“Now, whether, you know, Bush is responsible for high oil prices, I don’t think you can make that case. But we should remember that he promised, he said back in 2000, that he had, he knew what to do. He would be able to talk OPEC into opening the spigots and, you know, they haven’t managed to do that, so this is a failed energy policy, for sure.” Krugman also argued that the increased drilling would have an “insignificant effect on the price.”

So, let me get this straight: talking to oil suppliers to increase supply is a good economic policy but increasing that supply domestically can not be significant. Whether off-shore drilling can provide enough oil or not to affect price is argumentative. I guess we could consult a geologist to give us an idea of what physical volume could be expected in off-shore America. [Maybe the geologist could tell us that it would be environmentally damaging to the American coast but that is not what Krugman is talking about. He is talking about supply affecting prices.] Is Krugman a geologic expert? I doubt it and I know I certainly am not. However, talking to a foreign supplier to change supply is advocating stupidity.

If the oil suppliers had profit to be gained by increasing supply, they would do it without the need of any American talking to them. Only a foolish economist would fail to grasp this obvious fact. Many of the oil producing nations have said that they have increased supply as much as they can. Maybe they are lying but that is their prerogative. They have no obligation to increase the supply. If Krugman wants to play the part of a good liberal economist discussing the oil industry, maybe he should point out things like this:

Many of Saudi Arabia’s 6-million foreign workers labor under conditions that are sometimes compared to “modern-day slavery.”

Instead, Krugman is just talking partisan politics with his wind of educated economic authority behind his back. Failing to incorporate basic market mechanisms in his prescriptions makes him pathetic.

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He says Bridget and his other kids help him. “They go on for me. They get me Drudge. Everybody watches Drudge.”

Which means that McCain thinks the internet has “shows” that you “watch” like TV sitcoms — and he doesn’t mean YouTube either — not getting the concept of a “site” made by people “online” consisting entirely of “downloaded” clips that you can “link” to.

Maybe McCain reads the morning paper and watches the evening news but beyond that, I make the connection that he is spoon-fed information.

Nevertheless, I read the prayer that was published and I think it is a most noble prayer. I could not ask for a better prayer from a politician. In fact, the cynic in me thinks this whole thing was a public relations stunt designed to give Obama a boost above his detractors who wish to paint him as an anti-American Muslim sympathizer.

The Justice Department in 2002 told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed “in good faith” that harsh techniques used to break prisoners’ will would not cause “prolonged mental harm.”

Maybe they offered crash-courses on “How To Think You Are A Doctor 101″ too.

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Apparently, flying over to the Middle East and playing at being a diplomat shows that you can command the armed forces of the most powerful nation Earth.

As if this wasn’t funny enough as it is, McCain’s camp was quick to discredit this trip by saying it was “politically motivated”. No, really? Something done by a candidate for President is politically motived?

I hope we don’t have to sit through another four months of this. Can’t we get something other than McCain’s “Old Politics” and Obama’s “New Politics: Same as the Old, But Black!”?

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I’ve linked to the image above because I’m getting the impression that many Canadian readers aren’t aware of what it is. Most of you would say that it’s a map of what, at any given time in its 1000 year history, was part of the massive Roman Empire of old. I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that because the resemblance is uncanny. Here’s what the Roman Empire actually held at any given time in its history:

Chop off a bit of modern-day Iraq, add on some of the Baltic and Nordic states and you’ve basically got the same thing.

So enough mystery; what you’re actually looking at in the top picture is the, as of this Sunday past, the new “Union of the Mediterranean”, a political entity which was born of such ridiculous circumstances, only the Eurocrats could’ve come up with it. This new union, which includes every current EU state, along with all but one country which borders the otherwise unimportant body of water is the baby of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who was inspired to create the otherwise-pointless entity because the Europeans couldn’t decide whether they wanted to let Turkey into their cucumber-counting club or not. The official mandate that Sarkozy sees for the new UM (or MU?) is to promote trade, environmental protection and, eventually, European-type administration over the new conquered territo–err, members of this body that come from north Africa and the Middle East. One might suggest that the Europeans are trying to *civilize* Rome’s long-abandoned off-continent holdings again!

What strikes me as particularly amazing, although not all that surprising in retrospect, is that we now have a political entity that can in actuality become the reincarnation of the Roman Empire again not only in its ability to let western Europe influence and even dictate the domestic policy of other countries, but also in its ability to do so in a sphere of influence almost perfectly mirroring history’s most influential empire. I’m also obligated to point out that, as much as it’ll probably make Atheist dogmatics scream in agony to the contrary, it’s pretty hard to see how this new body couldn’t be capable of becoming the reincarnation of the sixth empire that the Bible says will come about again in the last days to serve as the political vehicle through which the antichrist will rule the world. To put this in perspective, what were the chances that an empire so geographically difficult to conquer on the first go and culturally diverse (see Mid-East Conflict) would become the mold through which a modern-day, diplomatic political territory be created, and in such a perfectly symmetrical way?

