Barrel Strength

On the pages of Facebook and Blogging Tories I have spotted postings by keeners on the notion of a resurrected Reform Party of Canada and actual moves to make the paper Reform Party of Ontario into something with warm bodies.

Of the latter I have little to say other than it might be wise to make good first on an attempt to take down John Tory before embarking on a twenty-first century peasants’ revolt beyond 905 and 416. If the provincial Progressive Conservative label is tainted from the last vote, I rather think that slimwhitman.on.ca is a poor choice for horse-switching.

But for the millennials who are contemplating the federal voodoo of raising Reform from its grave, I have to ask: what the hell part of seventeen years of brutal, pointless political civil war do you not understand?!

Many, including your correspondent, suffered through frustration at the ballot box, broken friendships, unbearable stress, wasted opportunities and years of needless, wanton Liberal oligarchy just to get back to square one and arrive at a winning coalition.

We were happy to achieve peace under Stephen Harper and we will not let go of it gently. Trust me, at the very least you will be wasting your time in a pointless sideshow but if you persist nothing will be spared to restore that peace. Nothing.

Do not force Cincinnatus to leave his farm again.

I don’t question the necessity of the Maxime Bernier resignation. But is that the extent of stunning incompetence amongst our parliamentarians?

Watching today’s brooaadcast on Newman’s “Politics”, I am baffled by some suppositions raised by Serge Menard and Bob Rae.

Firstly, Bloqhead Serge Menard talks about the claim of a listening device found underneath Mme. Couillard’s bed, wondering who could have placed it. If a private security firm can find it, odds are that no government agency placed it. For years intelligence and police operatives have gotten reliable voice monitoring by pinging a laser beam off a window in the target building. If true, this is the stuff of second-rate gumshoe work.

And then Menard ventures that people are more likely to discuss state secrets in the kitchen than the bedroom. WTF, M. Menard?! Would anyone take counsel from someone who appears to have no knowledge of the Profumo scandal, the Stasi archives or at least one spy thriller?

Secondly, Liberal and Great Canadian™ Bob Rae moaned about the need to preserve the honour of the post of Foreign Minister. Did he ever have a chance to talk to the man he replaced in Parliament, who coincidentally had been a Canadian Foreign Minister? To refresh his memory, it was Bill Graham, the man who also maintained a hideaway for an underage male prostitute who was his surreptious lover. Doubt it, Bob? Google “Lawrence Metherel”. Then come back to the table and talk about ministerial propriety.

This should be on page one of every newspaper in the country. I cannot add anything to what Ezra Levant has written but my disgust.

Kate informs us that the Messiah, aka Obama, has expanded his skill-set and it now includes raising the dead. It once again highlights what your correspondent has previously thought about his oratory skills.

As soon as the Teleprompter King™ deviates from a prepared text, he is in trouble. The fatal phrase that he uttered, “and I see many of them in the audience here today”, seems to be an idle ad lib on his part when one examines the corresponding video. When one hears him being interviewed, it is surprising to hear the umms and ahhs in his response. Your correspondent is old enough to recall that when Ted Kennedy’s presidential campaign began to falter, the newspaper started including the verbal annoyances in the text as a signal that it was time to stick a fork in the pig. Will the Messiah’s campaign follow a similar path?

May 30, 2008
Update: The WSJ Opinion column agrees:

As smart and credentialed as he is, Sen. Obama is often an indifferent speaker without a teleprompter.

Liberal Senator and command washout Romeo Dallaire pumps up the volume and keeps his rhetoric fact-free in today’s National Post:

We are permitting the United States to try a Canadian child soldier using a military tribunal whose procedures violate basic principles of justice.

Let’s parse this one.

Canadian?

Like the rest of his loathsome, misbegotten family, Omar Khadr was a willing and proud minion of al Qaeda who regarded Canada as nothing better than “the greatest hotel on Earth”, as described by that other Great Canadian™, Yann Martel. Waving a passport doesn’t trump one’s membership in a pathologically criminal enterprise.

Soldier?

In whose army, precisely, as determined by the much invoked albeit barely read Geneva Conventions? It takes a bit more than sporting dirty pajamas and shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” to be a uniformed party to a military conflict. Again, Omar Khadr has no legal status greater than that of a pirate or brigand.

Basic principles of justice?

Why should the people of the United States, particularly the families and neighbours of servicemen slain by Khadr and his fellow irregulars, be denied justice in seeing murderers punished for their crimes? And does anyone think a criminal proceeding fair to both the offender and his American victims can occur in a neo-Trudeaupia where the public utterance of the “I-Word” is being criminalized?!

