I say, fine.  Make the display a corridor.  Put a big sign at either end saying, “Do Not Look.  The University Doesn’t Want You To See This.”

Guaranteed you’d have twice the foot traffic and engagement.  Everyone wants to see what is forbidden.

An international coalition of warships patrols the area off Somalia to prevent such hijackings.

The coalition includes vessels from NATO and the U.S. Navy.

The merchants should pay for their own damn security. Those costs should be included in the price of oil faced by the consumers. Armies should not be securing merchant vessels.

Sponsored By: Gift Baskets for Men Select or design your own, save money, & impress.

If you’re at the Convention and you have a reasonable alternative, drop me an email or txt me at, (403) 634-8888.

I presume there were more than a few undesirables the Party and the RCMP would rather not attend.

The second curiosity was the event itself. While there was a substantial police presence directly outside of the Convention Centre, there were only a few identifiable police officers inside the building. While I’m fairly confident there were plenty of under-cover police officers available to spring to action if so needed, I was surprised to see no metal detector or bag searches.

Once I entered the Convention Centre floor, I was again surprised to see a fairly dark room with long straight aisles leading directly up to the centre podium. In the back of the room, where the various TV networks had setup there podiums, it was a mess of wires, cameras, technicians, video equipment and TV personalities. I would imagine a perfect place for someone to stage an attack.

Perhaps I’m over-analyzing the security threat to the Prime Minister, what do you think?

For more information on the Canadian Human Rights Commissions and their various corrupt and unethical actions, go here.

The Bank said it plans to introduce a Canadian Dollar Term Loan Facility (TLF) in four auctions of $2 billion each in the coming weeks.

Under the plan, qualifying financial institutions will be able to offer non-mortgage loans as collateral — meaning they can offer most loans currently on their books.

This will prolong the recession by feeding malinvestments. I do not like this socialist / crony-capitalist trend of our supposedly “conservative ” government. The real solution to financial woes is to let businesses fail.

Sponsored By: Gift Baskets for Men Select or design your own, save money, & impress.

First off, allow me to dispense with the obvious. The fact that America has elected a black man as their President and that coming generations will never remember a world where a black President of the United States was any stranger than a white one is a good thing.

More substantially, however, I would argue that there are upsides to his policy as well. He favours focusing efforts on Afghanistan and removing the forces from Iraq sooner rather than later. I think at this point we can all agree that Afghanistan is the “right” war, and this can only be seen as a step in the right direction. He’s promised to cut billions of dollars from the budget (of course, we can only wait and see if this will happen). He’ll most likely give the world a more favourable view of America, and while he may not have had as large of an impact as many thought, he’s clearly energized the youth of the country.

To ignore his positives is to close your mind completely to outside thought, and does both yourself, and conservatism at large, a disservice.

I’m not saying this will make him a “good” President, or that it won’t. I am saying these are his positives, and they aren’t negligible.

“This [economic slowdown] is different. It will call for different kinds of solutions,” he said.

But I don’t see a lot of originality in begging for handouts and corporate welfare.  Isn’t that what we’ve always done in the face of economic slowdowns?

His top priority, however, is to ensure that banks are lending to each other, and that credit is available to corporate and household borrowers at a decent price. A well-functioning credit market, he said, will help the manufacturing sector as much as any kind of direct aid.

Getting the money first into the hands of the bankers seems to be the priority of our leaders.

Hat Tip to Briggs Armstrong for Yet Another GM Bailout which not only prescribes solutions but also has the courage to point to the irresponsibility and immorality of such bailouts.

Also, the Blogging Tories suck.

The comments are beauty, too.

1. The only real contender with debts from the last convention is Gerard Kennedy, who placed fourth on the first ballot, just behind Dion and Rae. He’d be the biggest name to be prohibited from running if Quebec’s motion is accepted.

2. As a grassroots candidate, Kennedy has a lot of support across Canada, especially in BC and Alberta where the other candidates are rather unpopular. He has the most to lose by seeing the convention move East.

I’m probably being too paranoid, but I could be right.

“After Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election, Hillary Clinton announced that, henceforth, she would be known as “Hillary Rodham Clinton”. So maybe Obama can now become B. Hussein Obama, his rightful name.”

Classy.

And let’s not forget this tasty tidbit…

[T]he only good thing about McCain is that he gave us a genuine conservative, Sarah Palin. He’s like one of those insects that lives just long enough to reproduce so that the species can survive. That’s why a lot of us are referring to Sarah as “The One” these days.

