The Great Pumpkin

Play the global freezing game!

2009-01-21T08:57:00.000-04:00

...and benefit an Alaskan children's charity. The fact that folks from Alaska to Florida are shivering along with The Goracle will hopefully help warm his heart, if not his grey matter.

via Drudge

Thank you, President Bush

2009-01-20T13:49:00.002-04:00

Related: Mission Accomplished

Alien Nation

2009-01-20T12:25:00.004-04:00

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, "You are mad, you are not like us."
St. Anthony of Egypt

Doreen M. Truesdell:

I am a middle aged, middle income, traditional Catholic female and I don’t belong here anymore.

The nation I have loved all my life has rebelled, like some arrogant teenager who smugly tells his mother and father that he knows more than they do. It’s been coming on for some time, but I’ve always comforted myself with the thought that I stood with a silent majority that was just too busy working and striving and living and dying to voice their concerns about where the culture of our nation was headed.

Forty years or so after the cultural and sexual revolution began, the “teenagers” have won, the silent majority is a minority, and this nation — on an executive level — has become alien ground to me and many others.

This is not just inaugural griping, this is the realization that our nation has finally, officially embraced the post-modern world; that, in addition to media elitists and collegiate intellectuals spreading nihilism, we finally have a U.S. president who embodies such a culture. Propelled into office by voter greed, Barack Obama will now lead the nation that leads the world, using his successful blend of atheistic humanism and political manipulation that make for easy-to-digest sound bytes. The immoralists are no longer only in the ivory towers, they are in the White House, not to mention the courts, the educational systems and the financial industries. And most Americans don’t mind at all or are too busy or distracted to notice.

The U.S. has unequivocally, unabashedly and electorally embraced a subjective reality where truth is changeable, depending upon how it can serve our pocketbooks and our uninformed consciences.

“Every generation feels the same way, and yet the nation survives,” you may say. But I say our nation is dying and it’s closer to its death throes now than ever before in its history. The United States is 233 years old and it is creaking under the weight of its own arrogance.
“In the end Christ will triumph and the His truth will be vindicated,” you may also say, and I concur with a grateful heart. I thank God for His promises, which I know He will keep. But between now and His triumph could be the end of the great American experiment. Christ never promised the U.S.A. would be around to welcome His victory, and it’s not alarmist to say that our beloved nation may well fall before that glorious day arrives.

Stop. Before you click the “comment” link, stay with me a while longer because here’s where this article takes a surprising turn towards optimism. After two months of pondering what this new presidency and administration will wreak upon unborn babies, legitimate marriage, public education, health care and a bevy of other life-altering issues, I maintain there is opportunity alongside this heartache. In God’s universe, thanks to His mercy and providence, there always is.

The universal struggle between good and evil, between Christ and His enemies has now taken center stage in this nation. For decades most American Catholics have lived relatively comfortably by accepting shades of gray. Little by little the grays became darker as more of the Church’s moral teachings were questioned, ignored and rejected. Now, the gray areas have turned to blackness. It is no longer possible for lukewarm Catholics to remain faithful. The gray areas are gone. American Catholics will either embrace the white light of Truth or accept the darkness.

So where does this leave aliens like me? Totally reliant upon God, and for many of us it will be the first time in our lives. I used to define myself as an American Catholic, but now I realize I am a Catholic in America. The nation I used to depend upon to accept my spiritual composition is gone. No longer does our citizenship agree that our laws are, and should be, based on Judeo-Christian concepts. No longer can a Christian assume his moral beliefs will be given fair representation or even toleration in the public forum.

As aliens, we have an important role to play as keepers of the faith on hostile soil. Here’s our opportunity to get off the fence on every controversial issue that offends God and start pulling our weight as Catholics in America. Many Catholics already are very publicly defending Christ and His Gospel truths. Most aren’t. Are you defending Christ in America? Am I?

The rest.

Video tribute to the Obamessiah*

* Definition

h/t Happy Catholic for the St. Anthony of Egypt quote.

15 seconds

2009-01-08T21:17:00.001-04:00

An IDF soldier's Hanukkah

2009-01-07T13:32:00.001-04:00

Danny Brothers:

I studied in a Jewish seminary (yeshiva) a few years back, and at the time I was just beginning to consider the idea of serving in the Israeli Army. This particular yeshiva is a "charedi" institution - essentially ultra-orthodox. Charedi yeshivas are generally not very Zionistic, and their opinion of young men serving in an army instead of spending all day every day studying Torah is fairly low. So, when I volunteered to a rabbi that I was interested in the IDF, the response wasn't warm, to say the least.

The rhetoric thrown around was that the IDF is a "bad place for religious Jews." They liked to say that it's hard to be religious there, that it's hard to keep your level of faith, and that there are too many bad influences. At the time I didn't have any other information, I didn't know what it's like to be orthodox in the army, so I just took it for what it was worth: hyper-religious Jerusalemites judging what they had no experience in in the first place. I didn't know what to think, but I assumed that they were being slightly dramatic.

And now I know just how wrong they were. I have become even more observant of Torah law in the army. I pray three times a day, as required in Judaism, I'm kosher without condition, and I celebrate all the holidays and cultural events to the max. It's just so easy to be religious in the army. We wake up in the morning, do a gun safety check, and then we are promptly given nearly an hour for the morning prayers. It's either pray or clean the rooms...

...

