BC is the only province that has one, and the government claims it is revenue neutral.  The Surrey Leader timidly crunches the numbers.

They use two case studies: the $40 000 a year single woman, and the $70 000 a year single income 4 person family.

The numbers for the single are crunched most thoroughly, and you get the sense that more often than not, the single will come out ahead in this carbon tax scenario.  Fine.

But then look at the family.  The paper doesn’t do nearly as thorough a job breaking this scenario down, because the numbers quickly get ugly.  They barely break even, and only if you assume that they drive less than what is really a very low number for kms driven.  Especially if those kids are in sports, or any extracurricular activity.  And the number sinks still lower when you factor in that most families live in places heated by natural gas, which also has a carbon tax on it.  The number of kms becomes even more unachievable if there is a dual income, which is more and more common.

When you look hard at the numbers, it is not even close.  The carbon tax is nowhere near revenue neutral for families in BC.

Maybe we should change the name to the “Family Tax”.

Today’s post is supposed to be a juxtaposition of Stephen Harper’s visit to the same room Stephane Dion visited during the summer. Aside from the camera shots being at different points, giving us only a glimpse of the room in Harper’s case while Dion’s was the panorama, the graphics designer in me also picked up another issue immediately:

See that? Well, at first I had to be sure myself, so I blew up the image to get a closer glimpse…

Yup, that lady seems to not only have two different hair colours, going straight down the middle from the angle that the picture was taken, but she also wears two brightly different shirts! In other words, it’s clear that this photo has been doctored and cannot be trusted as an authentic view of the Dion event. Who knows, maybe Turner and co. took some of the extra people from the Harper event last night! The bigger question though is why Garth Turner (who, in this case, is personally responsible for his blog) insistent on deceiving voters? Oh, and on that note, since some of us Blogging Tories have known Garth to revise history…

“If I am in a cocktail (party) and everybody speaks at the same time, I have difficulty,” Dion said. “It affects my ability to catch the music of the beautiful language of English.”

While he said he’s not sure what his condition is called, Dion said he has been tested by doctors and told that it’s something that has been passed along through his family.

It’s called being raised in a French-speaking home.

And it’s overcome via actually caring to invest in your language skills.  But it would be racist to expect a citizen of France to do that, wouldn’t it?

Stephen Harper had the same disability - and overcame it.

And yes, I know about the “hard of hearing in crowds” problem.  Actually I have the same problem - but it has no effect on my ability to learn languages.  Listening is one thing, but speaking is another.  And from what I have heard of his speaking, that is what needs work, not the listening.

Hat tip to SDA.

To her credit, May has been actively seeking to enhance the awareness that we, the voters, have of her party, and scored a strategic, if unprincipled, victory in convincing West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast MP Blair Wilson to join her party (something, that was as hard as attracting flies to the Green Shift, if Wilson’s reputation of desperately wanting to have a party banner to hold this election is to be believed). Still, May’s will be a story of one who did so much good for her party’s fortunes at the same time that she did so much damage. For every point she scored by finishing second in a by-election or attracting a star candidate to her roster, she self-inflicted her party with a gaffe about our Prime Minister being like former National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler or by making the distinction between her Green and Liberal Red so blurry that the murky maroon gave the other three parties an convincing argument that she would only serve as Stephane Dion’s “Mini Me” during a Leaders’ Debate.

As for what the future holds, it’s pretty certain that there won’t be any green left in the commons aside from the upholstery after October 14th, and that May may in fact damage her party’s chances in the future of getting into the coveted television event by threatening the networks with legal action, and a hefty bill in legal costs. May herself might not be around next time to fight again if the Greens see the already-controversial marriage of convenience to Dion as the reason why they won’t ride 15% in returns this year to their first elected caucus in Canada. But, at least the Greens can look on the bright side: Stephane will be there, rallying for their cause all night on the first and second of October, as he becomes the best national leader the Greens ever had, at the same time he cements his role as the worst Liberal leader in history at the same time!

To star things off, the NDP has put out a new ad squarely aimed at the Prime Minister, found here. It’s an interesting NDP add on a few fronts:

First, it marks a departure by Jack Layton’s team from his five-year strategy of primarily attacking the Liberals in the hopes of replacing the Grits as the Official Opposition. I’m not sure that I see this wisdom in this strategy, as the last two elections, despite what the media would say, were good for the NDP and it was obviously allowing them to make gains in areas like Hamilton, Montreal and other gritty, working class cities. Oshawa, other parts of Toronto and Montreal, and east Nova Scotia are on their radar today only because the NDP has been able to make a compelling argument that the Liberals aren’t doing enough to oppose the Tories. Granted, the Greens are somewhat muddling Layton’s plans by introducing a new “anybody-but-the-rest” party, and one that is over-obsessive about the environment too, but Jack! wasn’t going to find his votes in urbane, eco-hugging neighbourhoods anyway; he was going to find them in the manufacturing centres and in areas where his efforts to support the Palestinians and Muslims were starting to make a difference.

Next, it needs to be said for the NDP: they’ve really improved their ability to create attractive, high-quality media. In an age with video makers on every PC and Macs built to create fancy footage, there’s no excuse. Still, kudos to the socialists to make something light years ahead of their infamously South Park-like ads that ran in 2000.