I wasn’t aware they’d changed the meaning of “conservative” to “corrupt, big government, lying friend of pork barrel funding”.

I guess you learn something new every day.

Sponsored By: Gift Baskets for Men Select or design your own, save money, & impress.

While he may or may not be a great president - only time will provide that perspective - one thing is for certain, President Obama can’t pay your mortgage or put gas in your car:

I’m fairly certain there isn’t a single politican - Republican or Democratic - that could come even close to satisfying the high expectations some have for this new leader…

The party of big government has lost the White House, to be replaced by the party of even bigger government.

The fact is, Manley won’t win. He’ll pick up less than ten percent of the vote. He’s splitting the economic center to center-right vote with Ignatieff, who has more popularity than Manley could hope for.

He doesn’t have the right background to be a renewal, “308″, grassroots candidate either. He has all the negatives of an establishment candidate, but having been out of politics for a while he seems to have lost his core team.

He has all the personality of a smoked eel, too. He’s not Dion 2.0 (he can communicate fine, at least in English) but he’s too mechanical.

The fact is, he won’t win. He ain’t even a contenda.

Sponsored By: Gift Baskets for Men Select or design your own, save money, & impress.

There will forever be young people born gay, so the demand for same-sex marriage will never go away. Furthermore, children have television, movies and pop music. There is no way to escape the reality that homosexuals exist. The latest argument in support of Proposition 8 is how it will potentially impose requirements of teaching same-sex marriages in schools. Well, I suppose it might hypothetically lead to that but I believe there is a lot of nonsense and bad influence in schools anyway. Teaching same-sex marriage is pretty low on the Richter scale compared to drugs, promiscuity and history classes, in my opinion.

Both sides of the debates involving Proposition 8 and same-sex marriages are nonsense. People are locking horns when they can easily seek common ground: deny the government any authority in such private matters. I believe that is where the modern civilized world is heading anyway. No matter the result of this vote, the only thing this ballot initiative will do is delay the inevitable. As governments create market failure, people are forced to become a little creative and more responsible for themselves. I see the future development of a new industry called the Marriage Registration Bureau or something like that.

If the right to same-sex marriage is forever denied through Proposition 8, I would suspect that homosexuals will still demand to be married. Therefore, they will have no choice but to create a parallel market in the marriage recognition industry in California.

If Proposition 8 is rejected, opponents of same-sex marriage will have no choice but to deny the legitimacy of the state’s recognition of marriage — unless they are happy living their moral lives in cognitive dissonance.

This act is unfair. This absurd SCAN Act gives coercive powers to the municipality to force landlords to do the job that the police are paid to do. If a neighbor is being disturbed by a crack-house, he is free to call the police. Only an irresponsible supporter of the state monopolized security industry would be blind to the obvious fact that there are enough layers of legislation to deal with disturbances already.

Hat Tip to CLEOnet. This act can also be quite unfair to tenants.

Columnist Michael Malone agrees, and tries her best to explain why:

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer — when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

[S]he is presenting herself to the public with an eye to her own long-term political career and a possible presidential bid in four years.

An unnamed source told CNN that “she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party.”

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Sponsored By: Gift Baskets for Men Select or design your own, save money, & impress.

In a PR system, there is no individual accountability for MPs. They have no particular jurisdiction they are responsible for that has the power to vote them out if they fail to represent them. People like our old friends Garth Turner and Belinda Stronach could switch parties without any repercussion.

In my Canada, MPs represent the public interest, not the political.

Finance: Jim Flaherty
Industry: Maxime Bernier
International Trade: Lawrence Cannon
Foreign Affairs: Jim Prentice
Defence:Peter Mackay
Environment: John Baird

The only real changes there are Bernier to industry, and Cannon to International Trade. Both have held these portfolios before, either federally or provincially, and both deserve to hold them now. Bernier was given a huge mandate by his constituency, and it looks like all has been forgiven.

Ambrose, Van Loan, Strahl, Ritz, Ablonczy, Finley and Day will all be picking up more minor roles in the cabinet.

Still, it could be fun, right?

The natural suggestion is Peter MacKay. He’s not from the West, he’s popular, he’s moderate, and seems pretty charismatic. I’d say he has a shot in any hypothetical leadership decision.

As sad as it is, Jason Kenney seems to be in a perpetual state of denial, which includes him thinking he can be Prime Minister someday. I’m afraid that’s not happening.

