Barrel Strength

Read this. I mean it. It is too long, yes. It uses the word “folks” too often. But swallow your conservative bile and read it. If you cannot stand to read it, skim it. But understand the message Mrs. Obama and her husband are putting out. This is what conservatives are up against in the United States this year. John McCain must come up with a compelling alternative vision or else the Democrats will carry the day. Mrs. Obama expresses in the clearest possible terms the emotional bargain the Obama campaign seeks to make with the American people. The point is to understand what the deal is, between the governed and the future government. Mrs. Michelle Obama points the way.

So Denis Coderre — the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen of the Liberal Caucus — flails away at the Harper government, alleging that someone may not have undergone a proper security vetting.

I have but two words for him:

Alfonso Gagliano.

The poster child of dubious vetting for high office in Canada.

That’s all.

Two interesting points came up in today’s edition of PrimeTime Politics on CPAC:

1. Pollster Nik Nanos reports that Canadians rate Stephen Harper as the most competent leader over Stéphane Dion by a factor of more than three to one.
2. In an interview with Environment Minister John Baird, Peter van Dusen notes that his previous guest, Elmer Fudd sound-alike John McCallum, warned that his party’s carbon tax proposal was not a tax on gasoline.

Now, let’s see: a leader who is not perceived by most voters as a competent manager entertains an election plank that would vastly increase oil and coal-based energy prices for Canadians, all while Ontario’s economy is reeling from high energy costs for its industries. So his greatest concern is that his minions do not suggest a hike in gas taxes is coming. Instead, he sticks with his master plan of swinging the death blow to the economy of the most vote-rich province in Canada.

Wow.

A postmodernist academic at Dartmouth College is threatening to sue her students on grounds that their “anti-intellectualism” violated her civil rights:

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of “French narrative theory” that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will “name names.”

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. “My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful,” she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. “They’d argue with your ideas.” This caused “subversiveness,” a principle English professors usually favor.

Such loopy resorts to legalism by the unreasonable are, of course, nothing new to us in Canada. But finding students who resist these PoMo clowns rather than acquiescing to them for the sake of grades is astounding. Hope remains in the quest to reclaim sanity in academia.

NEXT GEN HUMAN RIGHTS
The Future of Canada’s Human Rights Commissions
Crowne Plaza Hotel
Ottawa, Ontario
June 3, 2008
A Public Policy Forum Symposium

The agenda.

11:30 am Pundit’s Pit
This session will feature intellectual debate about the role of HRCs in
particular, and the state in general in addressing discrimination, hate
speech, and human rights violations in Canadian society.
Participants:
Warren Kinsella (confirmed)
Dr. Keith Martin, MP (invited)