What is up with Klein?

The latest from the Alberta campaign trail:

AISH comment continues to haunt Klein campaign

“Wednesday night at a Tory rally in Calgary, Klein related a story about two AISH recipients who approached him at a sod-turning, saying the money provided by the program wasn’t sufficient.

“They didn’t look severely handicapped to me. I’ll tell you that for sure. Both had cigarettes dangling from their mouths, and cowboy hats,” Klein said.”

His first round of comments was unthinking and betrayed a lack of sensitivity toward handicapped people. But Klein is not a poster-boy for sensitivity (that is an aspect of his charm, or so I’m told), so I gave him a pass for that one. Later on, though:
[Read more]

Harper Humour

Stephen Harper, seemingly the man without a personality, made an appearance at an annual press dinner in Ottawa last week. Here are some excerpts.

“I’ll admit I have my flaws. Even my friends tell me that I can be dismissive and insulting. But what the hell do those idiots know anyway.”

“You know, I’m constantly being called non-descript, lacking any kind of image, having no personality. And each time I respond the same way: ‘Kids, go to your room’.”

“Actually, I did hear a lot of funny things during the election. But they were mostly from my caucus.”

“Belinda gave me good advice too, but frankly I thought the beige pant suit made my butt look big.”

“I know some of you think here tonight that I am bitter of some of the campaign media coverage. But I don’t think it’s fair to describe my relationship with the media as stand-offish. I prefer the term walk-pastish, or better yet, drive-by-with-car-and-splash-with-puddlish.”

“In spite of what you may believe, I respect and support the press and it’s not just lip service. I support you financially as well. Just last week I shelled out 12 bucks to see Paparazzi. As you know, it’s the new movie about the aggressive reporter who gets killed by the celebrity he’s harassing. I wrote in our Conservative newsletter that it’s the feel-good hit of the year.”

How can you not like a guy like this?

Consult the Court, says the Court

Today the Supreme Court ruled that equality rights were subordinate to the financial outlooks of the governments that were charged with respecting them.

Top court sides with Nfld. in pay equity case

“The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled the government of Newfoundland and Labrador was justified in deferring pay-equity payments to female hospital workers.
…
Today, in a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court said the decision may have violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but the provincial government was nevertheless justified in deferring the payments.

“The spring of 1991 was not a ‘normal’ time in the finances of the provincial government,” Justice Ian Binnie wrote.

He said there comes a time when budget problems “can attain a dimension that elected governments must be accorded significant scope to take remedial measures, even if the measures taken have an adverse effect on a Charter right.”

However, he cautioned that governments must still prove that they are facing a fiscal crisis.”

[Read more]

Bush out in front

Reuters is reporting that, with just a few days left to go, Bush has a 3-point lead over Kerry nation-wide. What is interesting about this poll, however, is that undecideds are factored in on the basis of the direction in which they are leaning. Remember all the chatter about how the worldly and sophisticated independents were going to save the day by going over to Kerry at the last minute? It ain’t happenin’.

Florida, with a great number of delegates and very close numbers for Bush and Kerry, is still the state to watch.

Cost of the Subs - When the Truth Comes Out

Wait a minute - I thought we didn’t pay a red cent for these decrepit submarines? According to assistant deputy minister, Alan Williams, we’ve actually paid $565-million so far for the subs.

Feds torpedoed deal

The defence department quietly scrapped a deal with the British to barter Canadian training facilities for four used subs and will fork out $812-million for them. The Liberal government has repeatedly assured Canadians that tax dollars have never been spent to purchase the subs. The deal was explained as a cashless exchange of the diesel-electric submarines for the use of Canadian training facilities by the British military.

Canada signed a lease-to-own agreement in 1998 with the British for the four subs. The Canadian Forces have since ordered $60-million in spare parts and inked a $167-million support contract with BAE, bringing the total project costs to more than $1-billion.

Ok, so which is it? Did we or did we not pay cash for these subs? According to Department of National Defence own website,

The project includes $610 million for the acquisition and $140 million for project-related costs. It includes the cost of crew training, simulators, spare parts, Canadian modifications, and project support. To maximize savings and value for Canadian taxpayers, the project involves an innovative eight-year, interest-free, lease-to-buy agreement in which Canada’s lease payments will be ‘bartered’ for the ongoing use of Canadian training facilities by the British forces at Canadian Forces Bases Wainwright, Suffield, and Goose Bay.

Someone is getting screwed, and I think its the Canadian taxpayer.

The Bitterness of this Presidential Race Isn’t New

Jennifer Nelson makes some great points in the SF Gate about how we’ve been here before and the sky really isn’t falling.

Demo-nization Of Bush Recalls 1984 Election

The constant whining about how divided the country is and how divisive the political campaigns are this year is getting tiresome.

To listen to the Democrats, you would think that George W. Bush is the first Republican candidate they’ve ever disliked and that this is the first time this nation has faced a close election.

Does anyone remember 1984? Do you recall how much the Democrats hated Ronald Reagan?

No more junk food in schools, by Liberal decree

Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal provincial government in Ontario has banned junk foods from elementary schools. Sports drinks and chocolate-coated granola bars are among the items reported to have been banned by the latest government fiat.

One hopes that somebody, somewhere is growing tired of this constant government interference in every tiny aspect of their lives, or our future as free-thinking human beings is bleak. We have laws on how long your lawn can grow, how often you can water it, whether you can add a deck to your house, whether you can sleep in your own basement, what brands of pain-relief drug you can take and now, what your kids can eat in school.

