New Blog For a Familiar Face

Just a few days ago, my friend and I were wondering what came of William Gairdner, thoughtful author, polemicist, decent political philosopher, and social conservative. He authored some fine books including The Trouble with Democracy and edited After Liberalism.

Now he’s got his own blog. Worth reading.

H/t: Daifallah.

Entitlements of a Lazy Media

American Media: Deeply disturbed that Dick Cheney waited 48 hours before informing the press of the hunting accident he was involved in. Cheney should have dropped his rifle and hunting cap and sprinted to the nearest media scrum. And so we get reporter after reporter whining at length:

“Vice President Cheney shot a man in the head on Saturday, and 21 hours later you had to be looking at the Web page of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times to find out about it….If the vice president’s office was “working,” it was working awfully slowly. They didn’t even let McClellan know until 6 a.m. Sunday morning, 12 hours after the hunter had been “peppered.”

Following up on this new sense of entitlement, Canadian reporters have taken to complaining that the new government has been unwilling to provide the press with it’s daily slab of meat (from Gloria Galloway, the single member of the Carol “Doh!” Jamieson fan club):

“In more than a week since his controversial cabinet took the oath of office, Mr. Harper has made few forays into the world of cameras and digital recorders.”

Galloway then goes on to list Harper’s public appearances over the course of the past week: five in total. Now to me five appearances in one week means one for each working day. But that’s not enough for Galloway, and her expert opinion is dutifully confirmed by another expert: Peter Donolo. Who was, in case that name rings a bell, a Liberal staffer for most of the 1990s.

There’s a reason that five media appearances in a week is not enough. And that reason is: Members of the media press gallery suffer from attention deficit disorder:

“In the six weeks until MPs return to the House of Commons, the Opposition and press gallery members will be looking for ways to occupy their idle hands. And while Mr. Harper works on his Throne Speech, prepares legislation and receives briefings, the news generated in his absence is unlikely to be positive.”

So just to be clear: the absence of news in Ottawa will not dissuade the Ottawa press gallery from writing stories about the news. And since the prime minister is not providing daily meat for the press gallery to chew on, it’s likely that those stories will be negative (or, as Galloway impishly puts it, “unlikely to be positive”). And doesn’t Galloway’s story itself substantiate this?

UPDATE: Also see Thomas Sowell’s Spoiled Brat Media

MSM Admits Defeat – Blogosphere is Where the Real News is Found

A rather curious thing has occurred during the debate on whether newspapers and other media outlets should reproduce the Muhammad cartoons. If you read between the lines, and closely examine what many of the heads of these media outlets are saying, you’ll see they’re clearly conceding defeat to the blogosphere and the Internet. What kind of defeat? Well, take a look at what Colleen Boschmann, General Manager of McNally Robinson Booksellers had to say,

In fact, since the cartoons have been widely (exhaustively) discussed, and are available to the curious on the internet, it is the McNally’s position that carrying this particular magazine would not be ‘expressing’ anything except the symbolic (and in this case offensive) right to express whatever we want.

In a nutshell, the McNally’s stand is: yes to freedom of expression, no to freedom of gratuitous provocation. (emphasis mine)

Do you see admission of defeat? So basically, the cartoons are “available to the curious on the internet” therefore, we’re not going to upset a few Muslims and risk any sort of violence. Apparently Colleen doesn’t mind conceding the fact that the Internet is the place to get the “real” news and McNally Robinson Booksellers is simply going to bow out of this fight for freedom of expression. But as Kate points out, this bowing out is a tad bit hypocritical. Satanic Verses goes for $23 on their website.

What do you think of their cultural and religious sensitivities now?

Enough already

From 24 Hours:

Enough already. The Emerson issue is totally boring… As for the hundred protestors with nothing better to do this past sunny weekend I tip my hat to your concern for democracy but pity you for your lack of a life.

I’d like to extend the same sentiment to some conservative bloggers who have become obsessed with the issue.

Kinsella sues, Bloggers react

Does Kinsella annoy you? Than get over here and open your wallet with even 10 or 20 bucks. Graduate students don’t have much money as it is, let alone when hot-shot Liberals start throwing lawsuits around.

Background here.

Western Standard Website Down – Was it Hacked?

For some reason the website of the Western Standard is unavailable. Could it be the result of their decision to print the Danish cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad?

Update: They’re aware of the problem and working to fix it.

It seems that our website has been overloaded by traffic this morning and our web provider has suspended our account temporarily. This won’t affect the blog.

We’ll be back up soon.