On the impact front, I think that the NDP might be doing themselves more harm than good on this one. In 1990, the Ontario PCs released an ad attacking then-Liberal Premier David Peterson that was very effective in convincing the public that Peterson was not worthy of reelection. What the ad didn’t do though is suggest the alternative, something that the Tories pre-supposed they would be in the minds of voters anyway. The result? The NDP earned 37% of returns to become a majority government; the PCs were devastated, only gaining a handful in the high-teens. In this ad, the NDP isn’t doing such a good job in promoting themselves as the only real alternative to the Conservatives — this leaves the notion wide open for the Liberals to snatch up and use themselves. The attacks used in the ad aren’t so great either if you consider the fact that most voters aren’t as adverse to tax cuts as the Dippers are. The ad also could be interpreted to reinforce the reputation that the Tories have as being best able to whether us through this economic storm; a flaw that could help the government. In other words, the ad only speaks to the NDP base, which as we’ve seen before, is big enough to get the party around 10 seats.

Finally, the NDP really needs to ditch the “N”, and rename itself the “Democrats”. If you ever get to watch Question Period, the caucus that looks the most grey is the NDP. The party itself is about to hit its 50th anniversary and its strategists have come up with any sort of “third way” plan that would constitute any sort of newness in the party’s vision. So how is the party new exactly?

Oprah Winfrey may have introduced Democrat Barack Obama to the women of America — but the talkshow queen is not rushing to embrace the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket!

Wouldn’t it be great if, when making those decisions [in Washington], someone said ‘What would God think of what we’re doing?’

If the GOP took this line to heart, and applied it in elected office, America would definately live up to the Obamian rhetoric of hope and the traditional religious right notion of America’s greatness amongst the nations. The fact that a political party’s convention would produce such a statement goes to show just how truly free and sane that party’s country can be!

“If they decide not to allow me in the debates, what they’re really doing is telling voters `don’t take that party seriously.’ It’s inherently antidemocratic and the signal it sends to the voters is powerful…

Just for the record, this is the same Green Party whose August 29th edition of it’s official site includes an article titled: Harper as Canada’s Nero: Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Harper fiddles while the Arctic melts, while the leader herself got in trouble last year for comparing our Prime Minister to the infamous German National Socialist Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Is this the language that we expect from a serious national leader, or from someone who wants to represent all Canadians? In light of how extreme the Greens have been in attacking their opponents, maybe it’s not the best idea for Liz May to remind Canadians that she’s being serious!

Eloquent Update: From CTV on Wilson’s crossing:

We can only hope she’s sound as articulate during the debate, if she makes it!

The move is equally brilliant on the part of Green leader May, since it allows her to beef up her case for getting into the expected leaders’ debate that will take place in about a month’s time if the election rumours come to full fruition. She will likely argue that a lone MP, Deborah Grey, was able to propel her close friend and leader, Preston Manning, into the 1993 election debate which allowed their Reform Party to become tied with the Bloc for the second-largest caucus prize after that election. Greens will also trump up the claims that they have consistently polled around where the federal MP was before Jack Layton came on the scene, and that they are on par, if not above the third place Bloc Quebecois in the weekly polls we’re exposed to. If I were May, I would have done no different in courting Wilson — her persistence in turning to every disgruntled Independent this session, from Garth Turner, to Bill Casey, and now Blair Wilson, has finally paid off!

However, before we all run off to give May her much-coveted TV time, we need to put this in historical context, which will ultimately stave off the Green advance onto the small screen. First, when it comes to the Reform example, we have to remember that Deborah Grey wasn’t just elected, but was elected under the Reform banner in a 1989 by-election. Additionally, the party elected a Senator that then-PM Brian Mulroney appointed to the Senate and they were definately going to make an impact on the outcome of the election (this last qualification is the one that the media cites when determining which parties get into the debate). If the Greens want to argue for their place in the debate, they should ignore Reform and turn to the Bloc instead: the Bloc also was allowed into the TV debates in 1993 for the first time, but they also had never elected anyone, including the dog catcher! The Bloc had two MPs, including a former cabinet minister who served in that role during the preceding Parliament. On a more realistic note, many Canadian’s outside of Quebec express dismay that the Bloc is still allowed into the English debates since all of its candidates run in Canada’s exclusively French province. To give credit where due though, at least the Bloc is able to elect a sizable caucus each time, and continue to demonstrate that they play a significant (if not destructive) role in the course of our country. May cannot honestly argue the same. Finally, we should look at one more party to put this all into context. From the dawn of TV debates, right up to 1980, a third party had consistently elected MPs in the general elections of that era, made an impact on the elections and Parliaments they participated in (including one instance where they killed the career of a Prime Minister) and yet, they never were invited into the televised debates. The party, of course, was the Social Credit Party and while they saw consistently declining support since their heydays in the 960s, they made an impact on the Canadian landscape right up to last time they were elected: Joe Clark’s minority Parliament of 1979-80.