Due to Canada’s tradition of a strong federal Liberal party and a strong provincial Conservative party, I’d wager a guess that there is a great chance that a former Premier might take a run at the leadership. Not Klein, but someone.

Thoughts?

I call shenanigans. In this situation, they really only have two choices. Either a) Abstain in critical votes and preserve the minority, or b) vote against the government and plunge the nation into ANOTHER election.

Which would you choose, if you had just come out of your worst general election, ever?

Sponsored By: Gift Baskets for Men Select or design your own, save money, & impress.

If what the minister says is true, why are we not seeing insurance companies from “around the world” taking on the risk of these insured mortgages which “provide a reliable backstop for Canadian mortgage-backed securities, which are well accepted around the world” instead of the government? The truth is that these securities are only accepted because the people around the world expect the government will bail them out — at any cost, I might add — when they fail. I say let them fail. The more bitter truth is that the insurance companies and the banks do not have any money to do so even if they wanted to — their money depends on constant inflation of the money supply.

This temporary program will be offered to lenders on commercial terms so there is no expected fiscal cost.

Why is he calling it temporary? It makes no sense to call this temporary when the mechanism and the reliability of these markets hinges on bailouts.
No expected fiscal cost? Yeah, the money will fall from the sky!

Many countries have recently announced new and comprehensive policy initiatives to restore or protect the stability of their financial systems. “I welcome the decisive and far-reaching actions that many countries are taking, which will provide critical support to financial stability,” said Minister Flaherty.

I beg your pardon, Mr. Minister? Countries around the world are just printing money, nationalizing their banks and now you are doing the same.

Ladies and gentleman, friends and neighbors, get ready to enjoy more socialism and price inflation in Canada.

For 14 years Schmidt, who grew up in Germany, has struggled for the right to sell unpasteurized milk, forbidden under the Milk Act.
Michael Schmidt was found guilty Monday of contempt-of-court charges for breaching a court order requiring him to stop his unpasteurized milk operations in and around Newmarket, Ont.
—
At present, he says 150 families each own a share in one of his 30 cattle, who graze on pasture in Grey County about 200 kilometres northwest of Toronto.

The shares allow each family to a share of a cow’s milk production.

Like other government dependent producers, these people are the villains:

If selling raw milk were legal, it would in short order become a big business. The Ontario government, knowing the statistical risks of raw-milk distribution, would be legally and morally responsible for ensuring that no one got sick as a result.

Stop demanding that the government is responsible for everybody’s welfare!

I do not trust that these cronies actually give a damn about preventing people from getting sick. I think they only care about protecting their own market from competition. They want to eliminate competitive suppliers by making it more expensive to operate. If it becomes a big business — an absurdly debatable assertion — that would mean that a lot of customers would want it and they would prefer it over the other choices.

Check out Where Can I Find Real Milk? if you want to get your own.

The girl’s mother was upset by Wednesday’s ruling, saying she believes the onus was on Armstrong to determine the girl’s age.

“My daughter’s life has been changed because of this,” she said. “We don’t have our little girl any more. She has problems with her peers and she has problems making friends.”

Lady, where have you been? Clearly, you do not know your daughter. [It would make more sense to blame rock and roll like they used to do!] Whatever “changed” your little girl happened long before this trial and likely long before she sent naked pictures of herself to older men on the internet.

Call me a knuckle-dragger if you want but I have to ask: What does her father have to say about all of this??? Can we get a quote from him too? I think this girl is a victim of bad parenting. Compared to her peers, the main difference in this kid’s environment is her home.

Sponsored By: Gift Baskets for Men Select or design your own, save money, & impress.

1. he does not understand the relationship between image and politics
2. he no longer sounds sincere about his Green Shift platform

He kept going on and on about how nobody got to see the real image of himself. Like, the Liberals would have gotten elected if only Canadians saw the real Stephane Dion. Now a Liberal leader knows what it is like to have false images portrayed by their opponents. For years, the left wing portrayed Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day and Preston Manning as knuckle-dragging, bible-thumping neanderthals who will bring back capital punishment or outlaw abortion. Well, now the tables have turned.

Somebody ought to clue Stephane Dion in to reality: unless you have charisma or if you are young and good-looking or you can actually carry on an interesting conversation, do not count on your image to win you votes.

Anyway, what bothers me the most is that he insists that he never got a fair chance to explain his Green Shift plan. That bothers me because his Green Shift plan is not that difficult to explain. All he had to say is: “We are going to cut income taxes and replace them with carbon taxes.” [Granted, there is a whole lot more minutia in how these tax changes would be devised but the gist of it is still the same.] Why is that so difficult to explain?