I'm constantly surprised at the religiosity of this organization. So when Hanukkah came around I was happily surprised as we were gathered each night to light the candles, say the prayers, and join in on singing and dancing to celebrate the victory that the Maccabeans had over the powerful Greeks. Here we were, a group of Jewish soldiers celebrating the most unlikely of upsets by our Jewish brothers 2000 years before. For so long we had no state, much less no army, and consequently we had no security. Our people were thrown from land to land, abused and led like sheep to the slaughter. But finally we've returned, and I'm a part of that.

As we sang "Al HaNisim" I couldn't help but feel the hand of divine assistance; the Maccabean War and the 1948 War of Independence seemed like one and the same. Hanukkah is a celebration of the Jews overcoming the Greek oppressors, a regime that attempted to destroy the Jewish people, faith, and state. We overcame them then, and we will overcome the attackers of our state again. Hanukkah is a celebration of the physical strength to be found in faith, and I think what the charedi yeshivas are missing is that the IDF's fist is steeled only because its other hand is grasping a Torah.

We know where our strength comes from, just as Joshua and David knew, just as Judah The Maccabee knew.

The rest (including a video Brothers shot of his platoon dancing and singing part of "Al HaNisim.")

Related: The Book of Maccabees

The Children of Men

2009-01-07T10:58:00.003-04:00

PD James' novel, which I read last year, takes on a strange life of its own:

A "Reborn" doll

WASHINGTON - Many people like to stop and play with newborn babies, but now some adult women are playing house with fake babies.

Some women are even going as far as taking day trips with the fake babies to the park, out to eat, and even hosting birthday parties for them.

Forty-nine-year-old Linda is married with no children of her own. Now, she says she feels like a mother because she has Reborns [link added]-- dolls made to look and feel like the real thing.

"It's not a crazy habit, like, you know, drinking, or some sort of, something that's going to hurt you. It's like a hobby and it doesn't really hurt anybody," Linda said.

The sadly bizarre rest.

Related: Dolls Replacing Children in Ever-Aging, Childless Japan

Hamas and revolutionary Iran's ecumenical quest

2009-01-07T07:58:00.001-04:00

WSJ Opinion Journal:

Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that Sunni and Shiite radicals don't work together -- er, except when they do. Proof that the conventional wisdom is badly wrong is on offer in Gaza, where the manifest destiny of the Islamic Republic of Iran is now unfolding. Tehran has been aiding Hamas for years with the aim of radicalizing politics across the entire Arab Middle East. Now Israel's response to thousands of Hamas rocket provocations appears to be doing just that.

Born in the 1980s from the ruins of the Palestine Liberation Organization's corrupt and decaying secular nationalism, Hamas is a grass-roots, Sunni Islamist movement that has made Shiite Iran a front-line player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Before Hamas, the mullahs had financed the Palestine Islamic Jihad, whose holy warriors became renowned suicide bombers. But Islamic Jihad has always been a fringe group within Palestinian society. As national elections revealed in 2006, Hamas is mainstream.

Although often little appreciated in the West, revolutionary Iran's ecumenical quest has remained a constant in its approach to Sunni Muslims. The anti-Shiite rhetoric of many Sunni fundamentalist groups has rarely been reciprocated by Iran's ruling elite. Since the death in 1989 of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the charismatic, quintessentially Shiite leader of the Islamic revolution, Iran's ruling mullahs have tried assiduously to downplay the sectarian content in their militant message.

Khomeini's successor, Ali Khamenei, has consistently married his virulent anti-American rhetoric (Khomeini's "Great Satan" has become Khamenei's "Satan Incarnate") with a global appeal to faithful Muslims to join the battle against the U.S. and its allies. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the most politically adept of the revolution's founding clerics, loved to sponsor militant Sunni-Shiite gatherings when he was speaker of parliament and later as president (1989-1997). He and Mr. Khamenei, who have worked hand-in-hand on national-security issues and have unquestionably authorized every major terrorist operation since the death of Khomeini in 1989, have always been the ultimate pragmatists, even reaching out to Arab Sunni radicals with a strong anti-Shiite bent.

The rest.

Gasp! Fauxtography from Gaza!

2009-01-06T21:58:00.001-04:00

Mere Rhetoric:

Remember these tools? The ones who aired the Al-Dura hoax, inspired mass murder against non-Muslims, and then tried to bully skeptics into silence? Old habits die hard:

French public television network France 2 on Tuesday revealed they had aired photographs that allegedly showed destruction caused by the Israel Air Force during Operation Cast Lead, which were in fact taken during a different incident in 2005, one in which Gaza civilians were killed by an explosion caused by militants in the Strip. The footage aired on Channel 2 on Tuesday afternoon showed dozens of dead bodies, including Hamas gunmen and citizens, which the channel said were killed by an IAF bombing raid on January 1st. It later came to light that the channel had instead aired footage of the devastation caused after a truck full of explosives blew up in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp.

Wrong year, wrong cause. Though probably an honest mistake that has nothing to do with eager anti-Israel demonization in the France 2 newsroom. These things just happen.

The rest.

A creative use for microwave ovens

2009-01-06T21:30:00.003-04:00

See if you can guess what they're up to before the people leave the scene (make sure you have your speakers turned on).

Automotive bailout poster

2009-01-06T14:10:00.001-04:00

(Click to enlarge)

Courtesy Positive Liberty, h/t Kiwi Pundit

Though in all fairness to the Big 3, some blame must be squarely placed upon the additional burdens imposed by lawmakers and regulators via CAFE standards and other such interference with normal business practices and the real desires of consumers.