Speaking too of the Middle East, it is curious to see how the first meeting of the UM was so focused on reconciling the Palestinians and the Israelis; the National Post’s cover yesterday plastered the proud father-French President smiling as he hugged the Israeli PM and P.A.’s Chairman. I suppose this isn’t the time to bring up the fact that the whole tribulation is started with a peace treaty between Israel and it’s new best friend, antichrist?

I digress on the MU for the time being though. It’s still in its infancy and has yet to make any waves significant enough to reach this side of the Atlantic. It also doesn’t concern me if the usual suspects show up here to say how wrong I can be, no backing evidence or proof in hand as always! This post was more for the crowd that was expecting it sooner or later anyway, but just didn’t know when. It’s a public service message to those people because the MU was so quietly born that hardly any editor took notice…one might even say that it came “like a thief in the night!” Now I just await that talk of inking peace treaty…

Fox News VP Bill Shine told the LA Times for tomorrow’s paper that “news executives were in discussions about whether to air more of the tape.” Could it air on O’Reilly’s show tonight? If it does, lord knows how anyone in the news media will manage to cover Jackson saying the “n-word,” given how tongue-tied everyone got about a simple testicle-removal threat.

To answer my own question in the title, I guess it depends on your race…

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CLARK: I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war…But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded—that wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down
CLARK: Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

Both sides have been taking great pains to denounce the statement, but when you really think about it, was he wrong?

I respect McCain for what he did for his country. He truly is an American hero. And if you had spent time as a general, or Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, like Eisenhower, then of course that would be at least some qualification for the Presidency. But being an ordinairy pilot, or spending time in a POW camp? How many executive decisions will you be making in either of those situations?

Please don’t misconstrue my opinion. I’m not trying to diminish what McCain did, or even say that he would be a bad President. However, being shot at does not qualify someone for being President of the United States. If it did, the GOP should start looking around the prison system for their next candidate, no?

In recent days, I have set before the American people an energy plan. … And let it begin today with this commitment: In a world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025.

McCain is just covering up economic reality and using it to create a positive spin. The supply of oil is an international two-way street and it is no longer possible for the U.S. government to steer the traffic. It is only thanks to the high oil prices that independence is commercially viable. Without high oil prices, there would be no talk of independence.

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Witness:  Venezuela

Witness: South Africa
The Death of Johannesburg picture blogs. Note the before and after photos especially. 1980’s: Joubert Park

Today: Joubert Park

There are places that are getting more civilized and technological. I should be grateful for those. But it is the loss of civilization that really gets me down.

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McCain said such a device should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs and have “the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

If the battery actually works, the savings in gasoline should be enough incentive to the customer. This proposed $300 million prize is just a subsidy from the poor, i.e., people who can not afford the car, transferred to the rich, i.e., people who can afford the car plus benefit from the gasoline savings.

The cynic in me tells me that this magical electric battery has already been invented.

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The economy will likely avoid a formal recession, but its outlook through the end of next year is decidedly “subprime” with the deep housing downturn restraining growth to just above 1 percent, a UCLA Anderson Forecast report released on Wednesday said.

A “witch’s brew of the popping of the housing bubble, a wounded financial system and increasing inflationary pressures coming from rising commodity prices will keep the economy on a subprime growth path for the next several quarters,” according to the forecasting unit’s report.

What he said amounts to a doctor saying “Son, we figured it out! Your headaches are caused by pain above your shoulders.” This type of superficial economic analysis is passed off all of the time and most people do not even notice. It keeps the ball rolling and diverts attention away from the source.

The truth is that this “subprime” mess is all caused by The Fed printing lots of money backed by absolutely nothing. The Fed printed money to “stimulate” the economy and to finance expenses (for instance, a war) for which raising taxes would be a politically difficult sell.

Despite what the socialists would have you believe, you can not make something out of nothing. However, you can certainly confuse people about the real value of assets in the short run thus provoking poor business decisions on a larger scale. So, instead of financing public expenses by taxing Americans in an accounting sense, Americans are being taxed by price inflation, rising unemployment, credit crunches and decreasing economic growth. What a fantastic mix.

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I jest but only partly. The nature of politics can be very superficial. Rightly or wrongly and for better or for worse, people look at image before they look at substance and all politicians play on that. This Democratic primary seems unprecedented and we can no longer look at past voting trends in America to predict or plan the future.