The only reason why I can think that would be difficult to say is if the Liberals were lying about their plan. This is why I am thankful the Liberals lost the election. I do not think they should be trusted to follow through with their own plan. I think they were using this Green Shift as a phoney PR stunt, to make a nerdy old guy look hip but then use it as a cover for more Liberal cronyism.

You may already know that earlier today I announced that I will step down as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Over the next several months, the party will conduct a leadership race to determine my successor.

Moving forward, I have one overarching goal: the next leader must not be subjected to the same Conservative Party character assassination that I faced. To be successful, I need your help.

Harper’s Conservatives have enjoyed an enormous financial lead since the fundraising rules were changed, and from the moment I was elected leader, they poured millions of dollars into unprecedented attack ad campaigns. The Liberal Party lacked the resources to respond, and by the time the election was called, a false image of me was cemented in the minds of too many voters.

That can never be permitted to happen again. Between now and when the next leader is elected, you and I must ensure the Liberal Party has the financial resources to counter Conservative attacks. Every single time.

So I’m asking you to be generous now, not for me, but for the man or woman who will succeed me and lead our Liberal Party into the next election – an election we simply must win. And while a one-time donation today will help, for long-term strength and stability, I would like you to consider making a monthly contribution of $10, $15, $25 or more.

We did not win this election, but our vision of a richer, fairer, greener country lives on. Please help now to ensure that the next leader of the Liberal Party can turn that vision into Canada’s reality.

It’s always sad when people fail to take personal responsibity for their actions - whether it is a leader of a political party or a political party as a whole.  As Adam has recently pointed out, the Liberal party has bigger problems than anything Dion has done to the party - let alone anything the Conservatives have done.

The Liberals don’t exactly have a bumper crop of candidates this time around. So far I see:

Michael Ignatieff: The best choice. Of the group he’s the most likely to bring the party back to moderate right on fiscal issues and moderate left on social ones. But because they’re the Liberals, they’ll pick someone less likely to succeed.

Bob Rae: No-starter in Ontario with a horrible track record and an easy to attack platform.

John Manley: He has all of the same pros as Ignatieff, and has a shot at being the establishment candidate. Expect him to last to the second ballot, if that.

No-Name, Unelectable Compromise Candidate: This guy will win.

Things like being broke, having no vision and little party unity spring to mind.

Good luck Iggy.

Sponsored By: Gift Baskets for Men Select or design your own, save money, & impress.

I’ve been saying for months that McCain’s going to win, and I stand by that statement. Many pundits and news agencies are saying he’s basically out of the race. However, I would suggest that when one looks at this chart, you’d have to admit that McCain has a shot if he can keep his message on course.

All of the yellow, or “tossup” states on that map are ones that I can very easily see falling into McCain’s “win column”. If that were to happen, McCain would be within 7 electoral votes. That means he’d only need Iowa OR Virginia to swing over to red. Both states selected W. in ‘04.

He may be 72, but I’m calling McCain the “Comeback Kid”.

I’ve actually been excited to see Passchendaele since I saw the posters for it in theatres.  That it was made by a Canadian and was seeing wide release was also pleasing.  But now that I am hearing its star and primary movier, Paul Gross try to paint Stephen Harper with a broad “arts hater” brush, I am not so interested anymore.

I attempted to look into exactly where cuts to arts funding that have been made by the Conservative Government would have intersected with his film, or any art being produced in Canada of significance.  I found this list of recent arts cuts totalling 60 million dollars.

After reading that list, I don’t really see anything of consequence on the list.  A website is closing (we have more than enough arts and culture sites run by the government in my opinion), some public funding for artists who can’t afford to travel the world, to travel the world (the government doesn’t pay for me to travel internationally - why can’t artists pay for it themselves?), a minor independent video fund, some funding for provding archival material online (which presumably would be done by now?), and some other small funds without clear purpose or even clear usefulness.

I am sure that some artists are actually directly affected by some of these cuts.  But certainly not major film producers like Paul Gross, or any other artists I have heard in the media in the last few months, complaining about cuts.  The one that started this qhole ball of wax, if I recall correctly, was just rendering ineligible for public funding the making of pornographic or other morally questionable art.  Again, I am not aware that this would apply to movies like Passchendaele.