When death becomes an industry

2009-01-06T10:15:00.003-04:00

Mona Charen, Jewish World Review:

It's often pointed out that Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist. It's more than that. Hamas, with Iran's backing, is committed to Israel's violent destruction. Missiles have fallen on schools and homes. Hamas is explicit about desiring Israeli counterattacks, because while Hamas aims to kill Israeli civilians, they know that Israel tries very hard not to kill Palestinian civilians. But every Palestinian death at the hands of Israel is seen as a propaganda victory for Hamas — which is why they place their munitions and terrorists in mosques, hospitals, and homes crowded with children. Hamas representative Fathi Hamad [link added] stated it explicitly: "For the Palestinian people death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly (Palestinians) created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine, as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death as you desire life." [emphasis added]

It's impossible for Israel to hit back at Hamas without harming and killing innocent civilians. As Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu has pointed out, by aiming at Israeli civilians and using Palestinian civilians as human shields, Hamas is committing a double war crime.

But you will wait in vain for an international outcry.

The rest.

Crisis and Leviathan

2009-01-06T09:12:00.001-04:00

The new year always brings a spate of predictions, so I may as well add one of my own. I predict that the American Leviathan is about to undergo a growth spurt.

David Boaz:

Paging Naomi Klein. In her book The Shock Doctrine, the left-wing polemicist claimed that right-wing governments — which she defined very broadly — take advantage of crises, or “shocks,” to implement their dastardly policies of free trade, privatization, and tax cuts. Well, one government has now announced its intention to take advantage of an economic crisis to implement “things you could not do before.” And since this government no doubt includes a lot of people who have read Naomi Klein, she may very well be able to take credit for giving them the idea.

According to the Wall Street Journal, President-elect Obama’s first and most central appointee is excited at the opportunities presented by the current economic shock:

Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, speaking to a Wall Street Journal conclave of business leaders Tuesday, said the economic crisis facing the country is “an opportunity to do things you could not do before.”

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Mr. Emanuel said.

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Klein’s fans would be all over that if a Republican had said it. Instead, Paul Krugman praises that very line. Maybe he’s learned a few things from Naomi Klein, too.

In Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs demonstrated that government growth in the United States has not been slow and steady, year in and year out. Rather, its scope and power tend to shoot up during wars and economic crises. Occasionally, around the world, there have been instances where a crisis led to free-market reforms. Generally, though, governments seek to expand their power, and they take advantage of crises to do so. But they rarely spell their intentions out as clearly as Rahm Emanuel did.

See Klein’s thesis skewered by Johan Norberg here and here, and by Jonathan Chait here.

[Source]

Feel the love

2009-01-05T13:56:00.001-04:00

From San Francisco...

(via Zomblog)

...to Melbourne.

(via LGF)

A self-confessed progressive stares into the abyss...

2009-01-04T18:57:00.004-04:00

... and the abyss stares back at him.

Roger Ebert:

It's all coming to pieces, isn't it -- the world we live in, the continuity we thought we could count on, the climate, the economy, the fragile peace. The 20th century was called "the American Century," with some reason. I do not believe the 21st century will belong to anybody, and it may not last for 100 years of human witness. There are nuclear weapons in the Middle East and on the Indian subcontinent, and if one is used, more will follow and who can say when the devastation will end?

The weather is unhinged. It is no longer a question of global warming. It is a question of what in the hell is happening? I do not have to rehearse for you the details of this horrible American autumn, and a winter not yet half over. The tornadoes, the hurricanes, the floods, the blizzards, the wild fires, the heat waves, the water shortages, the power blackouts. The White House declares "a state of emergency" and the federal government sends money. How many states of emergency are we still in? How much more money is there?
The economy is going to get worse. We may have no idea how much worse. The greed and corruption at the economy's core reached a scale unimaginable at the time of the Great Depression. Even responsible banks are threatened, because they cannot borrow and are fearful of lending. The world seeks safe havens for wealth, but the dollar is weaker, the yen is also surrounded by Recession, and if we park our money in China, a risky notion, what will happen with their money, parked here?
...
What a daunting situation [Obama] will face. How well can he possibly "succeed" when so many of the problems, starting with the climate, cannot be cured by the actions of man? How can he lead the economy back from a pit of unbridled, unregulated greed--when we learn that CEOs protected their own $100 million bonuses as part of the bailout package we all paid for? How will he bring world peace between peoples who have hated each other for decades? [source]

Wow. From elation to rock bottom in just 2 months. I think he set a land-speed record or something:

As the mighty tide swept the land on Tuesday night, I was transfixed. As the pundits pondered red states and blue states, projections and exit polls, I was swept with emotion. Not because America was "electing its first Black president." That comes a little late in the day. It was because America was electing the right President.

Our long national nightmare is ending. America will not soon again start a war based on lies and propaganda. We will not torture. We will restore the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of privacy, and habeas corpus. We will enter at last in the struggle against environmental disaster. Our ideas will once again be more powerful than our weapons. During the last eight years, the beacon on the hill flickered out. Now the torch will shine again.

Admittedly, he did sounds a note of caution even while rhapsodizing, perhaps realizing that all those inconvenient expectations about the Obamessiah might have to be ratcheted back a wee bit:

But, oh, it will be hard for him. He inherits a wrong war, a disillusioned nation, and a crumbling economy. He may have to be a Depression president. [source]

Or perhaps a president of the depressed.