I seriously think Obama leading the Democrats all the way to the White House is best thing the world can get in November. This may sound hokey but a racially mixed president who carries the name Hussein succeeding Bush may diminish ill feelings harbored towards the Western world and buffer comments like this at least. It may provide hope to people who want to believe that anybody — no matter what their background may be — can succeed in America and that would be a good hope.

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I see nothing wrong with letting them stay in Canada. These deserters claim to have been deceived about what they were expected to do. They may be right. If they were deceived, that should be grounds enough for them to break their side of the contract and there is no basis for saying they enlisted voluntarily.

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Article II of the constitution states: “No person except a natural born citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

The framers of the constitution didn’t define “natural born citizen.” The phrase was added without any clarifying debate. The Supreme Court has never been asked to definitively settle the issue. And so we are left with a phrase just ambiguous enough to cause controversy.

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This because under the politically correct rules of engagement preferred by the Obama camp, only the Illinois senator gets to make ex cathedra observations about such ticklish matters as race and class, which must be treated as infallible. Pundits like Herbert and the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson have been chattering about the so-called “Bradley effect” ever since New Hampshire, but the Clinton camp must not.

Why not? Because contrary to conventional wisdom, it wasn’t the Clintons who “racialized” the contest at all. It was the Obama campaign, seemingly for the sake of galvanizing African-American voters in must-win South Carolina. (See Princeton historian Sean Wilentz’s article “Race Man: How Barack Obama Played the Race Card and Blamed Hillary Clinton,” in The New Republic.)

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It’s not the concept of rights that conservatives like myself hate; in fact, the United States — a country many of us neo-cons look to favorably — had natural rights embedded in its system far earlier in that country’s history. Rather, what bothers us the most with our rights is that they are so ambiguous and mailable; so much to the point that the courts could actually use the wording of the Charter’s introduction to justify locking up all Italian-Canadians…or rule just about any other reality into being just by a pronouncement. What good are rights if you can’t be certain that they won’t be written out of the Constitution 20 years from now when social culture shifts a tad, or, as today’s ruling demonstrates, the justice system we all depend on for stability is no longer in vogue over on the real estate west of Parliament Hill?

The credibility of today’s ruling isn’t also helped by the strong dissenting opinion of four of the court’s nine sovereigns. Strong language was used by Justice Rothstein in writing on the dissenting opinion, giving hope that this ruling could be overturned with a modest change in the line-up of court judges. Again, even the most partisan individual has to acknowledge that possibility and by extension, that rights are only as good as the ideologues in high courts who defend them!

Unfortunately, any change that may come down the road won’t come soon enough for the victims of violent crimes, or their families, who go on to see their perpetrators go on to receive a Happy Meal sentence, even when the crimes they commit are anything but a “diminished moral blameworthiness” act, as the court would have you believe!

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As a Christian, I won’t ever own the game and highly doubt whether I’ll ever play a friend’s copy, although GTA IV did strike up some curiosity last week when speaking to one of my gaming friends who holds no allegiances to God but is pretty observant. He mentioned that the game, with fancy next-gen graphics and a deeper, longer story was different than its predecessors since, in this new, more detailed version, the wounds you inflicted were actually graphic and not fuzzy, pixilated renditions; the game code was more realistic so that people didn’t just keel over and die but actually begged for their lives, cried out in agony and added a sense of victimhood that never existed before; and the game was more open-box (a challenge given the freedom this game gave you before) where as the anti-hero, you are now charged with making moral decisions as you go about your life of crime and immorality.

Yesterday, while visiting another friend, I got a chance to see the game in action by watching a mission through which the hero, Neco, was sent to kill the biker-boyfriend of the mob boss’s daughter. The mob boss, my other friend observed while we were chatting, was messed up — there was a strong correlation between his drug habits and the deteriorating relationships he had with friends, family and *business colleagues*. Later on, during online mode, the game spit out “player 1 2nd amendmented player 2″ after the former shot and killed the latter in an airport. It seemed to me like the rumours of hidden messages in this game were true, even to the point where I now wouldn’t be surprised if I was told that Nico could get STDs from some of his dating activities that take place in the game (and which caused the infamous “Hot Coffee” affair in the last GTA game). Could it be that publisher Rockstar games is actually trying to explain to young and impressionable gamers that bad choices in life have consequences?

While it’s still a little premature to say, it might also be suggested that just by striving to give gamers that more realistic experience — right down to going to a bar to play pool — Rockstar is inadvertently making its games so life-like that the ugly side of crime, promiscuity and general ungodliness are all seeping out of the woodwork. If it is this intense, the publisher of GTA IV might have also found a way to reach out to a demographic law enforcement, governments and churches have struggled decades to make contact with. Ironically, Rockstar’s realism might just have the unintended consequences of making the acronym GTA a cultural fossil, given enough upgrades to gaming hardware.