It isn’t for our own good, either. Alleve is available in the USA, but not in Canada, so either the Canadian government is depriving us of a useful analgesic, or the US government is allowing Americans to take a potentially harmful substance. One supposedly benevolent government is actually acting against the best interests of their citizens. Not to mention that tobacco and alcohol are still allowed even given their very harmful effects, and for a more extreme example, that one of the first acts of the American FDA was to press charges against Coca-Cola for not putting cocaine in their beverage.

This is not the end of the nanny state. Once you have established that government has the right to boss you around, to regulate your activities and to issue you with orders to be obeyed against your own desire, there is no logical stopping point. Where we draw the line and say “this far, no further” is purely subjective and all it takes, apparently, is for 23% of the electorate to disagree with you and your life is no longer your own, whatever your standards.

Schools told to dump junk food

The Ontario government is banning pop, potato chips and other calorie-laden junk foods from elementary school vending machines in a bid to improve the physical fitness of the province’s schoolchildren. Education Minister Gerard Kennedy released guidelines for the province’s school boards today to restrict the in-school sale of treats like sports drinks and chocolate granola bars to students from kindergarten through Grade 8.

Media Coverage Needs to Change to Save Hostages

It is mind boggling to me why we tolerate the duplicity of Al-Jazeera television. Here is a network dedicated to Arab Islamic programming with distribution in major Western democracies. Here is a network that is the platform of choice for radically evil Arab Islamists. Here is a network ready and willing to protect its “sources” upon receiving a tape from hostage takers.

But while Al-Jazeera is the worst offender most other Western media outlets are ready and willing to report on every heart wrenching moment in a hostage taking saga. Such reporting needs to stop. Hostage tapes, aired and reported on across major news networks, gives radical terrorism a political platform it does not deserve. The very essence of what they demand, that either Britain, the US or any other coalition partner cede to their wishes or else, is contrary to the very essense of political discourse. Politics is conversation, a means of civil dialogue and debate meant to avoid the winner takes all approach of violent conflict. Politics is not what these terrorists would ever seek to uphold.

But the terrorists know how to use Western liberties to their advantage. They use freedom of the press to soften Western resolve and to decieve popular opinion into taking them for reasonable men: “Leave Iraq and we will free this hostage and others. All we want is our country back. The choice is yours.” What washed over lies from evil zealots who sense our spiritual weakness. But while our spirit may be weakened, its true strength lay in our passionate regard for the human spirit itself. Human dignity matters, and freedom of the person allows for transcendental ends beyond anything radical Islam can match. We are trying to establish a liberal democracy in Iraq, establish a democracy where the individual is privileged because the transcendental significance of his soul, equally among others, is recognised. Iraq is not for the taking by radical Islam because radical Islam does not share our faith. It is unwilling to submit to the humility required by true faith in God, a faith that is manifest in the freedom of the individual to not always follow it by diktat.

Consider the case of the tortured and tormented Ken Bigley. Here was a man who watched his own friends beheading, only to wait in a cage for three weeks until maximum damage could be exacted on British public opinion, then receiving his turn under the knife. What allowed the Bigley saga to drag out was that Western news media were willing to report a.) that he was taken hostage and b.) every twist in the saga. The terrorists know they are making news, they are banking on the full effect their actions will play on public opinion. If they can weaken public resolve in the West to finish the job in Iraq their assumption, mistaken or otherwise, is that they will win Western governments less willing to stay the course.

The terrorists seem to sense that public opinion in the US is less likely to be swayed than in Britain. Bigley was killed three weaks after his American friends, giving him a three week goodbye splashed across frontpage news. And Margaret Hassan, the last hostage, is a high profile middle aged British charity worker. The terrorists are counting on public sympathy for Hassan to stir outrage at Blair and even Bush. And while having sympathy for her is a prerogative of any decent person, knowing about her in the first place is not. Our knowing about her captivity only makes her captivity worse since we can never give in to terrorist demands. Our knowing encourages more hostage taking.

The time has come for Western media to pledge never to air any tape made or procurred from a terrorist source. Western media should never again report when a hostage has been taken. Such coverage does not help to win their release, it only it assures their death. Hostage taking in Iraq is no longer news but terrorist electioneering.

McGuinty awards himself a ‘B’

Liberal Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, speaking at a Toronto Board of Trade breakfast, wrote himself a report card and awarded himself a healthy ‘B’ for his first year in government.

Obviously, this was about the only source that would have given McGuinty a passing grade. The press and the opposition love to draw attention to the broken election promises, including a pledge not to increase taxes (for breach of which the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has filed suit against McGuinty and finance minister Greg Sorbara), to balance the budget, to lower tolls on the 407 ETR and to cease construction on Oak Ridges Moraine.

The glossy 16-page progress report on which McGuinty based his self-aggrandizement cost the taxpayer $23,400 for paper and printing alone.

McGuinty gives Grit team a ‘B’

Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty wrote up his own report card yesterday and gave his government a passing grade for its first-year performance. “I give us a B,” McGuinty told reporters yesterday. “I think we’ve made some real progress.”

Macleans weighs in

Macleans, Canada’s impartial newsmagazine, recently wrote on the arrival of Fox News Channel in Canada. Here is an excerpt from their cover “story”:

“My most enduring images of George W. Bush date back to the fall of 2000, when I spent a week covering his victorious campaign. He struck me at the time as a pretender, a bit-player cast as male lead, and nothing I’ve seen since has changed this perception.”

Fascinating. For more such news, visit the whole story.

Next Page »