo Danielson is living on the edge with an abdominal aneurysm, a dangerous bulge in her aorta ...

... doctors have recommended ... endovascular aneurysm repair, in which a device called a "stent" is inserted into the diseased aorta...

... But she will have to wait until April ... The health authority has placed a cost-saving, yearly cap on the stent procedure because of the extra cost ...

... "We've literally had the rug pulled out from under our patients," said Dr. Jim Dooner, head of vascular surgery for VIHA.

... It's a form of accounting that Dooner says is "absolute lunacy and it is wrong."

In other words CanuckCare involves bureaucratic rationing based on the calculations of government bean-counters. [Note also how government health agencies like to call themselves "Authorities" rather than, say, "Services". They want to make sure the peons clearly understand where they fit in the pecking order.]

In the USA there is no government forced waiting (at least until ObamaCare comes along). So Williams’ decision to go to the USA was the wisest move he could make from a personal medical standpoint. However, Lorne Gunter makes an excellent point. Professional politicians like Danny Williams and his ilk are responsible for shoving a government health monopoly down Canadians’ throats and denying ordinary folks the level of care they insist on for themselves.

From the comments in Gunter's piece:


As Kate McMillan often says - "Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough".

Updates:
Here's Ezra Levant, and;
Rex Murphy goes easy on his fellow Newf. Murphy makes the point that we're operating in a "vacuum of fact". There's some truth to that, and I can believe that Newfoundland may not have the treatment he needs. However, it's unlikely, whatever Williams' precise problem, that treatment is unavailable anywhere in Canada. If it is available here, then he's hypocritically jumped the entire Canadian queue by going south.