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Secondary industry involves the processing of raw resources into more usable forms.  Examples of this are sawmills, smelters and refineries.  These industries take out a lot of the waste in the resource (slag, bark, etc.) and present a raw material that can then be used to create something useful.  This processing takes industrial and technological and human resource investment, but provides much more benefit in terms of profit to the community, and to the state.

Tertiary industry involves the actual production of goods.  It takes the cut lumber, the refined crude, the wood pulp, the steel, and turns it into goods - paper, houses, buildings, cars.  This involves even more technology and human resources.

Every job created in industry means more taxes collected for government, more income, more employment, more services needed.  It is an economic fact that every industrial job created spawns seven service industry jobs in the community.  Thus, truly industrialized nations are based upon the building of secondary and tertiary manufacturing.  They create more in terms of national growth than primary industry does.  Colonialism was based upon this reality.  Industrialized, technological nations with a surplus of population exploited colonies for primary industry, shipping the raw materials home where the processing and manufacturing was done.  It made Britain, Europe, and the USA extraordinarily wealthy.

It should be pointed out, however, that the USA was a former colony.  It was being exploited by this economic reality, UNTIL it simply refused to be exploited anymore.  Taking secondary and tertiary production upon to itself has made America the most powerful economy in the world.

Why isn’t Canada like the USA?  It is because we have never stopped being a colony.  As our ties slowly disintegrated with England, we became a colony of America.  Now we provide the raw materials to America’s economic engine, but the cost is that we are forever a colony, throwing away our treasured resources and allowing other nations to exploit them and turn them into goods the world needs.

This is why it outrages me when I see our governments wilfully sabotaging our economic strength.  When I first moved to BC, I read in the paper about the new BC Liberals agreeing to INCREASE raw log exports (primary industry) to America and Asia, just as our lumber mills (secondary industry) were all shutting down due to lack of investment in technology and inefficiency.  We were throwing away jobs, sending them overseas and destroying towns that had prospered for a hundred years.  Why?  Because our government didn’t have the guts to stand up to big international conglomerates and tell them, if they want our logs, they need to process them here, before shipping them to market.

It really is that simple.   Canada has so much in the way of resources, and we are so close to markets like Asia and the USA that these big companies won’t find better places to get them.  It is too profitable to walk away from.  However, if we are willing to give away our resources, they will process them in the cheapest ways possible, which means we lose.

Flash forward to news today about a pipeline proposed to take oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast.  The main focus of the pipeline is to get oil to the “Gulf Coast Refinery Complex”.  I am sorry.  They built those refineries to get oil from offshore rigs and from the Texas Oilfields.  If those fields are tapped out, too bad.  They need to build more refineries in Alberta.  It’s our oil, we deserve to benefit from the secondary and tertiary processing that come from its production.

Yes, America would love to keep the refining and the jobs and the taxes where they are, but not at the expense of Canada.  That just ain’t right.

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When discussing self choice in relation to child porn, she had this to say: “Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it’s distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.”

So, following this logic, we should also decriminalize murder, seeing as when it is outlawed the cost of a hitman rises, increasing the incentive for someone to kill for money?

I cannot see how anyone can argue that a child is ready to make the kind of choice that would subject them to child pornography, and in almost every case they will be influenced by either their parents, or the pornographer. Granted, perhaps if she was talking about people who are legally children but widely considered old enough to make sexual decisions, (14-17 years old), her position might be slightly more defencible, but still.

I am all for freedom for two consenting adults to do whatever they want behind closed doors. Children aren’t adults, and I doubt they’re consenting.

It doesn’t look like Ruwart will quit the race, despite the increased scrutiny, but it still looks like the Libertarian nominee is going to be ex-Republican representative Bob Barr after this quotation has been brought to light.

Of course, it’s all a moot point, as the LP Candidate has no reasonable shot at the Presidency, but it’s a start. Now if only someone would read “The Audacity of Hope”.

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[…] at this point I have begun to wonder if Hillary and Barack are not in a race to see who can elect John McCain the fastest.

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Hillary Clinton is currently written off by almost everyone, including me. She will inevitable finish second to Obama in delegates heading into the convention, regardless of how Pennsylvania and Indiana play out. North Carolina is the other remaining state with any considerable number of delegates, and Obama has that one wrapped up, I’d say. She could carry both of them by 60-40, which is the outside limit to how big she could, I think, and still end up behind him. In the end, Obama took a lot of little contests throughout the race that pretty much won it for him.

However, voters are refusing to listen to the numbers, the pundits, and political experts. They’re still turning out in amazing numbers to vote in a race that’s already “decided”. And lately, they’ve been voting in favour of someone who’s “already lost”.

