Top Ten Unconservative Contest Finalists!

We received a lot of great entries to the Top Ten Unconservative Things… Contest. I spent most of the morning trying my best to narrow them down to just ten. However, I think most would agree that the ten entries below should accurately cover some of the disappointments many conservatives have had to endure.

Here is your opportunity to vote for your favorite unconservative entry. The author of the entry that receives the most votes will receive the signed copy of Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone (see note below). I’ve actually got two copies of America Alone, so I’m going to be giving away another copy to those who submit a vote. So after submitting a vote, please contact me or post a quick note in the comments section below. Make sure to remember to include a proper email address, so if your name is drawn i can contact you directly and get your mailing address.

Last Chance to Enter – Top Ten Unconservative…

Today is your last day to enter your submissions to be considered for the “Top Ten Unconservative Things the Conservative Party of Canada Has Done” contest. I’m going to pick the winning entries later tonight and then announce the top ten list tomorrow morning.

Good luck!

Worth a Laugh

While lounging around the house today I caught a few minutes of Craig Oliver’s “Question Period”, and found the entire experience to be pretty laughable. Watching Warren Kinsella discuss the Mulroney affair appears to be an effort in futility.

To begin with, Mr. Mulroney is a bit irrelevant at the moment, isn’t he? Neither major party seems to want him, and someone whose charisma gave him the opportunity to become an “elder statesman” has become more of a target for low-level media bulldogs to take potshots at.

The program did have one redeeming value, though. Watching Kinsella practice pronouncing “Mulroney” was worth a laugh or two. He’s working very hard on it, as once he’s mastered the name he’ll only have a couple more phrases to go before he can be taken seriously as a political commentator.

Desire Munyaneza, Rwanda war criminal, should be set free

The trial started two years ago and finally ends in a conviction. I trust Frank Chalk, director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, has his heart in the right place but I beg to differ with his early statement:

He said Rwanda has considered removing capital punishment, but some of those convicted in early genocide trials were executed.

“In some cases it’s not feasible to send them back to their home countries for a variety of reasons, so we needed a law like this,” said Chalk, who teaches history at Concordia University.

“We need to demonstrate to future potential perpetrators of crimes against humanity that they can never find a safe haven in Canada.”

See, now that Desire Munyaneza is convicted, he is finally getting the safest haven in the world: a Canadian prison. He can not ask for anything better.

Desire Munyaneza should be set free but his photograph, name and address should be made public knowledge. Enough money has been spent on his war crimes trial. I reckon no more money needs to be spent after the public hears stuff like this:

Dozens of witnesses said he helped kill dozens of Rwandans during the 1994 bloodbath that claimed some 800,000 lives, mostly Tutsi. In one episode, the trial was told that he helped place children in sacks to be beaten to death.

Mr. Munyaneza, then 27, ran a store owned by his father in Butaré in southern Rwanda. The store ordered 2,304 machetes from a wholesaler months before the massacre. The court heard that Mr. Munyaneza helped pass them out as the killings began.

or other monstrosities like this:

The court was told that Munyaneza, the son of a wealthy Hutu beer distributor, set up roadblocks in southern Rwanda to select Tutsis and moderate Hutu as victims based on their ethnicity or allegiances.

One man who was imprisoned in Rwanda for his own role in the genocide testified that Munyaneza orchestrated the massacre of between 300 and 400 Tutsis in a church.

Birmingham police brutality

The police here are sick monsters. The victim is thrown from his vehicle and clearly immobile. Yet, half a dozen stooges pummel him when he poses no resistance.

Birmingham police beating video

Should Paternally-Initiated Abortions Be Allowed?

A Pennsylvania boy is going to be charged for attempting to abort his baby which his girlfriend was carrying after it was discovered that he attempted to do so by lacing the girl’s drink with a cow hormone. My need for clarification is quite simple as this draws one’s mind back to the images of coat hangers and back alleys abortionists use to illustrate their argument; what is the difference with this situation, in which the father is attempting to get rid of an unwanted child in a fairly safe (to the mother), albeit extreme manner, and the 16 year-old girl who decides a week before her due date that she no longer wants her child and decides to have a partial-birth abortion (as opposed to having a C-section and then giving up the child for adoption)? Pro-lifers are welcome to join the discussion as I think this story itself helps to put the debate into a bit of perspective and we might get some good content out of this…

Paul Dewar NDP supports crony capitalists and corporate welfare

Paul Dewar of the NDP is now demanding corporate welfare for the laid-off Nortel employees:

“Nortel has a long history of R&D in Canada. We can’t let the last 10 years affect Canada and prevent it from being an R&D leader. We can’t sustain a country on service workers. We need knowledge-based workers.”

That sounds poetic but I beg to differ. We can not sustain people with government bailouts. The technology industry did not just collapse over night. If those workers can not find “knowlegde-based” jobs — whatever that means — elsewhere in the market, tough luck. They should go find different jobs.