Calvin and Hobbesianism

2009-01-03T11:50:00.000-04:00

Click.

Hamas has this strategem down pat

2009-01-02T22:53:00.000-04:00

I came across this quote recently:

It is an old stratagem for the persecutor to say that he is being persecuted. Popular wisdom has seen right through this all along. In the words of the old Spanish saying: "They throw the stone and then bandage themselves."
St. Josemaria Escriva

Maybe St. Escriva has been moonlighting at The National Post, where popular wisdom can still be found:

Nor are we much moved by Hamas's claims that most of the dead are women and children. Again, Israel's enemies know what tugs at the heartstrings of Westerners and are not above adding young corpses to the piles so as to shock and appall European and North American viewers.

Still, even if we accept Hamas's death tolls and concede that many innocent civilians have died in Israel's air raids, the fault for these deaths lies clearly with Hamas.
International law recognizes a country's right to defend its borders and population, with violence if necessary. It also places the legal blame for civilian deaths on combatants who attack a sovereign nation, then scurry back to bases hidden among the regular population.
Were Israel to desist now, before Hamas has been dealt a crippling blow and before the Israeli government has once again proved its mettle, Palestinian militants would soon be firing rockets at Israeli schools, homes, shops, offices and public buildings again. Nothing would have been gained and the lives lost on both sides would have been in vain.
As unpleasant as it may be for Israel to persist, it must forge on if Operation Cast Lead is to have any long-term benefits.

Exactly.

Why the issue of abortion is also a free speech issue - Part II

2009-01-01T21:19:00.001-04:00

I previously posted about why the abortion debate has become a free speech issue here, and now Jonathan Kay expands upon the theme:

Following on the idea that "people treat as human that which appears to be human," [philosopher James Q. Wilson] suggested in Commentary magazine that every woman seeking to abort her fetus be made to examine a photo depicting roughly what that fetus looks like on the day in question -- an image contained in a catalogue retained for this purpose: "266 photographs in all," Wilson specified, "one for each day of embryonic or fetal development."
The idea has always appealed to me for one simple reason: It ensures that the mother understands the moral dimension of what she is doing at the moment she is doing it.
...
It seems like a cruel exercise, but it also strikes me as morally necessary. One of the lamentable results of the culture wars is that women have been taught to regard abortion -- a medically profound event that either kills, or pre-empts, a unique, genetically determinate human being -- as if it were merely an act of feminist self-empowerment. Showing a mother an image of her soon-to-be-dead fetus will disabuse her of that myth.
Over time, such a policy might also render a more humane society. It is no coincidence that monstrous crimes are most common under governments that deliberately shield their citizens from the moral consequences of their actions. In the Soviet Union, abortion was used as a means of birth control. (In latter decades, each Soviet mother had, on average, four abortions.) And why not? The all-knowing state said it was OK. In other communist nations, orphaned babies were warehoused in conditions that ordinary people would have found shocking -- had they been allowed to observe them.
This is more or less the template that Canada's militant pro-abortion advocates are following. Last month, the National Post's Charles Lewis profiled the tactics that university radicals are using to shut down the abortion debate on Canadian campuses. At the University of Guelph, the Central Student Association has informed Life Choice, an anti-abortion student club, that it would not be accredited because its message allegedly offends women. The controversy mirrors a similar episode at York University, whose student government banned a pro-life group under an identical pretext last summer.
And then last week, Lewis reported that the Student Union of Lakehead University (LUSU), an officially pro-choice body, is forcing all student publications and displays to be "positive" in nature -- a blanket move obviously designed as a pretext to thwart a pro-life group that recently petitioned CUSA for official status.
In the most telling example, a prolife student group at the University of Calgary has been threatened with fines and expulsion because it erected a large, graphic display showing a bloody fetus alongside an image of Holocaust victims. (The school is willing to permit the display -- but only if it is turned around, so that passers-by won't see it.)
Dead babies and Jews -- that's strong stuff. But an obvious question presents itself: Would students be forced to take down equally graphic images of Falun Gong victims? Of domestic-abuse survivors? Of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? Probably not. On those issues, universities and student activists rise to their role as debaters and truth-seekers. But not when it comes to abortion: An anything-goes consensus has been reached, they tell us, encoded in Canada's complete absence of an abortion law. And anyone who complains about it is a presumed misogynist.
In other words, pro-abortion radicals don't just want a country where abortion is free and easy, but where consciences are as well -- where a woman who gets an abortion is not only exempt from legal sanction, but also exempt from the natural moral reflection that, in a humane society, inevitably accompanies major bioethical choices. And to make that wish come true, they're willing to shut up anyone trying to tell women the other side of the story.
Even Canadians who support abortion rights should find that pretty scary. A "right to choose" means nothing if women don't also have a right to be informed.

Proportionate hypocrisy

2009-01-01T15:25:00.002-04:00

George Jonas puts it in perspective:

Societies dispensing the advice of proportionate response have often reacted with less restraint than countries they warn against "overreacting." Certainly Israel has tolerated insurgents terrorizing civilian populations to a much greater extent than the U. S. (or, for that matter, Canada) ever would. In Canada, prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act in response to a few mailbox bombs and two kidnappings by the Front de liberation du Quebec. Agree with Trudeau or not, it took just one murder (Pierre Laporte), one maiming (Sergeant-Major Walter Leja) and one abduction (James Cross) to send tanks rumbling down the streets of Montreal in 1970.