And lots of the places she’s won are big states that the Dems will have to win in order to have a shot in November. She took the popular vote in Michigan, Florida, Texas, California, New York and and Ohio. She’s won many of the more recent primaries, and she claims to have a lead in the “super-delegates”.

Not only that, but she has more of a chance of swaying moderates than Obama does. He may have a monopoly on charisma, but in a long, drawn out election policies will start to come out, and Clinton is far more a middle of the road democrat. Obama is one of the most liberal sitting-Senators, and even a cursory read of “The Audacity of Hope” would make many conservatives shy away. She has the better organization, has an easier time getting donations from corporate America than he does, and is all around a better campaigner.

Still, for her to win the nomination, she’ll need a lot of super delegates. Now, to get a lot of them shouldn’t be hard. They are, after all, politicians. They’ll want to be on the side that chooses the President, so as to get in his, or her, good graces. So I’d expect that many will wait until the last minute, see how the tide is going, and move en masse to the winner’s circle. And they aren’t going to go against the delegate count. They are humans, they are politicians, and they need to be reelected. That won’t happen if they ignore the will of their constituents.

So even though Hillary may look like a winner, it won’t matter, and I’m one conservative who is sad about that. 

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Today’s events have given me that something, as a couple of friends and I hopped in my car and spent the day (fittingly “Earth Day”) traveling 2.5 hours to Buffalo to see the movie because the powers that be here in Canada feel us Canucks are too fragile to be introduced to dangerous, untested ideas that aren’t directly from former Democratic VPs or Michael Moore. It was a fine day with pristine weather, and as much as Buffalo isn’t exactly the Emerald City, it also has a certain charm for me dating back to frequent trips with my grandparents during the Reagan/Bush Sr. eras. Plus, entering the States, you feel that while people aren’t as polished, but they (be they Democrats or Republicans) are more sincere and rooted in their national values.

Regarding the Expelled movie, I start off with what I was going to suggest earlier this week had a post actually emerged: it is not about destroying evolution nor was that the purpose (see the video clip for more verification). Instead, the Darwinists, who are so scared about what this movie could do in the court of public opinion that they even attack a small-fry blogger in Ontario for merely showing interest in this movie, have failed to address the question this movie raise on why scientists (those with PhDs and impressive resumes) who discuss Intelligent Design are ostracized. Science is man’s study of nature and being a human construct is prone to faulty theories and conclusions; just as the ancients observed the universe revolving around the Earth, or the enlightenment folks developed sophisticated alchemy charts to explain compounds, so too have many scientists throughout many centuries observed, but come to the wrong conclusions because of their perspectives. Even Einstein’s speed of light barrier is now being treated as a special case these days and that mathematically-postulated equation was only invented within the last century. From a political perspective, I have to warn the Darwinian forces that continuing to ignore the argument that Expelled makes only risks their side’s own peril. Doing so only reinforces the statement Ben Stein has made that Darwinian scientists are not interested in the continuous defence of their conclusions that has been and should be inherent to the work of science.

Next, on the appearances in the movie, I noticed a striking difference between PZ Myers and his buddy, Richard Dawkins. Myers, who in the movie gushes about the day when God is marginalized in our society despite the recognition of North America’s founding fathers (not to mention even the UN’s approval…) of the freedom of religious beliefs (and not just on the weekend PZ!) was far more confident in his opinions, whereas Dawkins, who wrote “The God Delusion” was surprisingly stuttery and uncertain as he spoke. Being a political animal who specializes in electronic media, I did pay careful attention to see when cuts were made in the scene (which could suggest editing and misleading question-answer sets) and at the end of the movie when Dawkins was being interviewed with Stein one-on-one, these cuts did not exist in a way that could’ve edited the detailed answer that Dawkins gave — namely that he could see the possibility of aliens seeding the Earth via some sort of ID that they developed. In other words, Dawkins agreed on camera that ID could have merit…but as long as we’re not including God in the equation. A rather meta-physical assessment for a biology professor to make, yes, but he also failed to explain how the A* I discussed a few weeks ago came into being (remember, nothing + nothing != something!). I would also note that nothing that any of the Darwinists said in the movie, when taken at face value, could be taken out of context; one guy actually suggested that molecules attached themselves to crystals and *poof*, we had life on Earth — you just can’t splice that kind of stuff!

The movie also did deal with the Hitler-Darwin connection, admitting that not every Darwinist will become a Nazi, but suggesting that Darwinism does lend itself nicely to eugenics and the bloodbath that has been many atheistic regimes throughout the 20th century (see current news on China for more details…). Could the Darwinists counter this claim? I don’t know, but that’s only because they haven’t seriously tried yet except to collectively say “nuh-uh”!