Top Unconservative Things Contest… Submit Now!

The “Top Ten Unconservative Things the Conservative Party of Canada Has Done” contest is picking up steam. Over the past few days, hundreds of individual submissions have been received and I’m looking forward to more.

The contest ends in less than a week (Monday May 25), so get your submissions in as soon as possible! Thanks to all of you who have already submitted your list and good luck on winning the book.

Note: This post will remain on the top of postings until the contest ends.

CONRAD BLACK Gets Shot At SCOTUS

In a HUGE development in the fraud conviction of Conrad Black, what every pundit was calling the remotest of happenings came to pass this day. The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear the appeal of Lord Black’s convictions; fitting that it should come on Victoria Day no less.

Is it just my reading or does CTV’s headline, “U.S. court agrees to review Black’s fraud conviction,” seem rather understated. The Supreme Court of the United States agrees to hear a select FEW cases.

The United States of Obama Is About Anything But Civilty

For those of you who spent your Sunday afternoon in the pursuit of long weekend R&R like I did, I hope that you are having a good time and enjoying the company of your family. The Notre Dame convocation ceremony has now passed and unfortunately it does not look like there will be any winners from this situation, only losers. Here is the breakdown:

1)The most direct and visible losers in this situation are the students who, for whatever reason, decided not to attend the ceremony today or had what should be a momentous point in their lives overshadowed for what strictly amounts to a photo op. Is it fair to allow the magnitude of this situation to allow us to ask why any educational institution grants honourary degrees to sitting Presidents or Prime Ministers? It only serves to put the school in question in a partisan light and alienate the segment of the student body which does not support the office holder. Many students just put four years of their lives into what will be their greatest academic accomplishment, only to have the achievement morphed into the latest ground of the culture war.

2)The babies. Again, today there was a photo op and a whole bunch of pomp and spectacle, and there was even a convocation ceremony too! Unfortunately, there are those who were at the ceremony this afternoon who defend the opinion that a split second before a legal, viable baby is born, it is open season fodder. Science tells us that the baby would be viable before hand as well, but the political opinion still stands, and is held by the current President of the United States. In the academic spirit, let me put this forth: calculus would serve as a model on sorting through this messy issue. If you break down the period of a child’s life from conception to the point that he/she is in his/her mother’s arms for the first time, you would be able to determine the quantitative attributes of that person at that time. Should be not be using this as a model to test whether life exists at each period of time, instead of assigning an arbitrary point in the cycle as the point where we’ll start acknowledging the right to life.

3)The US President. This article summarizes any points from Obama’s speech worth reading. Much in the President’s fashion, Obama completely side-stepped his obligation to be a thoughtful legislator, and, again, simply went after his opposition because they don’t agree enough with him — hardly an American attitude. Where the Democrat really took a wrong step though was in accepting the degree in the first place; outside of what I mentioned in the first second, it’s hard not to see this as the President trampling through the gardens of his opposition and if he had to accept a diploma anywhere, it shouldn’t have been at a Catholic university.

4)The Catholic Church. Very few people, even a lot of supposed “Catholics” understand how the institution works in a legal and governmental sense but if any party could’ve single-handedly ended this train wreck before it started, it was Rome. I’m tempted to say that the Catholic bishops and cardinals who spoke out against this event were the closest things to winners in this situation, but obviously their goal wasn’t accomplished. Instead, the Vatican leadership, whose job it is to oversee the doctrinal consistency of the worldwide Catholic body sat on its hands when it could’ve revoked the right for ND to use the Catholic name, reassigned the rouge priest who is President of the school and installed someone with a bit more honesty about his faith, or at least condemned the event. It is speculated that the papacy didn’t do this because it is trying to court favour with the Obama administration, but it’s fair to ask of Catholic leadership what purpose your faith serves if you aren’t even willing to defend it in your own backyard…

5)The protesters. The final group here that is immediately identifiable. At least they have proven once and for all that campuses aren’t outlets where free speech is actively welcomed, and they may be the long-term winners if they convince enough alumni of ND to redirect their donations to more worthy causes from now on, but after the on-site protests were effectively shut down, the motus operandi should have shifted to moving the above-mentioned church leadership into action. on a more local note, just as I condemned the Tamils for taking over a highway just short of a week ago at the time of their post, I cannot condone protests on private property where they are not welcome. Notre Dame has much to answer for now but there are proper ways to go about bringing that to fruition.

On a final note, it is not immediately clear that Notre Dame is a loser yet; they certainly will be facing a self-inflicted challenge over the next year as a result of today but as I alluded to, it is now up to the alumni of the school to determine whether or not ND also leaves today a loser. If the alumni literally put their money where their hearts are, my post here has a sixth group. If not, then American
Catholics should really be re-evaluating whether they want to pay even lip service to the school being a uniquely ethical institution that attracts students with a higher calling than just academic excellence alone.

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