So, in context, the Greens still have a long way to go before they can argue that they have a right to be on the screen when Canadians tune in to decide who they’ll be voting for this fall. Incidentally, the move by Wilson might just give Foreign Affairs Minister and fellow turncoat David Emerson (Con, Vancouver Kingsway) an opportunity to claim a seat in this upcoming election after all. Wilson’s riding was being floated around already as a place where Emerson could run and have a chance of not being forcefully returned to the private sector; if he and the current incumbent were both party floppers, it might soften the backlash he is likely to receive after his infamous team-trading a week after the last election. Still, if the Conservatives want to play it safe, Wilson’s decision today will almost certainly allow the Tories to retake the west Vancouver riding if they just run someone who is uncontroversial; the Liberals, barely able to win last time, will be too focused on defeating the newly-empowered Green machine in order to take the Tories on directly. As for the Greens, they will likely lose Wilson as quickly as they gained him — but as for the larger goal of actually electing a Green to Ottawa, he will serve as a potent boost in the arm!

Update:Mike (see comments) notes that the Socreds did get into the 1968 debate (an interesting affair in it’s own right, given that it showed Tommy Douglas do a pretty passionate piece against allowing homosexual marriage). However, it would still be hard for the Greens to argue that having a seat in Parliament, even if the seat was gained in an election under a Green banner, automatically entitles you to be in the debate as the Socreds didn’t get this privilege in other elections. Before we tackle that ball of wax though, let’s see them get a Green elected!

These fake ceremonies expose the dishonesty of Chinese statesmen whose mission of defending what is “in the national interest” as a fraud. Apart from their projected image — naive or otherwise, it makes it clear to the communist stooges that they can not control all information regardless of how much of their parasitic time is spent filtering the media and no matter how low they go.

The biggest reason in my mind to choose international adoption over domestic is not FAS or “red tape” as the video suggests.  The biggest reason is that the need simply is not as great for children in Canada as it is in places like China, Haiti, or Russia.  While our system isn’t perfect, the child welfare system in Canada work pretty well.  All orphans or children under protection are housed in hoster families, with a semblance of a normal life.  They are well funded and supported and want for nothing, except real parents (though as someone who knows many foster parents, do not doubt that the vast majority really love the children in their care!)

Contrast this with the situation my new brothers and sisters (in law) left behind in eastern Russia.  They resided in an orphanage, with hundreds of other kids.  While America and Canada may have progressed beyond the “Little Orphan Annie” institution, Russia has not had the funds.  Their building was an ancient cement structure, with unreliable heating and electricity.  In the year before they were adopted, for months in the middle of winter some orphanages in their city with without heat at all.

Imagine that.  Russian winter, without heat for months.

As Coltyn said in the video, rats were commonplace in the building.  The staff there cared as best they could for them, but were sparse given the numbers of children in their care.  Health care was sporadic at best.  I could tell you a lot more about different health concerns that they faced after coming to Canada, but our system was up to the task.

Russia is better today than 7 years ago when most of them were adopted.  But they still run orphanages, and an institution is no way to raise a child.

Other countries that are popular are worse off.  Haiti is well known for its problems.  Ethiopia is also one which is commonly looked at, as well as old Eastern Bloc countries like Romania and Bulgaria, and the Ukraine.  Compared to them, Canada’s orphans are in paradise.  That to me is the real driver of most international adoptions.

It is really sad that so many Canadians, living as we do with Satellite TV and cel phones for everyone, and an XBox 360 in every room of even the poorest households, have the gall to complain that they “can’t afford” more kids.  Whether natural or adopted, children need love and care first and foremost.   Lucky for us, those are renewable resources that actually increase in quantity with each additional child in your life.  The fact that there are any children that need adoption at all should be a shame to us all that we prefer to have our twice annual trip to Cancun than to give an orphan the love and the family that they deserve - whether Canadian-born or born elsewhere.

If you could do something to save one child’s life, why wouldn’t you?  Do your part.  Not everyone needs to do what my family did.  But everyone should do something.  Support an adoption group or charity.  Support a group that seeks to improve the plight of orphans in the 3rd world.  Consider adoption.  Give a child a home.  Imagine what kind of message it sends to your children about compassion and caring in adding a child to it who never had a home.  If you’ve raised your children right, they’d be thrilled to switch to a bunk bed to save a new brother or sister from life without a family.

Prentice moved swiftly to condemn the move, summoning the chief executives of both companies to Ottawa to discuss the matter.

On Thursday, the industry minister said he met recently with Bell Canada CEO George Cope, but has yet to have talks with Telus CEO Darren Entwistle.

Prentice knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on - Telus and Bell can charge whatever they want for the services they provide. However, here comes the threat:

Prentice described the meeting with Cope as a “healthy exchange.” However, he made it clear the government wants the companies to eliminate the charge.

“At the end of the day, the cellular industry currently is an industry where we don’t have heavy regulation . . . That’s something that we’ve tried to maintain in Canada,” said Prentice.

This brings up a number of questions?

• Is the Conservative government going to get into the business of telling private companies what to charge for specific non-essential services?
• Is the Conservative Industry Minister going to continue to demand meetings and threaten companies every time he personally disagrees with their actions?

and finally,

• Is this Conservative government going to act like a real conservative government (one that actually applies conservative economic principles to their policies and or actions), or are they content to be just marginally right of the Liberal Party

But the Conservative’s director of communications vehemently denies the holes in the image are bullet holes. In an interview, Ryan Sparrow said they are just holes “like there are in Stéphane Dion’s policies.” And, in apparent unintentional irony, Sparrow framed the criticisms from blogs as Liberal partisans trying to “shoot the messenger.”