Ultimately though, the movie sets up a dangerous potential for those who follow the status quo. If the movie does well and becomes as recognized as Bowling for Columbine did years ago, it will either force the Darwinists to adapt to a new environment wherein they actually offer a credible rebuttal to ID or, poetically, are cast off into the great waste-bin of historical movements no longer among us. This will include a healthy debate with the scientists who openly challenge the doctrine of Darwinian evolution. It will also mean contending with the large number of scientists, teachers and faculty who, though afraid for their careers now, will down the road get the protection of tenure and management, thus bringing a delayed, but more potent threat to Darwinian group-think. Who’ll win in the end? Well, it’s all about the survival of the fittest, right?

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So the question that comes to mind for conservatives is twofold: First, can McCain win? And second, perhaps more important, should he?

McCain represents a classical neocon. He tends to be more of a moderate on economic issues, while being a hardline conservative on social issues. While many conservatives would support him simply because of the letter behind his name, I simply cannot do that.

Against Obama, I have a hard time choosing a better candidate. Neither one represents my views, and neither one would make a good President. Obama represents the young, idealistic, far left wing of the Democrats, while McCain represents the old, social conservative wing of the Republicans. For all the noise about him being a maverick, he tends to toe the party line where it counts, and that’s not good.

However, many polls have him at a good pace with Obama, and the math seems to be in his favour. In the present state of American politics, a Democrat cannot win without carrying New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California. Right now Obama is doing poorly in all of those States, and is actually behind McCain in Pennsylvania.

Considering the fact that mere months ago, it was the prevailing view (and in some circles still is) that after Bush, any Democrat can beat any Republican, this current state of events can only be attributed to the fact that Clinton is destroying Obama’s credibility, and support within his own party.

Many of the states that Democrats at one point considered a possiblity, such as the Upper South, are complete write-offs for the Republicans. Obama has no chance there, and McCain will pick them up handily.

Basically, the Dems have only one shot at winning, barring some unforeseen circumstances. They have to hold onto the Kerry states from ‘04, which is possible, and take Ohio. No other states that went for Bush in 2004 are even a remote possibility for them now.

but if I’m McCain, I’m looking at the numbers, and I’m smiling. If he can take all of Bush’s states, which I think is quite possible, then all he has to do is take a state with as small an electoral college as New Hampshire, and he’s got the Presidency. Basically, the smart money is on McCain at this point.

However, is that good for conservatives? I’m going to say no. I want the Democrats to win, and win big. I’m tired of Republicans fighting for votes in the fever swamp known as “Christian values Conservatives”. I want a more libertarian party, with more focus on small government. And that simply cannot happen until the party is shaken up.

GOBAMA.

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With that said though, I think that the Harper government, keen to keep itself from acting too rational on matters dealing with our southern neighbours, lest our nation’s favourite case of racism bloom along with the other spring offerings, might have come to the right conclusion on this one, even if they still don’t have a good reason for why they did it in the first place. Consider, if you will, the wider context of this sale. Yes this was a sale between two willing organizations that was perfectly legal within the context of business and contract law and in appearances it appeared very free-trade and amicable for all parties. However, the aerospace industry and its derivatives, including satellites, is notoriously regulated the western governments involved. For MDA, this means that it cannot compete for U.S. business because U.S. law requires that contracts are rewarded exclusively to U.S. firms. In fact, if you look at why MDA wanted this deal so badly, it’s precisely because of this law — it would’ve allowed the company to compete in the massively larger, and far more lucrative U.S. ocean instead of being concealed within its present Canadian fishbowl. Not that we’re much better, screaming how any foreign interaction would be an immediate compromise to our sovereignty and national security.

At the end of the day though, if we’re going to play nice and laissez-faire, the least we owe to ourselves is to expect the same attitudes in return. NAFTA would’ve never worked for Canada if it was all give and no take. It’s also why North America’s flirtation with China is ultimately doomed in the long run as well. As soon as they actually get an economy over there, do you think the Chinese government’ll actually welcome the free flow of wealth out of its country, given the way it handles every other non-expedient situation it encounters right now? This sort of vigilance might have also given our local auto industries a fighting chance, if the union python wasn’t helping Japanese protectionism to choke it to death!