What finally places Senator Dallaire firmly beyond the pale is the headline of his tract, “Who are the real criminals in Omar Khadr’s case?”. What can one say of a man who holds public office yet, clasping to his chest the faint title of “national hero” , calls an entire state and nation criminals for not attempting to free a willing servant of evil from the burden of his crimes?

Senator, you disgust me.

When it comes to reporting on the PM’s new chief of staff, Keith Boag — like his apparent mentor — has “plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence.”

Click video to play.

The week before the BC Human Rights tribunal travesty, he sells out the Fraser Institute Conversation Series at $500 a ticket. Bjørn Lomborg on Global Warming, Karl Rove on U.S. Politics, Richard Dawkins on Evolution and, May 26, Mark Steyn on the War on Terror. They book ‘em big on the west coast. This is delightful.

Two great broadcasters and one great interview. Listen to the American correct Paikin about hockey lore. Best new gen: after the impromptu TVO debate, a couple of the fresh young lawyers said they were having trouble nailing full-time jobs because they were perceived as enemies to free speech. Sounds like Canada’s law firms get it: it’s not your skin colour or your faith, it’s your fundamental misinterpretation of the values of the society in which you hope to practise. ‘Kids, in a professional environment that assumes a free society, book-burners are unemployable. Sorry, can’t work with you. Next.’

We were told by the MSM that Obama drew a record crowd of 75,000 for political rally in Oregon on May 18th. Even Obama was impressed and the great orator began his speech with “Wow! Wow! Wow”. Even your jaded correspondent was suitably impressed. Alas the truth is something else.

The referenced post states that “Unmentioned in national reporting was the fact that Obama was preceded by a rare, 45-minute free concert by actual rock stars The Decemberists. The Portland-based band has drawn rave reviews from Rolling Stone magazine, which gave their 2005 album Picaresque four and a half stars (out of five), and another four and a half stars for 2007’s The Crane Wife.” The report goes on to state that “They even closed out with a sing-along entitled “Sons & Daughters”, which had the masses joining the band to declare “Here all the bombs fade away…”

Well that certainly explains the size of the crowd.

A genome paper provides interesting results and conclusions thus corroborating old assertions.

Results: Among the 17 tissues, the highest similarity in gene expression patterns was between human brain and testis, based on DDD and clustering analysis. Genes contributing to the similarity include ribosomal protein (RP) genes as well as genes involved in transcription, translation and cell division.

Conclusions: Present results provide evidence to support the proposal that human testis and brain share the highest similarity of gene expression patterns. The implications of the similarity regarding that both brain and testis contributed to human speciation are discussed.

Your correspondent received the following travel story from a friend.

Last week we decided that we wanted to visit an island in Bahamas that was off the beaten path. Given the limited ferry routes, and our desire to spend only one night in a place with limited amenities , our choices were limited to the island chains of Eleuthera and Andros. We selected Eleuthera based on the logistical issues and set off for Spanish Wells, an island that is about half a mile wide and two miles long with a population of about 1,600. Other than that salient fact, we didn’t know much about this island.

On the way there in a ferry, my friend sat beside a black man and innocently enquired if he was going to Spanish Wells as well. He pointed at his forearm and said to my friend, “they don’t like my kind there.” Needless to say that this came as a surprise to us given that the population of Bahamas is 90% black. We disembarked the ferry and went into a restaurant to eat our breakfast. The waitress/cashier/hostess was white and that is when I started noticing similarity to Man-O-War cay in the Abaco island chain.

Both islands are populated by white evangelical Christians and both of them are dry. The proprietor of the only restaurant in Man-O-War cay, told me that he had a liquor license but didn’t want to serve alcohol, because the locals would ostracize him and he would lose business. He blamed it on “narrow-minded religious people” and said that with a straight face, as I gazed at the 6″ brass cross he was wearing around his neck. I was told that at one point they did have a liquor store in Spanish Wells, but it caused too many problems. Given that there is only one level of government, the individual cays do not have right to ban alcohol but societal pressures keep these two cays dry, although it is easy to acquire it with no prohibition on bringing it in, unlike some of the native communities in northern Canada.