The rest.

Theotokos

2009-01-01T13:57:00.001-04:00

Men have crowded all her glory into a single phrase: The Mother of God. No one can say anything greater of her.
- Martin Luther

From antiquity, Mary has been called “Theotokos”, or “God-Bearer” (Mother of God). It is a relatively recent phenomenon among some Christians that this term has even become controversial. Yet since the Protestant reformation – it has. So, sadly, it is this title which prevents some Christians from experiencing Mary as the gift that she is meant to be for the whole church and for the world. The word in Greek is “Theotokos”.

The term was used as part of the popular piety of the early first millennium church. It is used throughout the Eastern Church's Liturgy, both Orthodox and Catholic. It lies at the heart of the Latin Rite's deep Marian piety and devotion. This title was a response to the early threats to 'orthodoxy' or the preservation of authentic Christian teaching. A pronouncement of an early Church Council, The Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D., insisted “… If anyone does not confess that God is truly Emmanuel, and that on this account the holy virgin is the “Theotokos” (for according to the flesh she gave birth to the word of God become flesh by birth) let him be anathema.” The Council of Ephesus, 431 AD,

I believe that this division over Mary need not and should not continue. First, the historical reason for the Council’s insistence on the use of the title reflected a an effort to preserve the teaching of the Christian church that Jesus was both Divine and human, that the two natures were united in His Person. Not only was that teaching under an assault then, it is under an assault now. This teaching lies at the heart of the Christian claim and the implications of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ for all who bear the name Christian. It must be protected as the unique distinctive and contribution of Christianity.

The reason that the early Church Council pronounced this doctrine was “Christological”, meaning that it had to do with Jesus Christ. No one has ever claimed that Mary gave birth to His Divinity but rather that His human and divine nature could not be separated.One of the the threats to orthodoxy in that day was an interpretation of the teachings of a Bishop of Constantinople named Nestorius. Some of his followers insisted on calling Mary only the “Mother of "the Christ””.The Council insisted on the use of the title (in the Greek) of “Theotokos,” (“Mother of God” or “God-bearer") to reaffirm the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Continued disagreements concerning this term through Christian history have led to a diminution in the role of Mary in some Christian circles. Subsequent reaction and counter reactions have made it all very complicated. This has impeded some Christians from grasping a deeper truth concerning the very meaning of Mary’s life - her humility and her deference to God's Will. Perhaps it has also impeded a fuller understanding of the call to every Christian to live our lives for God as Mary did? Maybe it has also undermined our mission to bring “the world” to the new world, recreated in her Son, the Church which is His Body on earth, continuing His redemptive mission?

When we fail to receive the great gift of Mary and learn to pray her prayer and live like her we may miss the call of every Christian to bear Jesus for the world as she did. It is time to re- examine the deeper implications of the treasure that is found in the life example and message of the little Virgin of Nazareth. This wonderful title, Mary, the Mother of God, “Theotokos”, reveals a profound truth not only about Mary, but about each one of us. We are now invited into the very relationship that she had with her Son. We can become “God-bearers” and bring Him to all those whom we encounter in our few short days under the sun. [source]

The UV Index is low

2009-01-01T12:18:00.002-04:00

Outside my front window, noon, January 1, 2009

Environment Canada:

...Major winter storm to give blizzard conditions to Prince Edward Island.

An intense low south of Cape Breton will track northeastward today. The low will lie east of Cape Breton later this afternoon and will continue towards Newfoundland this evening.

Snow heavy at times will ease off over most of Prince county this afternoon but will persist over Queens and Kings County until late in the evening. Total snowfall amounts of up to 20 centimetres are likely over Prince county...While the rest of the province could see 25 to 40 centimetres with locally higher amounts possible over parts of eastern Kings County.

Very strong northwesterly winds will persist throughout the day. Wind gusts up to 100 km/h are expected. These very strong winds will give widespread blowing snow and white out conditions...As well as cold wind chill values. Blizzard conditions will likely persist over eastern Kings County until Friday morning.

In addition...Higher than normal waters levels can be expected this afternoon and evening for most coastal areas of the province. For north-facing coastlines of Queens and Kings counties...These high water levels combined with heavy pounding surf could give local coastal flooding during high tides later on today and today night.

CBC:

Police are warning people to stay off the roads Thursday as Prince Edward Island is blasted by a winter storm, essentially shutting down the Island.

Snowplows were pulled off the roads around 6 a.m. because of near-zero visibility and blowing snow.

Police are warning people to stay off the roads, which are covered by half-metre snowdrifts.

P.E.I. could get 15 to 45 centimetres of snow.

Many flights in or out of the Charlottetown Airport are cancelled or delayed, while the Confederation Bridge is closed to high-sided vehicles.

No power outages have been reported, with wind gusts nearing 100 km/h expected later in the day.

Most of the annual New Year's levees, including the army and lieutenant-governor's levees, have been cancelled. A longstanding tradition on the Island, the gatherings give people a chance to meet their neighbours and dignitaries.

Charlottetown's Polar Bear swim will go ahead, however. [It was almost canceled due to to global warming, but with a wind chill of -13 C, it is presumed no polar bears will drown. Ed.]