Paul Gross says that he shouldn’t have made these cuts  “…because that’s where the Canadian identity comes from.”  If Canadian identity rests on federally funding the porn production industry, or on Canadian artists’ need to be funded to travel all around the world, then I think we have bigger problems and more important places to fund.  Emily Carr didn’t need to see the pyramids of Giza in person to create world renowned art.  Nor did the Group of Seven need to attend swanky conventions in Prague to produce amazing pieces.  Get a grip.

I read this article and all it talked about was talk.  No explanation whatsoever.  Someone must understand this.  Please tell me exactly where this ten billion dollar deficit is supposed to come from.

Keith Martin, a Liberal who put forth a private members bill regarding the issue, was retained by the electorate with a slim plurality of the votes. Rick Dykstra, on the other hand, achieved a commanding victory.

Hopefully these two men will continue to serve at the forefront of this battle, and hopefully they will win.

Sponsored By: Gift Baskets for Men Select or design your own, save money, & impress.

Not surprisingly, for some people it is just a question of money. Speaking of money, this, on the other hand, is a real worry: the Prime Minister announces plans to study why voter turnout is falling. What a ridiculous waste of money!

First of all, it is a false problem. The Canadian population today is different from the population of yesteryear. Therefore, we are just imagining a trend between apples shrinking into crab-apples and oranges shrinking into tangerines. It is a false comparison of two different populations. We would not be so impressed by reports of shrinking hoola-hoop sales now, would we?

Second, voter turnout does not matter. Governments can still get elected to power regardless of the voter turnout.

Third, low voter turnout makes sense and it is logical. Some people have great difficulty with simple mathematics, but the truth is that the individual vote makes no arithmetic difference to the calculation and determination of an electoral win. This is the same mechanism of the free-rider phenomenon and it applies all over the place — elections are not immune to individual incentives. This may all sound pretty much like heresy to our sensitive democratic ears but too bad. It is the truth — a curious truth that Green Party supporters seem to witness repeatedly and casually dismissed by defenders of democracy.

Fourth, the numbers suggest that approximately half of the population does not feel so compelled to demand something of their government. How can that be bad?

Fifth, the numbers may also suggest that approximately half of the population does not feel that a piece of paper can make a difference in the power exerted by their government. [I guess that would depend on the nature of the paper. Last week, the government just printed stacks and stacks of paper without parliamentary approval and that inflation of the money supply will most certainly affect them.]

Low voter turnout can be interpreted many different ways. One thing is certain: it reflects an observable exercise of freedom given a constrained amount of choice.

Looking at the WikiPoedia reference for the preceding election shows the same error in over-estimation of the Green Party.

Nina Grewal successfully defended her seat, despite returning competition from Brenda Locke.  This is the second time Mrs. Locke has stood as a candidate against Grewal, and the third time in the last 5 years that Locke has stood for public office, also running for the Provincial Liberals in the Green Timbers riding in the last provincial election.  She’s lost every time.  Not sure when she is going to get out of public politics, but I’d be losing heart after running three failed campaigns in a row.  Especially since margin of loss this time is exponentially greater - in ‘06 she lost by 800 votes.  This time around it was closer to 9000.

I voted in this riding, and let me just say, anecdotally speaking, I really feel good about living here in such a culturally diverse riding.  I saw people of all shapes, sizes, colours and garb going in and out of North Surrey Secondary yesterday, all exercising their franchise with dedication.  It was one of those moments that made me feel good to be Canadian.

Surrey North

Dona Cadman won the riding easily, by several thousand votes over the NDP candidate, Rachid Arab.  This, despite the media at every turn attempting to portray her as either stifled, which she wasn’t, or somehow against the party she is running for, which she is not.

To set the record straight, Chuck ran as an independent when a potential candidate snuck into the race at the last minute and signed up hundreds of members to vote him in.  The riding loved Chuck so everyone encouraged him to run against the newly minted Conservative, and he won.  Yes, the party never changed its rules to prevent that kind of shenanigans, but it’s lazy politics to assume that nobody is running against you.  There certainly was never a move to kick Cadman out by the party itself.

Then, during the bribery thing, Dona is completely convinced that what was perceived as bribery by the media and ridden into the ground, was not.  She has had personal conversations with Stephen Harper and is convinced that he never knew about what was going on, so it doesn’t reflect on his character or reputation.  Whatever answer she gave him, it turned whatever residual bad will she had to such a positive, that she was willing to run for the party.  Personally, I think the fact that she is running for the party should have laid this issue to rest once and for all.  If she doesn’t consider it an issue, why does the media (even last night, during election coverage