Spanish Wells itself is a prosperous community that relies on fishing for its source of wealth. The fisherman on this island sell all their lobster catch to Red Lobster chain of restaurants in North America. It is obvious that this hard work has been rewarding. Houses are well maintained, roads are clean, lawns are pristine and there is very little crime. I was informed by the young lady to leave my rented golf cart in the front, with the keys in the ignition, if the counter was unattended. The beaches are amazing and one can walk a couple of miles out into the water and still be only waist deep. About 70% of the population goes to the three churches on Sunday and I heard more Christian music at the church fund raiser than I have in my entire life. This cay takes it cultural cues from US in many ways. They are rabid sports fans and follow New York Yankees avidly as if it is their home team. Golf carts are painted with various sports motifs.

Like the rest of the world, there is the usual divide between the younger generation and the rest. The friendships on the island are over a wider age group, because of the small number of people in each age group. In the 18-35 age group one of the things to do is to go to the beach at night, light a bonfire, drink beer and smoke marijuana. It is not enough to keep the two resident policemen on the island busy . Several of them had a desire to leave the island, as they found is boring and stifling, but they also understood that they had no means of doing it. The openly referred to blacks as niggers and opined as to what might happen to you in Nassau, the capital of Bahamas. Blacks are not made welcome here and that explains why the population is, in my estimate, 98% white. Rhodies would feel at home here.

Meanwhile back in the country formerly known as Rhodesia we find this:

I had lunch in Mutare yesterday, a town in Zimbabwe on the Mozambique border.

To give you a benchmark — bread is currently over 110 million a loaf; on 22nd April it was 40 million per loaf.

The lunch bill: soup — 50 million, oxtail — 600 million, coffee — 50 million, with no charge for the pink ice cream.

During the meal, one of my mates was drinking beer — 750ml bottles of Castle Lager (fondly called bombers). He ordered a fifth one, was advised that the price, which when he ordered his first, second, third and fourth ones was 160 million per bottle, had gone up to 340 million per bottle.

That’s right — during lunch there was a price increase…

US Federal Judge Bernard M. Decker:

“It is better to allow those who preach racial hatred to expend their venom in rhetoric rather than to be panicked into embarking on the dangerous course of permitting the government to decide what its citizens may say and hear …. The ability of American society to tolerate the advocacy of even hateful doctrines … is perhaps the best protection we have against the establishment of any Nazi-type regime in this country.”

By June 24 1978, US Nazi leader Frank Collin had assembled his forces and was ready to parade his might before an astonished world. Apart from his drive to make a fool of himself, Collin himself was a character of minimal charisma and absolutely no consequence, while his Brownshirts were an ill-favoured bunch of mixed physical types, mostly unremarkable. In press conferences, Chicago reporters enjoyed asking Collin whether he was of Jewish descent so they could watch his face turn red. For months, the ACLU had been fighting for Collin’s right to lead his dozen confused young adolescent males on a march through Skokie, a mostly Jewish suburb of Chicago. For some reason, the US federal government was forced to host a Nazi demonstration and chose Federal Plaza in downtown Chicago as the venue. The Chicago police were drafted in to make this all happen. Their solution was to bring the Nazis in through the back of the federal building and on to the plaza. The wags on the force had decided to place the press inside a double line of saw-horses between the Nazis and the mob. (Jim Belushi was there with the world’s phoniest press pass, to gather material for Second City skits. The cops didn’t care. You want to be part of a human coil-spring between angry and stupid? Fill your boots.)

It was a beautiful day and everyone got there early for the warm-up. College kids came in for miles around to confront the demonstrators. It could have been a festival, with street vendors and music, except people were carrying signs mounted on two by fours and lengths of steel pipe. The police did their best to confiscate those, along with the rocks and bottles, but it was a big crowd.

The demonstration itself was quite brief, and Collin’s bull-horn was totally inadequate to the storm of noise and debris that instantly broke over him. While he exercised his right to free speech, the Chicago cops exercised their baton arms on the unfortunates who were jammed up against the barriers. The press got a story with lots of exciting ‘vis’, and the students got a lively outing. Everybody got something. This is how a free people conducts its business, in the open air, in full view of all. Hateful people have a right to say at least some hateful things, and government has at least some obligation to protect them. Whenever I look at the wasteful, inept and ultimately useless human rights cases in Canada, I think of the US government making sure Frank Collin had freedom of expression. He is long gone now, but the lesson remains. Give a free people free expression and free access to ideas - they know what to do.

Who wouldn’t find something better to do than see this:

Is it in fact a reverse portrait of Dorian Gray, where the subject’s stupidity grows as the picture remains constantly dim?