Nova Scotia and parts of eastern New Brunswick will also feel the effects of the storm. Cape Breton is expected to bear the brunt of the blizzard, with as much as 45 centimetres of snow forecast.

Many flights in and out of Halifax Stanfield International Airport are already cancelled or delayed.

Related: It's the sun, stupid.

New Year's Eve adult beverage for 2008

2008-12-31T22:05:00.001-04:00

Slàinte mhòr agus a h-uile beannachd duibh!*

(Found under the Christmas tree - in honor of my Scottish ancestry of course)

Glenlivet 12 Year Old shows a perfectly balanced display of fruity and floral flavours. Oak is present but in the distance. This Classic Speyside conveys beautiful images of a fertile orchard, blossoming at springtime and laden with juicy ripe fruit at summertime. Nose and palate offer a warm experience of Speyside fresh and fragrant air. The single malt to choose for a relaxing moment, enjoyed on its own or with a fruit pudding (plum or apricot pie, Belgian waffle with stewed apples, marzipan biscuits).

Inverness Courier:

A party of Excise officers, led by Mr Mactavish of Braemar, has uncovered a hidden supply of illicit whisky. The amount of spirit seized is described as being of “unusual magnitude”. This is a rare success for the Excisemen in their prolonged battle against the infamous whisky smugglers of Glenlivet.

For many years now this isolated glen has been the centre of whisky smuggling in Scotland, with hundreds of illicit stills secretly operating in the bleak and rugged terrain. Aided and abetted by many resentful of the punitive tax on whisky, the smugglers transport their illegal cargo out of the glen in armed convoys, to the Scottish Lowlands and beyond.

So good is the quality of the Glenlivet whisky that it has become known as “the real stuff”, and for wealthy connoisseurs throughout the land there is no acceptable substitute. But for once, things have not gone the smugglers’ way.

It appears that for some weeks the resourceful Mr Mactavish has been shadowing one of the bands of smugglers as they have gone about their unlawful business. In the process, he has discovered where a large consignment of whisky is to be concealed on its first night in transit. It is a vital piece of information.

While the smugglers sleep soundly some distance away, Mactavish returns to the scene with an armed posse and, under cover of darkness, seizes 20 ankers [casks] of “pure Glenlivet”, worth a small fortune to the outlawed distillers.

Alerted in the nick of time, the smugglers themselves evade capture. Nevertheless, the operation is deemed a success and it is to be hoped that Mr Mactavish is rewarded for his courage and initiative with a dram or two of the prized booty. [22 January 1822 - source]

*Great health and every good blessing to you!

New Year's Eve Family Scrabble Game

2008-12-31T21:40:00.000-04:00

All tiles used (house rules allow country names) - team play with girls beating the boys (this time around as my son insisted I point out) 328 to 317 - a nail-biter to the last word.

Happy New Year!

The useful idiocy of delusional 'realists'

2008-12-31T13:21:00.004-04:00

[image courtesy of Joel Rosenberg]

Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post:

Both Iran and its Hamas proxy in Gaza have been busy this Christmas week showing Christendom just what they think of it. But no one seems to have noticed.

On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari'a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion.

Hamas's endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad. Here, too, Hamas wanted to make sure that Christians didn't feel neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day care centers and schools. So on Wednesday, Hamas lobbed a mortar shell at the Erez crossing point into Israel just as a group of Gazan Christians were standing on line waiting to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas.

While Hamas joyously renewed its jihad against Jews and Christians, its overlords in Iran also basked in jihadist triumphalism. The source of Teheran's sense of ascendancy this week was Britain's Channel 4 network's decision to request that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad give a special Christmas Day address to the British people. Ahmadinejad's speech was supposed to be a response to Queen Elizabeth II's traditional Christmas Day address to her subjects. That is, Channel 4 presented his message as a reasonable counterpoint to the Christmas greetings of the head of the Church of England.

Channel 4 justified its move by proclaiming that it was providing a public service. As a spokesman told The Jerusalem Post, "We're offering [Ahmadinejad] the chance to speak for himself, which people in the West don't often get the chance to see."

While that sounds reasonable, the fact is that Westerners see Ahmadinejad speaking for himself all the time. They saw him at the UN two years in a row as he called for the countries of the world to submit to Islam; claimed that Iran's nuclear weapons program is divinely inspired; and castigated Jews as subhuman menaces to humanity.

They saw him gather leading anti-Semites from all over the world at his Holocaust denial conference.

They heard him speak in his own words when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

And of course, over the years Ahmadinejad has often communicated directly to the British people. For instance, in 2007 he received unlimited airtime on UK television as he paraded kidnapped British sailors and marines in front of television cameras; forced them to make videotaped "confessions" of their "crime" of entering Iranian territorial waters; and compelled them to grovel at his knee and thank him for "forgiving" them.

The British people listened to Ahmadinejad as he condemned Britain as a warmongering nation after its leaders had surrendered Basra to Iranian proxies. They heard him - speaking in his own voice - when he announced that in a gesture of Islamic mercy, he was freeing their humiliated sailors and marines in honor of Muhammad's birthday and Easter, and then called on all Britons to convert to Islam.

Yet as far as Channel 4 is concerned, Ahmadinejad is still an unknown quantity for most Britons. So they asked him to address the nation on Christmas. And not surprisingly, in his address, he attacked their way of life and co-opted their Jewish savior, Jesus, saying, "If Christ was on earth today, undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers."