“It’s pretty evident Liberals are sensitive about bad policy,” he continued. He also said there are no plans to clear confusion about the holes.

Perhaps Sparrow has never actually seen a bullet hole before? Nevertheless, I’ll say it again, this website - including Sparrow’s comments - are an embarrassment to the party and its membership.

Update: Read here for more…

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…

1)The Garth — Got the reception that he deserved for the “Screw the West, We’ll Take the Rest” redux. I hope he doesn’t come back to tell us he’s inclusive the next time a homosexual agenda issue comes up, but if he does, it won’t be the first time he’ll be caught directly lying to Canadians. That last note makes his quote from today all the more amusing (emphasis added):

For writing and acting in defence of my country, for opposing those who put self interests before Canada, for the decisions I have made, and the consequences they have yielded, I regret nothing.

Who knew Turner had such self-hatred?

2) Regarding the most recent evolution post, “Tom” has actually posted alleged proof for macroevolution (the effort is appreciated). Two problems though; First, after being told repeatedly by PZ Myers’ fanboys that we’ve had proof for years, this opening statement from Tom’s article doesn’t sound too compatible (emphasis really added!):

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

So, before June 9th of this year, would Darwinists have happened to have been acting on some level of faith or is the article, written by a well-respected science publication, just wrong and in need of serious correction? Secondly, I’m happy that the bacteria have discovered some new munchies, but as was brushed upon in the definition of a species argument, can we indicate if these lemon-sucking bacteria are in fact a completely different species from their brethren and not just hungrier?

3) I cannot sit by any longer when it comes to Harris-Decima. The Toronto Star’s resident polling firm (that should tell you a lot about their credibility right there!) has been doing weekly polls recently that indicate a trend in which the Harper Government is now on par with dog food in popularity questions they ask. However, their latest butcher job shows over 60% of Canadians preferring massive carbon taxes if

the rising price of fossil fuels is a reason we must move even more aggressively to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels

.

That’s a big if to be assuming there, and one that even I would agree with, were I actually polled. However, I thought the article the quote appears in was called Canadians want climate action now, poll suggests, not (oh, I don’t know), Canadians want action now to end addiction to high gas prices, addiction to oil, poll suggests. Oh, The Star…

4)Finally, it’s always cute to see the NDP attempt to orchestrate some sort of public backlash via the government. Of course, what will really happen is that NDP will fail but consumers will take care of themselves by canceling phone plans and the sort. The phone carriers might think that their government-mandated cartel creates a highway robbery scenario, but there are still millions of us non-mobile Canadians who make do just fine without cells, and it’ll stay that way until someone approaches us with a reasonable cell phone plan!

SEE ALSO: Joanne indicates she’ll be first blood if the new texting fees come in; looks like you got a winner here guys! Right From Alberta also noticed an interesting point about the NDP’s petition to stop these fees.

Here’s one more example in that file:

But the blazes are giving researchers an unprecedented close-up look at boreal fires, which are expected to grow more common as the climate changes.

Two years of Forestry at NAIT taught me a lot of things.  One is the fire history of Western Canada.  The reason fires are getting more common is because Lodgepole/Jack Pine forests (what most of the Boreal Forest is made up of) only last 80-120 years.  Then they either fall down and die from bugs (like the Mountain Pine Beetle), get succeeded by Spruce trees, or they burn.  If I recall the numbers correctly, in the 20 years between 1880 and 1900 something like 60% of the forest in Western Canada burned.  Was that global warming?

No.  It was a natural cycle of a healthy forest.

When exactly did reporters begin to leave out the “investigative” part of their job?

As for the latter though, wouldn’t it be interesting if we, for one moment, got truly investigative and turned the tables on the all too comfortable Darwinians who have become yet another group to hijack our education system for their own self-preservation and motives? After all, in the noise of bitter reviews, intimidating threats and exhaustive and bewildered requests to anti-Darwinists to just shut up, I think the evolution debate has failed to examine a key component: whether the theory of Charles Darwin is truly something worth wasting time on in the science class to begin with. After all, a physicist who learns anything from F=MA to the hydrogen fusion reaction that is continually taking place at the centre of our sun to even string theory is able to take that knowledge and apply it to the benefit of mankind in a strictly physical sense. Even if the highly controversial string theory proves to be a dead end, what it would tell us about how elementary particles don’t interact would help us to zone in on other understandings and ultimately give us a better way to understand the very microscopic. In turn, that would allow us to apply our knowledge one day to advancements that might, for example, allow for microscopic computers that write data onto quarks, just as F=MA gave us the first building blocks we needed to put a man on the moon. Chemistry need only need mention of companies like DOW or Pfizer to prove its contribution to our modern society and even a late-comer to quantitative analysis, biology, will soon prove invaluable to an entire generation of baby-boomers who are in the midst of retiring from the workforce currently. In fact, the driving force behind science is not just getting to have a better understanding of the world around us, from the very small to the very large, but also being able to apply that knowledge in some fashion.