Kind of a strange reason for shutting the website completely down. Personally, if my host shut my account (website) down because of increased traffic, I’d be shopping for a new host immediately. It’s called scalability, and any quality host is capable of dealing with higher the expected traffic.

Update 2: I suspect this is the more likely culprite for the downed WS website.

Almost 1,000 Danish websites have been defaced by Islamic hackers protesting about controversial cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

The attacks typically replace home pages with pro-Islam messages and condemn the publication of the images.

Update 3: It’s 4pm and the site is still down! Obviously this is more than simply a overload of traffic on a server. Overloaded servers, as far as I know, do not return “Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)” errors. Adventures in Bowling Green claims,

Kevin Libin, editor in chief of the WS, tells me that they’re working to get the web page back up. I asked him if it was too much traffic, or something else. He says it’s “something else.”

Confirmation of a successful net attack against the Western Standard? You be the judge. What I can’t figure out is why no one has bothered to explain the reason for this outage, or why it has taken this long to resolve this issue? With the Western Standard’s publication of the cartoons being one of the major issues of the day/week, you would imagine they would be alittle more prepared.

If anyone has any additional information, you can post it here or send me an email.

Update 4: It’s after 9pm and it looks like westernstandard.ca is back up and running. Still no word on what actually happend. Although, if it was actually hacked, you would have probably seen Ezra Levant spitting nails in every direction.

Al Gore’s America-Bashing for Sauds

Al Gore gave a speech to an audience in Saudi Arabia, criticizing US treatment of Muslim prisoners.

I wonder what William Sampson would say about this? Here’s what the Sauds say about William Sampson.

Maybe the Sauds will be find such open opposition to one’s government a sign that they too should allow for open debate about its government’s policies.

I doubt it.

Garth’s World: Mulroney the latest victim

Garth has expanded his reign of terror to include the former prime minister:

Reports that a $300,000 payment made by Karlheinz Schreiber to former prime minister Brian Mulroney came from a Swiss bank account connected to the Airbus affair raised internal questions among federal Conservatives yesterday, with at least one MP saying the matter should be looked into.

The news adds to some of the tension being felt by former Reform Party members who are concerned about the influence of friends and former colleagues of Mr. Mulroney as the new Conservative government of Stephen Harper takes office.

“The allegations have got the media upset and they’re in the public domain, they obviously should be investigated,” MP Garth Turner told the CBC.

First: I was not aware that the only prerequisite for investigation of a private citizen was an upset media. Hell, if that were true, the frenetic and perpetually-outraged Canadian media would have half the country under constant wiretaps.

We already knew that Garth knew nothing about investing; we then learned that he knew nothing about Parliament. Apparently he knows about as much about the law. When are people going to realize that that neatly-trimmed beard adorns an entirely empty head?

Second: This is apparently the third media talking point on the new government that has been circulated since the election, following the hand-wringing over a lack of representation from Canada’s largest cities and the head-holding over the undemocratic nature of Harper’s cabinet appointments from….Canada’s largest cities. The media has now moved on to the third bullet: A schism in the party between old Reformers and old Progressive Conservatives, Harper having allegedly surrounded himself with the latter. Except for the problem that Garth was a Progressive Conservative cabinet minister.

Garth Turner and his media friends: Never letting the facts get in the way of a damn good soundbite.

Garth Turner: A Big Bundle of Contradictions

Garth is now considering bolting his party just weeks after being elected because he is coming under fire for criticizing Emerson for…..bolting his party just weeks after being elected. What does credibility sound like while it’s swirling down a toilet?

Steve Janke asks: Will Garth resign and run in a by-election if he leaves the party that he was elected under? Isn’t that what he’s been calling on Emerson to do?

Meanwhile: MK Braaten reports on how Canadians have tuned out the media and Garth.

And: Garth is slowly but surely losing defenders: “Note to Garth “so indignant about floorcrossing I’m thinking of crossing the floor” Turner – you look bad. Media hound bad. You need to look in a mirror and figure out whether this is about principle – or just about you. And that’s coming from someone who has been cutting you a lot of slack.”

Garth Turner Redux

It is important to remember what kind of man is currently bestowing his wisdom upon all of us little people:

“If you own Nortel, or a mutual fund holding it, don’t bail out now… If you do not own Nortel, then this is the time to start accumulating it.�
– Garth Turner, 2000

“I am constantly amazed at the assumption people make that they can manage their own finances… most people can’t. They don’t have a clue how to pick stocks.�
– Garth Turner, 2002

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