H/T to Halls of Macadamia

I thought the Herouxville Declaration was completely reasonable: it said that Quebecois don’t stone women, don’t want their women in veils, they eat pork and they have no intention of submitting to Islam. Immigrants should accommodate to our ways of doing things, and not natives to them, in all essentials. I agree. This is what immigrants do anyway, within a couple of generations, unless prevented by government policies. Of the Muslims we are not as sure as we would like to be, and the jury is still out. If you actually bother to read the Declaration, you will find little or nothing with which to disagree.

I am under no illusions about French Canada however. My sympathy for the reasonableness of the Herouxville Declaration has not blinded me to the general tribalism of the place. There is a completely unself-conscious racialism/tribalism/nationalism here that offers no apologies about itself. The purpose of the state is to protect the French-Canadian nation/tribe/race, however called. As an English-Quebecer, I have had my language subjected to discriminatory legislation and have seen my community reduced by hundreds of thousands of people since 1976, as we departed for better linguistic and commercial climes.

It is quite difficult for some liberal minds to adjust to the reality that their compatriots are splendid people who do not give damn for political correctness. “Les anglais” are just a richer and more educated sort of foreigner than Caribbeans, say, and possibly more useful, but neither should step out of their place. The place is run by, for and about the interests of French-Canadians, and get used to it.

My friend, the Count of Amsterdam, a Quebec-raised emigrant to Los Angeles, said he spent the winter watching the testimony before the Bouchard Taylor Commission on “reasonable accommodation”. He was fascinated by the overt racism and xenophobia of the Quebecois testifying. Having spent his working life in Los Angeles, the melting pot, he was fascinated by the witnesses’ insistence that immigrants should be exactly like the people they are immigrating towards.

Having lived here for longer, I felt inclined to defend their rights to express themselves in politically incorrect ways: it is how they feel, after all.

The Bouchard-Taylor Commission report has been leaked in advance. The reports in the Montreal Gazette indicate that the Commission believes that the burden of adjustments falls on us rather than on the immigrant.

“The main goal of adjustments is to protect minorities against flaws in the laws of the majority, and not the contrary. [The adjustments] ensure that every person enjoys the same rights. Sometimes different treatment is needed to ensure an equal right. It’s not a question of a privilege. It is a reasonable adaptation.”

Unhappily, the falsity of this position will not be exposed to the ridicule it deserves because the linguistic fascists of Quebec will also trounce the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. You don’t like them and I don’t like them, but we also don’t like the basic premise of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, which is that we have to adapt to the “rights” of immigrants. One of the rights seems to include the right not to adapt to the host culture.

I think it s great mistake to frame discussion of cultural adpatations exclusively in terms of rights. One critic of multi-culti in Britain always used the example of the Aztec immigrants who insisted on their right to conduct live human sacrifices to the angry sun–god Huitzlilopotchli. The same blindness to the issue informs the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. The assertion of “rights” is not an unequivocal good. With every right comes a corresponding obligation on others to respect your rights. The multiplication of “rights” is the multiplication of the responsibilities of others to respect them. Just as with pollution, the “rights” are off-loaded onto the community, and the community bears the cost. The Bouchard-Taylor approach imagines that there is no cost in social cohesion, efficiency or any othe rimportant social value to paid for the expression by others of their rights to be different.

The folly of Bouchard-Taylor and their ilk is that they conflate every right with every other, without a hierarchy among them, so that by the end of this infinite inflation of rights, the value of rights is the same as German Reichsmark in the hyper-inflation of the 1920s. And you know where that led to. I see the same devaluation of rights being caused by the hyper-inflation of rights in the rights-obsessed society we are engineering in Canada

One of the continuing sources of mystery in my life has been the prominence of Charles Taylor in the liberal imagination. I cannot think of a practical or theoretical issue on which he has been right, yet his pious maunderings are received as holy gospel among certain elites. We must not confuse personal decency and high-mindedness, which he possesses in spades, with pragmatic judgment, in which he is as deficient as can be.

In a seven acre space in Ottawa, a little west of Parliament Hill, stands Mount Suzuki. Mt. Suzuki stands eighty to one hundred feet high after several weeks of 15C-20C weather. It is attacked daily by large machines which rip its sides to expose the whitish snow left from last winter, so that it can melt before the snow yard has to be filled again with the snow removed from city streets in the winter of 2008-2009. Look at this immense acreage of black soot-covered snow. Talk to me about global warming at your risk.