Throne Speech Passes, Stephane Dion Sings Soprano

Jack Layton contributes to the desperate search for Stephane Dion’s missing testicles.

This one is set to go off

This is the itch that AveWatch has been scratching for over a year, and the big story that nobody in the main stream media will mention. Ample evidence demonstrates that, for years, Tom Monaghan has coercively used the Ave Maria Foundation to improperly create and run other non-profit and for-profit ventures that are managed centrally on Monaghan’s whim rather than as independent autonomous entities. Through financial coercion, he forces the recipients of his “philanthropy” to put duty to Himself above fiduciary duties to the organization. Tom Monaghan’s good supersedes all other duties in these organizations. Monaghan’s person, his Foundation, and his for-profit Florida businesses – including his mega-development Ave Maria Town – have benefited at the expense of Michigan’s Ave Maria School of Law, Ave Maria College, and their respective alumni, employees, donors, and students.

A conservative Catholic experiment in higher education is about to erupt in legal fireworks. As a point of note, if you are going to act as a tyranical employer, its best not to start firing lawyers, lest one of them take your threats seriously.

I don’t know what the Las Vegas oddsmakers are giving, but I would be surprised if either Ave Maria institution survives until the end of 2008.

Garth Turner Admits to Spamming Halton Voters

Garth just doesn’t know when to stop talking. Take this exchange in Steve Janke’s on election databases:

As for email blasts for fundraising and related political activities, the list used was compiled from people who contacted me for political purposes, not from CIMS, and blasted by a private contractor. Were there some Conservative supporters on that list? You bet, and they howled. Fortunately, most were smart enough to find the auto-delete feature.

Sending unsolicited emails to internet users is the very definition of spamming…

Black Cinema & White Criticism

Armond White rides to the defense of mediocre black director Tyler Perry. Why is Perry consistently slaughtered by the critics? Yep, you guessed it. If you have an ear for the absurd with an intellectual bend, this may be one of the funniest articles you ever read. Some excerpts [including a spirited defense of R. Kelly's "vernacular"]:

Most critics don’t “get” Tyler Perry basically because most critics are whites who are not only clueless about Perry’s African-American culture, but unsympathetic to his particular expression.

It’s alarming that American film critics alienate themselves from the aspects of Perry’s films that should be universal.

Perry’s critical beat-down isn’t an issue of knowledge—or taste—so much as cultural preference.

Nothing in Knocked Up is as meaningful as Perry’s spectacle of men who must restrain their anger physically or his politically incorrect fashion show of women proudly, luxuriously wearing furs as signs of pleasure and achievement.

This happens to be the basis of R. Kelly’s extraordinary music-video opera, Trapped in the Closet—a work of true genius that the media has also underrated and ridiculed. The media mocks R. Kelly’s vernacular (calling it “crazy” is the easiest way to avoid its daring and brilliance) just as Perry’s comedy and Eddie Murphy’s in Norbit are disdained as unsophisticated or vulgar.

Besides, Denzel will take us back to modern slavery next month.

Ontario: The Teachers Union Economy

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Across the provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador is expected to be the growth leader this year, with Alberta moving into the lead in 2008, rivaled only by Saskatchewan. Manitoba’s steady growth and inflation rates will keep it in the middle of the western provincial pack, and B.C.’s growth rate will move slightly downward. RBC’s forecast for Ontario’s economy has been revised downward to the bottom of the pack among all the provinces.

Oh darn, and no federal Liberal government to rescue them.

How do you get Albertans to work an extra day a year?

Replace an existing holiday with the proposed Pierre Trudeau Day! Undoubtedly inspired by the birth of Emperor Pierre The Third.

[Xavier. Who could make this up?]

Who comes up with these ideas? Oh right, Liberal MPs from Toronto. All hail our future Liberal Overlords!

Labour Unions Mistake Alberta for Hamilton

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Alberta’s largest labour organization is threatening to launch an election-style campaign aimed at punishing the ruling Tories at the ballot box if Premier Ed Stelmach scraps a government-commissioned panel’s proposal to raise oil and gas royalties.

What. A. Joke. Where do union threats actually mean anything nowadays? Hamilton? Windsor? Nice cities, those.

Counterproductive too. What kind of Alberta premier worth his salt would want to be seen as siding with the lazy, bloated, entitled, useless labour unions?

Let’s hope that Stelmach implements the Royalty Review recommendations word for word, but certainly not because the ridiculous and delusional Alberta unions have threatened the government if they are not.

Small Dead Fossil Records

I see guest poster Lance at Kate Werk’s Small Dead Animals has touched off a mini-firestorm with a post on Intelligent Design.

All are welcome to carry on discussion here instead if they’d like to provoke discussion on a favorite topic of mine — the political philosophy of scientific discussion.

All Ye With Ears, Listen!

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Politics is not about going into an election every chance you get. Politics is about proposing good policies and opposing bad policies.

Bow before your oracle, wretches.

Even Peter nods…

Socrates never DID much of anything, because he couldn’t quite figure out what virtue is.

Peter Lawler then goes on to discuss a Fred Thompson candidacy. I don’t dispute his political analysis of Fred Thompson necessarily. But Socrates never DID much of anything? Don’t tell that to Victor Davis Hanson or he’ll bore you to tears with tales of Potidaea, Amphipolis, and Delium, as did Alcibiades in the Symposium, and Socrates himself in the closing moments of the Apology, after he has been sentenced to death.

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