He then reiterated his call for non-Muslims to convert to Islam saying, "The solution to today's problems can be found in a return to the call of the divine prophets."

THE FACT of the matter is that Channel 4 is right. There is a great deal of ignorance in the West about what the likes of Ahmadinejad and his colleagues in Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas stand for. But this isn't their fault. They tell us every day that they seek the destruction of the Jews and the domination of the West in the name of Islam. And every day they take actions that they believe advance their goals.

The reason that the West remains ignorant of the views and goals of the likes of Hamas and Iran is not that the latter have hidden their views and goals. It is because the leading political leaders and foreign policy practitioners in the West refuse to listen to them and deny the significance of their actions.

As far as the West's leaders are concerned, Iran and its allies are unimportant. They are not actors, but objects. As far as the West's leading foreign policy "experts" and decision-makers are concerned, the only true actors on the global stage are Western powers. They alone have the power to shape reality and the world. Oddly enough, this dominant political philosophy, which is based on denying the existence of non-Western actors on the world stage, is referred to as political "realism."

The rest.

Outside my window

2008-12-30T14:22:00.001-04:00

Our kiwi vine (which finally produced fruit this summer after 6 years and is gradually taking over our deck) provides a good highway for our frequent visitor, who travels across our roof to a jump-off point to the nearest tree.

Eat (chocolate), drink (tea and wine) and be merry... and bright

2008-12-30T13:57:00.002-04:00

ScienceDaily (Dec. 24, 2008) — All that chocolate might actually help finish the bumper Christmas crossword over the seasonal period. According to Oxford researchers working with colleagues in Norway, chocolate, wine and tea enhance cognitive performance.

The team from Oxford’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and Norway examined the relation between cognitive performance and the intake of three common foodstuffs that contain flavonoids (chocolate, wine, and tea) in 2,031 older people (aged between 70 and 74).

Participants filled in information about their habitual food intake and underwent a battery of cognitive tests.Those who consumed chocolate, wine, or tea had significantly better mean test scores and lower prevalence of poor cognitive performance than those who did not. The team reported their findings in the Journal of Nutrition.

The role of micronutrients in age-related cognitive decline is being increasingly studied. Fruits and beverages such as tea, red wine, cocoa, and coffee are major dietary sources of polyphenols, micronutrients found in plant-derived foods. The largest subclass of dietary polyphenols is flavonoids, and it has been reported in the past that those who consume lots of flavonoids have a lower incidence of dementia.

The rest.

Ruach Tzahal - or "The Spirit of The IDF"

2008-12-30T12:55:00.001-04:00

Before I entered the army I used to always throw around something I had heard from Israeli advocates. They like to say that Israel is one of the most humane armies in the world, despite what anti-Israel crowds may say. That crowd says that we kill innocents, that we beat the Palestinians, that we do everything possible to demean the humans living in Gaza, the West Bank, and within the borders of the State. I knew it wasn't true, so I followed the pro-Israel declaration of humanity.

However, I didn't really know what it meant for the IDF to be "humane." I knew that Israel gives free medical care to Palestinians with serious problems, including allowing women in to give birth in Israeli hospitals. I knew that we take religious Muslim laws seriously at checkpoints, especially in terms of male soldiers not touching female Muslims. I knew that we take the utmost care to protect the dignity of the Palestinians. I guess I didn't know how we got to that point, to the point of knowing how to be humane, what being humane meant.

I finally figured it out when we were taken into an auditorium on base recently to receive a lecture about "The Spirit of The IDF," or Ruach Tzahal in Hebrew. This was actually the second time that I was formally taught the ethical code of the IDF, the first being in Michve Alon. We took our seats in the large auditorium, and at the podium stood the Company Commander, the commander in charge of all the new recruits in my battalion. After we got situated he started.

The fantasy life of a Popular Mechanics writer, circa 1950

2008-12-29T21:52:00.002-04:00

Click to enlarge. [source]

Seeing (through) the half-full glass

2008-12-29T21:23:00.003-04:00

It was a chance conversation on March 23 1985 ("in the afternoon, as I recall") that first started Josh Silver on his quest to make the world's poor see. A professor of physics at Oxford University, Silver was idly discussing optical lenses with a colleague, wondering whether they might be adjusted without the need for expensive specialist equipment, when the lightbulb of inspiration first flickered above his head.

What if it were possible, he thought, to make a pair of glasses which, instead of requiring an optician, could be "tuned" by the wearer to correct his or her own vision? Might it be possible to bring affordable spectacles to millions who would never otherwise have them?

More than two decades after posing that question, Silver now feels he has the answer. The British inventor has embarked on a quest that is breathtakingly ambitious, but which he insists is achievable - to offer glasses to a billion of the world's poorest people by 2020.
...
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.

Read the rest here.

It's never too early to start planning for St. Valentine's Day

2008-12-29T21:10:00.003-04:00

Or for celebrating the end of global warming in style:

The how-to's.

Soon to be seen on bicycle paths everywhere

2008-12-29T16:20:00.001-04:00

Or not... $165 is the cost of trying to not look like a dweeb... Of course, you can always purposely choose to look like a homespun dweeb. (Someone wanna Photoshop Jack Layton in one of these?!)

"Now we turn to Professor Smith, who adheres to a Marxian paradigm...

2008-12-29T15:35:00.001-04:00

...that regards capitalism as a moral outrage that is destined to collapse according to the implacable laws of history."