When it comes to the necessity to teach Darwinian evolution in a grade 7 classroom, or high school, or even university, what is the purpose? I mean, we can keep clubing each other over the head about how detrimental it is to society for the other side to get a voice in on the debate, but as I noted above, the debate always ends up in the realm of the meta-physical; things pertaining to the existence, or lack thereof, of God! Has evolution allowed us to come up with any great invention or advancement? Is it so essential to our understanding of biology or chemistry that twelve year-olds need to understand it if they are going to pass their high school biology or chemistry courses? Or are we all fooling ourselves here, using findings that more properly belong in the hit-or-miss fields of archeology and social science to indoctrinate young minds with what is practically nothing more than a contemporary, social statement?

The fact is that evolution is still very much stuck in in the past, and will continue to be until it can offer actual testifiable evidence of one species giving way to another over the course of two or more generations. It’s all about the findings in the dirt, the rock layers and the pretty pastel pictures that appear in text books. The funny thing about history is that as it becomes more remote, the possibilities of the imagination grow exponentially. It’s also the truth that if evolution was so essential for our children to learn, I should have never graduated from university, nor anyone else who currently walks to Earth and believes that evolution deserves a more skeptical analysis, since the understanding of that knowledge should have been essential in understanding everything from RNA-DNA reactions to the immune system. Evolution should have to be to biology what F=MA is to physics if the official story is to be believed, wherein a student that fails to acknowledge the very foundations cannot comprehend or excel while studying the more advanced topics.

So as Expelled comes out this weekend in a fraction of the theatres it did in the US back in April, you’ll probably see a few fireworks fly as the Darwinians campaign to remain the only kid on the block. What the movie will continue to do though is extend a debate that has lasted for over 150 years and certainly isn’t going away; a debate where a lot of questions could be and should be asked. Ultimately, the most dangerous of those question for Darwinians isn’t “Can you prove it?”, although they certainly hate that one. Rather, if they want to spend valuable class time teaching my son or daughter about their great theory about nothing, the worst thing they could hear back from my kid is “So what?” The runner up might sound something like “Why are you so concerned about us hearing from the competition?”

Days after a major news magazine uncovered a teen pregnancy pact at a Massachusetts high school, parents and school officials struggle to understand the reasons why the girls may have participated in the scheme — and what could have been done to avoid it.

What could be done to avoid it? Well, that depends on who is intervening and when that intervention takes place. From a school nurse’s perspective, I suppose force-feeding contraceptives would probably be the only strategy because clearly these girls wanted to get pregnant.

I have an old-fashioned solution: make girls earn their allowance (cell-phone, movie money, computer privileges, etc.) by baby-sitting their neighbor’s kids. That would be a great preventive measure.

What we have after all those caveats is a shift that won’t do an iota to change the habits of Canadians, if the goal is still, in fact, to save ourselves from the sixth element of the periodic table. The fact that Dion is trying to convince us that life will go on normally also demonstrates that the professor didn’t take much chemistry in his undergrad as even the only item that doesn’t require carbon for production, computer software, still requires a bunch of energy that comes from carbon just to run the computers that make the programs. How is this not going to affect us?

Then, of course, we must consider what corporations are going to do. Being nobody’s fool, any industry that pollutes like the steel factories in Hamilton, the auto plants in the GTA or the oil refineries in Alberta, will just find a way to slip their sites south of the border where the environmental lunacy currently hasn’t hit the same heights. Under Stephane Dion’s loophole-ridden Canada, we sell our oil assets to the States, sacrifice jobs that would’ve been created to refine the black gold, then buy it back at a loss for our vehicles that aren’t going anywhere because of said lack of jobs.

So, with that all considered, can we really count on the Liberals to actually follow through with anything? Well, they’re still proposing a tax aren’t they? And since I just spent three paragraphs explaining the glories of this plan, and that your average Canadian voter stops reading after “insiders”, I’d say that Stephane Dion will successfully reduce our carbon pollution by putting the massive CO2 emitters currently in the Liberal caucus out on the street, and ensuring that their successors won’t be blowing so much hot air about a plan too gentle for environmentalists, too harmful for conservatives and too complex for a national party to win voters over on!

I thought I would take a look at google to find out what to expect.  First I encountered the official position: 2008 is likely to be normal or above normal - a 90% chance of either, and only a 10% chance of below normal.

What is normal?  11 named storms, with around 6 hurricanes in the North Atlantic.

I then checked out this neat page which looks specifically at storms that have hit Orlando (guess where we’re going?)  Nicely broken down into 30 year increments, suggesting that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is largely responsible for whether or not a hurricane hits Orlando.  Still, even in peak periods, the odds of a hurricane hitting Orlando are pretty low - 1 in every 3 or 4 years.  (This is low because if you’re only going for a week, and hurricane season has about 20 weeks, then basic math tells you the odds of a hurricane hitting the same week you’re there is 1 in 60-80.  You wouldn’t take those odds on an NFL team winning the Superbowl… so why worry about a storm?)

But then I thought, what do the experts know?  In the same chain of google hits I encountered this CTV report from May 2006 - “Major Hurricane Season Brewing in the Atlantic“.

In what could signal a frightening new fact of life in the age of global warming, Canadian and U.S. forecasters are warning that another major hurricane season is brewing in the Atlantic Ocean.