So in retrospect, I think that even conservatives will look back on the Prentice decision as one that was beneficial for a Canadian firm. Not that the man actually deserves any credit, given his willingness to invent guilt-by-association taxes to appease record labels and other blunders that indicate that Jim Prentice clearly doesn’t *get* how economies work! Of course, lost in the translation during this whole situation was the question of how MDA got into its mess in the first place; if Prentice were wise, he’d be spending the upcoming weeks with his American counterpart on that one…

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To be sure, Oprah remains one of the most popular figures in America, but recent data suggest her popularity has eroded. One possible explanation for this decline is that her endorsement of Obama and her support for him may have done more to damage impressions of her than to strengthen support for Obama. Then again, Obama may become the next president of the United States, and he may feel he has Oprah partly to thank for going out on a limb for him — not a bad situation for the talk show queen.

Still, a lesson celebrities may extract is that political endorsements carry the risk of alienating fans, often without the reward of considerably boosting support for the candidate. While celebrities are certainly entitled to express their political beliefs — just like every other American — it is possible that the public prefers high-profile entertainment personalities to stay on the tube and off the stump.

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Elizabeth Eckford, a shy fifteen year old, was the first black woman through the doors of Little Rock Central High School in 1957, one of nine students who represented an early victory in the civil rights movement. Until that day, all of the students in the most prestigious high school in the city were white. Her story is breathtaking and sobering. Read it all.

How sad that the school has reverted today to segregation in the name of progress:

Central High School looks as imposing as ever, but over the past 50 years, its innards have changed unimaginably: the school is now more than half black. It’s all misleading, of course, because Central is really two different schools, separate and unequal, under one roof. The blacks go to different classes, sit on separate sides of the cafeteria, have different, and far lower, levels of performance and expectations.

And it echoes all the way into Toronto of 2007.

It’s amazing what you read when you follow unrelated links over at Kathy’s blog.

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Read more here at Best of the Web…mid way down the page.

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What I have noticed about most articles discussing this kerfuffle, is that both the Obama camp and the Clinton camp have admitted to anti-NAFTA rhetoric on the campaign trail, but both have assured Canadian officials that they are not to be taken seriously.

What does that say about the credibility of either Obama or Clinton that they would do this?

That question aside, I am starting to wonder if perhaps there is another side-effect to this mess. Harper is facing flack all over the Commons over our Prime Minister merely expressing concern over thinly veiled threats against a major international trade treaty that has massive effect on Canada’s economy.

Why shouldn’t our government be expected to comment on such an important document as NAFTA being threatened?

But maybe another question should be asked. If the outcome of this flap damages Harper’s credibility as Prime Minister, then maybe it is, once again, American interests influencing Canadian politics, and not the other way around, as our opposition seems to want to frame the issue.

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Ralph Nader’s living in the past. The problem is, he could, once again, destroy our future. True, the 2004 election was so lopsided his 0.38 percent of the vote made no difference. But, if it’s close again this year, we could be looking at 2000 all over again. Nader could be the difference between a new direction for America and a continuation of the disastrous policies of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t concern Mr. Nader. He cares more about what’s good for Ralph Nader than what’s good for America.

and here is more…

Had Ralph Nader not run in 2000, President Al Gore would be finishing his second term. The Iraq war would never have happened, Abu Ghraib would have been nothing more than a fiction in horror movies. There would be a progressive majority on the Supreme Court rather than Roberts and Alito.

Had Ralph Nader not run in 2000, President Gore would have received the Nobel Peace Prize for historic global warming policies enacted during his presidency.

Now here comes Nader again, mid-life crisis and all, a little boy in a man’s body, desperately in need of gainful employment, and pathetically in need of media attention, doing it again.

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During a nationally televised debate in Cleveland, the two Democratic presidential candidates suggested Canada and Mexico would be given just six months to make compromises on the deal in order to satisfy the U.S. government.

“I will say we will opt out of NAFTA unless we renegotiate,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I have said we will renegotiate NAFTA (and) you would have to say to Canada and Mexico, ‘That’s what we are going to do’.”

Said Mr. Obama: “We should use the hammer of a potential opt-out” to force Canada and Mexico to reopen trade talks.

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Meanwhile, I have a few friends in teachers colleges across the province who have reported back that specific unions have come into their classes to tell them the names of Liberal candidates in the local areas that they were expected to vote for “if you want a job after school” or how there are now classes dedicated to teaching how great a man Pierre Trudeau was (even if he were a great man, a controversial statement in itself, should we not teach the students to judge history for themselves?). As they say, your tax dollars at work.

I found this video on YouTube today that brought me back to these issues and reminded me of just how intellectually bankrupt our system is, and ethically destitute the unions which brought it about are. The United States has many good things, and many bad but one constant in the latter category has been its education system which has been a point of grief in that country since at least the time of the civil rights movement. Watching the video, it really depressed me to notice how much of the show could be cast in Ontario these days — particularly the part around the 22 minute mark. John Stossel is a personal favourite, and 20/20 (like all TV investigative journalism shows) should be watched with caution but aside from the fact that the network has a vested interest in not being sued for slander, Stossel makes his best point at the end of the show: a hope that this sparks a debate.