…”Last year we were looking at 12 to 15 storms and this year the forecast is for about 17. No one would go out on a limb and say it is going to be just as bad as last year, but the indications are there that it is still going to be another active season, almost twice as active as normal.”

Last year’s hurricane season was the most destructive on record.

Sounds scary right?  Especially mixed in with all the panicky global warming jargon.

Then right there on the same google page, I have Wikipedia’s 2006 storm season. 

“It was less active than the previous year’s Atlantic hurricane season; the first since 2001 in which no hurricanes made landfall in the United States; and the first since 1994 that no tropical cyclones formed during October.^[1]“

Hmm.  If they were sensationalizing that much in 2006, I think we have to ask ourselves, what else are they sensationalizing?

I will say this: it wasn’t the NOAA that issued the breathless notice for panic - it was the Associated Press.  But I am still not worried.  Kind of makes you think though doesn’t it?

Get real people. The previous $500 per game contract was a colossal rip-off and never should have happened. The artist is just trying to milk the tax-payer further. With this contest, the CBC is telling how much they are willing to pay the artist of the current theme. No more and no less. Have no fear. I like to call this whole thing a game of poker or chicken. My guess is that we will get the old theme back. My bet is that the CBC is this artist’s biggest source of income.

I recommend that the owners of the current Hockey Night In Canada theme submit their old theme to this contest and take the prize money. Since the winner will be chosen by the listeners, I figure it would be a shoe-in. Anything the CBC offers is a cash cow.

The very fact that this site is designed for children makes what would be an outrageous site even worse, especially when you consider that your carbon-fattened pig explodes into a pile of blood at the end of the quiz(see image). It is also the latest evidence that the movement spearheading the climate change cause simply does not value human life and in fact sees each human as a virus leeching off the planet’s life source.

When you throw in the comments by a Elizabeth May confidante earlier this year that it would’ve been less tragic for seal hunters in Newfoundland to die and another story from Australia that I reported on earlier this year in which a doctor down under wants to tax families for every precious child they bring into the world, a clear pattern starts to emerge among those for whom the Earth is of chief importance. I don’t suppose that the original claim by environmentalists that we had to protect the planet for future generations of children holds much water anymore as they either want to tax said children out of existence or blow up the ones that slip through anyway when they reach age 8. Let’s just hope for everyone involved at the ABC that no child decides to be a good little trooper and take one for the Earth!

(welcome Newswatch readers!)

HOWARD KNOPF in the Hill Times states the ill-advised bill would:

Put digital locks on our computers, cellphones, iPods, other gadgets and tools, and, ultimately, our culture and make it an infringement and maybe even a criminal offence to try to circumvent the sometimes malignant and much-maligned technology known as Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Technical Protection Measures (TPMs).[...]

Make it possible for the big four foreign record companies to sue ordinary Canadians whom they suspect of file sharing. [...]

Head on over to Digital-Copyright.ca for more details on why this Bill is a bad idea.

First, to understand the blatant hypocrasy and moral inconsistency (or “intellectual dishonesty”, as our seculatarian friends like to say) of the YFS, you need not read the pages of the National Post, Michael Coren’s column, or the Blogging Tories; just head on over to the Federation’s website, where a big red button titled “Denial of Free Speech at McMaster” which links to this — a letter attacking McMaster for banning “Israel Apartheid Week”. That’s right, the YFS which is making national headlines this month for trying to oppress diverse views on its campus, was the same group that was also making headlines back in March for vigorously defending a campaign that wasn’t just about free speech but was also known for a history of violence and harassment of an prominent ethnic group on campus.

This inconsistency might go a long way to explain why, in the months and years ahead, when Canada starts to examine whether a primitive primate can “argue” for human rights, the YFS will probably be there, strongly backing the cause and at the same time oppressing groups which speak out for unborn humans which can also not speak in a court of law but can, unlike chimps, meet the biological argument for species validation in that all non-genetically defective fetuses have the capability of breeding with humans and producing sustainable, fruitful offspring. Save the primates, scourge the people, as it were. Don’t expect facts to get in the way of York’s student leaders or their cheerleaders on The Left as the entire abortion argument for them has long been one about passion and emotion, but not much beyond the principle that guilt-free sexual incidents should be an absolute right that trumps all others.

Their argument, founded around the reality that men can walk away from affairs without the risk of pregnancy while women cannot, betrays this in that their natural conclusion is that women should have the freedoms that men do in this regard, instead of examining whether men should have the responsibilities that women do for a pregnancy instead. Nor does the rights and realities of the growing child become a discussion point during this whole debate either. Wouldn’t you expect more from scholars, charged with examining all aspects of the issue at hand?

Update:Steyn’s insight into the future of abortion, and a small tip ‘o’ hat to the York affair…

If Bernier is going to be pre-judged (the prejudice just happened to provide convincing scoring points for his opponents) based on the company he keeps, I would like to see more politicians discard the company they keep — that includes careless employees.

A fundamental component of the debate has been ignored so far though and that is whether a tax on the sixth element of the periodic table is really such a good idea after all. For example, I relayed a report late last year on how an obsessive academic from Australia proposed the sick ideal of putting a carbon tax on each baby born into the world and a yearly tax on children for the first years of their lives. As we have our national government apologizing for the Chinese head tax of almost 100 years ago, calling the practice a shameful blemish from our past, eco-liberals are gearing up to add a tax that doesn’t discriminate on race necessarily but on simply existing. The professor was never quite clear on what would happen if families either refused or could not afford to pay the tax, although he was certainly joyous in announcing how this would effectively womens’ (and mens’) right to chose to have their babies (something liberals often love to do except when they know the choice will result in one less life in the world).

On the other end of the age spectrum though, Stephane Dion’s carbon tax threatens the well-being of our society. While details haven’t been offered by many pundits so far, I’m sure more than a few of them have been sharing my imagination of a Conservative attack ad picturing an elderly old lady, huddled in the corner of a dark, snow-squalling room; as the picture pans out from the detailed sadness of this lonely old woman, a caption will read something to the effect that the retired lady wouldn’t afford heat because that nasty Scrooge of a Liberal, Stephane Dion, is taxing coal so high that she can’t afford to keep warm this Christmas/winter. Whether or not we end up seeing an ad like this run, the fact still remains that some fixed-income Canadians will be hit hard by a carbon tax, often in the case where they slaved away their whole lives under an income tax system that punished them when they were making more money. Now they wouldn’t make as much, which should reduce their burden under income tax, but would be sideswiped by the Dion carbon tax at a time in their lives where going out to make more money simply wouldn’t be an option.

Finally, we have to realize just what a ridiculous notion it is for the Liberals to propose that a carbon tax would be tax neutral. Take the mathematical equation ax + by + cz = 100, where a, b, and c are the percentages of total tax that three hypothetical taxpayers, x, y, and z, would pay into the system. If a tax shift were truly neutral (and Canadians have good reason to believe that no political party that proposes a new tax will EVER deliver on the neutrality promise), that 100 would have to stay the same since it represents 100% of the taxes the government collects now.

On the one hand, it may go down for x because he doesn’t buy as much carbon in a year, but z’s burden might go up because she lives on a rural farm where oil heating and a truck are the necessities of a farmer, not the luxury that we might think. Will *big oil* account for some of the z’s out there who will see their tax bill increase? Most definately, but who do you think will pay for it in the end? The fat cat execs who The Left is always telling us about, or the common Canadian who goes to fill up at the pump?

On the other hand, we have to ask just why the Liberal spin doctors are already playing up the tax neutral element of such a carbon tax? After all, either the government isn’t going to be collecting the same amount of money because carbon usage will go down (in which case, we have to ask how Dion plans to fund his national daycare and other new spending projects), or they will and we will be essentially using the same amount of carbon. Thinking further, what isn’t carbon out there? Bread? Wrong. Clothes? Try again. Wood? Look elsewhere. In fact, the only things I can think of off the top of my head are computer chips and software programmes that are downloaded off the internet. Not exactly the bare necessities but I’m sure the tech industry is already thrilled that our government already presumes that we’re pirates and thieves every time we buy a CD/DVD and is itching to get into the flash drive market as well (think of it as a silicon tax — maybe we should just harmonize it with Dion’s carbon tax and have a tax on all IV A elements!).

Ultimately though, if the Liberals are willing to fight for this one in an election, I say go for it. After all, it wouldn’t take long for someone to point out the obvious: if all this environmental posturing we’re doing now is meant to save the Earth and, ultimately, our existence as a species, why would we impose a tax that would be so destructive both to our children and our elderly? Isn’t the point about making our quality of life better? And once the debate is framed that way, Dion’s already ill-advised plan will be toast and we won’t have to hear any more about eco-radicalism, or at least until the summer of 2024 when we have a couple more days over 30 than usual!

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.

Perhaps the Star, The Chronicle Herald, CTV and the other rags reporting this garbage should team up with the RCMP and go inquire about the relationship between Michael Chamas and former Prime Minister Chretien.

Rae was angered by the generalization for which he says he sees no basis in fact.

-Toronto Star, Saturday May 10, 2008

That quote, and that link, refer to a story by Toronto Star reporter Tonda MacCharles today that suggests that Prime Minister Harper is wrongfully smearing the opposition with an anti-semitic brush. Rae’s charge is quite simply not true, which isn’t shocking to Ontarians who remember his expert opinions on the affairs of government nearly 20 years ago. However, Tonda MacCharles, a journalist, is not presenting a full picture of the situation in her write up and all it takes is a quick Google search to prove it. That’s right! Three MPs, including Bloc MP Giles Duceppe and Montreal Liberal Dennis Coderre marched alongside Hezbollah flags in downtown Montreal back in the summer of 2006 when the Israeli-Lebanon strike was going on those two years ago. The three MPs never publicly denounced their actions and as public representatives, ignored the due diligence that they are expected to practice as such office holders.

That is because Hezbollah is a radical and dangerous group that wants nothing more than they physical obliteration of Israel and all Jews in the world. That’s the sort of allies that the three MPs above-mentioned had on that summer day two years ago and that is why the Prime Minister is accurate in asserting

Canada, under this government, is never going to cater to that kind of opinion. You know, I am disturbed that there are some elements in our political system; there are even some members of Parliament – we saw during a confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah a couple of years back – some that were willing to cater to that kind of opinion.*

So in other words, the Montreal rally was exactly what the Prime Minister was referring to, lest the opposition now suggest that his “blanket statement” could imply other anti-semitic occasions that opposition members indulged in (a Freudian slip, if it comes?). It will come too though as the Montreal event was pretty cut and dry, something that even the most hardened partisan should see if they simply put the shoe on the other foot and tried to imagine Conservatives marching alongside someone holding a “God hates fags” sign…hey, even having an MP holding hands with somebody down the street would even be fair game I guess!