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What the GOP needs to realize and fast is that unstable allies who want to be the chief have a way of not drawing the opponents voters (like many red tories up here like to think) but a way of pushing even staunch ideologues on their side, like Ann Coulter, to the other team by virtue of their obsession to out-liberal liberals or out-conservative conservatives (whatever the case may be). Sadly for the GOP, the two front-runners are both men who you wouldn’t trust to sell you a decent used car, let alone run the country. Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee both have their flaws, but at least they’re sincere in stating their agendas. Unless one of these two men, or a drop-out like Fred Thompson wins the nod (see here and here for the historic precedent), the GOP risks handing not only the White House, but both chambers on capital hill to the Democrats for the next two years!

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The first tobacco ban was imposed by the Nazi Party under direct orders from Adolf Hitler. (Follow the Wikipedia entry to footnote 1).

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President Bush has had a difficult time lately in Iraq. He lost the mid-term elections, fired his defence secretary, and is about to launch his presidency’s last stand — a “surge” of thousands of fresh troops in one more desperate attempt to take and hold Baghdad.

Norman Podhoretz speaks Jan 16, 2008 :

It took Lincoln three years to find Sherman and Grant. It took George Bush three years to find Petraeus.

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Read the whole thing

H/T Captain Ed

Memory refresh on Captain Ed:

April 2, 2005

 

Canada’s Corruption Scandal Breaks Wide Open

A political scandal involving the Public Works Ministry, a government effort called the Sponsorship Program, and allegations of corruption in the ruling Liberal Party has Canada abuzz with rumors of payoffs, Mob ties, and snap elections. For the last two years, Canadian politics has been gripped by the so-called “sponsorship scandal”  tens of millions of dollars in government contracts which were funneled into advertizing firms closely connected with the Liberal government for little or no work, but with shadowy rumours that much of the money found its way back into Liberal coffers. Prime Minister Paul Martin, himself a Liberal, appointed the Gomery Commission to investigate these charges and determine whether to bring charges against government officials for corruption and malfeasance. (See the blog Small Dead Animals for some excellent background on the case.)

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This was Giuliani’s second visit to The Villages, a sprawling planned community in the exurbs of central Florida. He fondly recalled how at his last appearance, held outdoors, an eagle flew overhead.

“I want the eagle back,” he said, “I thought it was a great omen.”

But this event was held indoors — and no one seemed to regret it.

Mr. Giuliani again referred to the eagle when talking about how he wants to “take the top off the roof, so that people can look way up in the sky, at that eagle, and kind of dream as soaring as far as they can go.”

But throughout Mr. Giuliani’s speech, the sound of rain pounding on the roof and thunder led people to worriedly look at the ceiling.

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Romney also benefited from his Mormon religion, the poll results show. Romney captured 94 percent of the voters who identified themselves as Mormon, which made up 25 percent of all Republicans participating in the GOP caucuses.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints estimates there are 170,000 members living in Nevada.

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Ben Stein, first made famous in the celebrity world through Farris Bueler’s Day Off, staunch Republican and former speech writer for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, is staring in a new documentary called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” that will be out in theatres this February and tackles the dogma of evolution that is not only harming free speech in our society but also has led to many of the disasters of the 20th century with the greatest death toll. I have searched and haven’t seen any evidence that it will be carried by Canadian chains, but I hope this is just because the movie is still at least a month away from release.

Anyway, watch the trailer here since it’s actually a pretty powerful and moving piece. I hope that everyone who considers themselves to be truly open minded to all the possibilities of science watches this too. As for the commentators on this blog who will simply dismiss both this post and this movie as blind faith, I offer the challenge to you that Stein implies in the above-linked movie: watch the movie, listen to the criticism and respond accordingly. Otherwise, it really begs the question on whether you are really comfortable with your faith in what you have heard about evolution (studies, evidence of, arguments for), or are just paranoid that someone if challenged with a rival theory like intelligent design it will come crashing down. For the trolls (and you know who you are!), I simply offer the original title Darwin gave to his book,

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

,and ask you to explain how such a social (and Holocaust-endorsing) statement can be classified as the title of a purely scientific work — until I get a direct answer to that, I will not respond to any of your inquiries as I haven’t seemed to get much of a response on mine and think I’m overdue!

With that said, let the acid start flying…!

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“If we were all rich, that would be very nice,” Albright said. “If we were all poor, it would be too bad, but we would be the same. What the problem is now is the poor know what the rich have as a result of information technology and the spread, generally, of knowledge. And, it creates a whole new host of problems in terms of disquiet and anger.”

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