So are the Liberal and Bloc caucuses full of raving “drive ‘em into the sea” anti-semites? Hardly. Are their numbers, however, including those who give legitimacy to an organization that deserves to be destroyed and at the same time associating themselves with a toxic philosophy that the civilized world should not entertain? Absolutely!

*-emphasis added

But now Canadian media, because we have a Conservative minority and the Liberals desperately want an election, rather than framing themselves as hypocrites, disagreeing with every government motion then abstaining to vote, the media are digging up every conceivable scrap of dirt to slander the Conservatives.

Look at the Bernier fiasco.  We have Gilles Duceppe looking like a pawn, and what are the real charges?  That a cabinet minister had the bad taste to date someone who had formerly gone out with a rough character.  Note he isn’t married to her, he dated her.   And she didn’t marry the rough character, she just went out with him for a while.  It seems to me that if I found out that my girlfriend used to go out with a Hell’s Angel, I would probably question her taste.  It might even lead to my ending the relationship.  Does this mean that I have necessarily done business, or have any sort of allegiance to said ex of my ex?  This is why the media refused to air the story for so long - it is a non-story.

But I digress.  What really set me off this morning is a bit of ludicrousness from Saskatoon.  Yes, that Saskatoon, that is growing faster than any other city in the country right now.  That Saskatoon that since unseating the NDP has seen the province’s first net growth from other provinces in decades.  That Saskatoon that is reaping record profits from mining, ethanol farming, and now a massive oil discovery in the southern part of the province.

But let’s look at the story itself.  A POLL of… who?  Oh right, citizens of Canada.  On what they KNOW or what they THINK?  What they think, right.  They THINK that we’re heading for a recession.  Why?  Probably because the media is telling them over and over again we MIGHT be heading for a recession, since the USA MAY be going into a recession, despite the fact that they haven’t come within a country mile of of the classic definition of a recession from professional economists.  What proof do they have?  Well, Ontario has faced a lot of closures and slowsdowns in the auto sector… but strangely, their unemployment rate is not growing significantly.  Alberta isn’t as white-hot as they were a year ago, so now they are only red-hot.  Out here in BC, there have been massive problems for the lumber industry, yet the heart of lumbering in Prince George has seen housing prices double in the last 2 or 3 years.  The Okanagan continues to boom because that’s where Albertans are buying vacation property.  And the Lower Mainland?  Well, people haven’t stopped moving in and jobs are still plentiful if a little underpaid given the cost of living.

So which provinces are exactly suffering and dragging us into recession?  Beats me.

But the authority the paper cites is the people.  The people who don’t have economics degrees, the people who don’t have their finger on the pulse of other provinces, or even their own cities generally.  No, all they know is the media keeps digging out “people” who speculate we MAY be going into a recession.

But like the gossip wheel, when one person whispers into your ear, when you pass it on, it gets worse each time.

The media whispers, “we may be going into a recession.”

Then the polling company calls and asks, “Do you fear a recession?”

The citizens say “Yes” because they have heard we may be going into a recession.

The media reports, “Economy recession-bound, latest poll indicates”

So now we are going into a recession.

I can’t wait for these clowns to go out of business, if this is what passes for journalism nowadays.

So why is everybody focusing on what Hilary will do right now? Well, the cultural side of me likes to think that she’s America’s version of “nobody’s baby”, Shelia Copps; the woman who was able to turn some of the cogs behind the scenes for a while but got shafted when she went for the brass ring herself. In other words, it’s just melodrama right now. Don’t expect Barack Obama to draw too much attention to himself though; doing so will only expediate those tough questions that will eventually come to the eventual Democratic nominee and the man who built his entire campaign around “Yes, we can!” doesn’t come across as much of a policy wonk.

Clinton, for her part, is now just like the NDP; incapable of winning the top prize, guaranteed third place, but still naive enough to think there’s still a shot that she’ll drag down her closest neighbour. How the media doesn’t know or, if they do know, act on this is no longer in the realm of good journalism. It’s Barrack, not Hillary, whose opinions will be debated in the fall; she’s just a sad sideshow now.

Of course, the respectful thing for Clinton to do right now would be to drop out of the race, sparing the world from more of her sob story. She won’t do that though, since she was in it for blood from the get-go, trying to finally establish her decades-long goal of becoming the first three-term president since FDR. If she can’t have the cake, no one in the Democratic Party can, and from here until August, she will be a loadstone around Obama’s neck, dragging him down long enough and far enough to secure a McCain victory in November. If she pulls it off gracefully, something as doubtful as her becoming the 44th President, she gets another chance in 2012; if she fails to make a difference and Obama wins, she won’t have her next shot till 2016. The choice is pretty obvious when you consider the ego of the Senator from New York.

It’s Obama’s story that is really the more important issue r