Wouldn't it be great if the MSM would preface the remarks of its "economic experts" with such an introduction? Why this won't happen:

Economists are everywhere in the media these days, arguing with each other and pronouncing on what precisely needs to be done to fix our economic problems. The majority say that the government needs to spend and inflate like crazy, while others say that this will not only fail to fix the problem but will prolong the downturn.

The opinions of economists are not random. They can be classified into schools of thought, and to schools within schools. It's too bad that the radio and television announcers can't just say this before the economist ever opens his mouth.

"Now we have a word from Professor Jones, who was trained according to the Keynesian tradition, and advocates Keynesian-style policies as dictated by a Keynesian model."

Or, "Now we turn to Professor Smith, who adheres to a Marxian paradigm that regards capitalism as a moral outrage that is destined to collapse according to the implacable laws of history."

Or, "Professor Walker is a Chicago-school economist who generally appreciates markets but believes in monetary intervention based on a positivist understanding of economic method."

But of course the economists themselves do not want to be so classified. They would rather be seen as objective scientists — and anyone who disagrees with them to be guilty of fallacy or to be inadequately familiar with empirical reality.

Read the rest here, and have some fun taking the "Are you an Austrian?" quiz. (For the record, I'm 85% Austrian - I think I'll order Faustino Ballvé's little book and brush up on my economic theory.) Anyone want to guess what school Stephen Harper would adhere most to?

Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam...

2008-12-29T13:28:00.002-04:00

and the deer and the antelope plug'n play...

[source]

The promise of real star power in California

2008-12-29T11:52:00.002-04:00

While it has seemed an impossible goal for nearly 100 years, scientists now believe that they are on brink of cracking one of the biggest problems in physics by harnessing the power of nuclear fusion, the reaction that burns at the heart of the sun.

In the spring, a team will begin attempts to ignite a tiny man-made star inside a laboratory and trigger a thermonuclear reaction.

Its goal is to generate temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius and pressures billions of times higher than those found anywhere else on earth, from a speck of fuel little bigger than a pinhead. If successful, the experiment will mark the first step towards building a practical nuclear fusion power station and a source of almost limitless energy.

At a time when fossil fuel supplies are dwindling and fears about global warming are forcing governments to seek clean energy sources, fusion could provide the answer. Hydrogen, the fuel needed for fusion reactions, is among the most abundant in the universe. Building work on the £1.2 billion nuclear fusion experiment is due to be completed in spring.

Read the rest here.

A good question

2008-12-29T11:40:00.000-04:00

Suppose you lived in the Toronto suburb of Don Mills and people from the suburb of Scarborough -- about 10 kilometres away -- were firing as many as 100 rockets a day into your yard, your kids' school, the strip mall down the street and your dentist's office.
A trip to the cleaners to pick up your shirts would be a life-risking act. Going to the grocery store would involve thinking through in your mind the location of all the shelter sites along the way, in case rockets started raining down on the road as you drove by.
Or perhaps you lived in Montreal's Outremont neighbourhood and your children had weekly emergency drills because people who hated you -- absolutely, blindly hated you and everyone from your community -- were launching missiles by the score into your cul-de-sac and the nearby playground, and they had been doing it for seven years.

A clip-and-save retort to lob at the smug “We are all Hezbollah now" crowd. (Not that it will make much difference. But a trip to Sderot might, as it did in this case, at least temper their views.)

Related: Tales from a rocket-protected playground

Geek apples

2008-12-27T19:57:00.002-04:00

Here's how it was done.

Toyota Prius customer revives sluggish sales

2008-12-27T18:06:00.001-04:00

As The Green Motorist notes, falling gas prices aren't good for the ecomotive sector:

[In November] Toyota...posted a significant loss with a decline of 33.9% seen. What is unusual is that one Toyota model posted a huge increase in sales and it was not the Prius. Instead, it was the Toyota Sequoia with its paltry 14/17 (city/highway) fuel efficiency rating. That’s right, gas falls to under $2 gallon in most places across the United States and people seem to have amnesia. Four dollar a gallon gas was not that long ago but the way the Sequoia sold in November (a 52% increase over October) you would think it happened decades ago.

Earl Stewart, owner of a Toyota dealership in Florida “sold 57 Priuses in November, down from 67 in October. He is discounting his Priuses by $1,200 on the base model and $2,000 on the most-expensive versions.” (Source: Automotive News)

All is not lost, however, as one savvy Prius owner came up with a new climate change-friendly marketing strategy for Toyota during the most recent storm:

When an ice storm knocked out power to much of New England, one Toyota Prius owner reached for his inverter and powered some of his home with the happy little hybrid. Smug FTW? Yes.
John Sweeney, of Harvard, Massachusetts, was among the many residents of Eastern Mass without power after a big ice storm hit on December 12th. Sweeney, an electrical engineer, saw his Prius as the answer. Using an inverter, he converted the DC power coming out of the car into AC power for his house. Though he couldn't run his entire house one his one car, they were able to get approximately 17 Kilowatt hours of energy. This was enough to power his refrigerator/freezer, television, lights, wood stove fan and accessories for a few days. Although anyone can use a regular DC power supply, like the battery found in a non-Hybrid car, but a hybrid is ideal.

Read the smug rest here.

"Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about???"

2008-12-24T09:36:00.001-04:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

Queen Caroline

2008-12-23T12:59:00.000-04:00

Gag...

Nobility cannot be bothered with the rules and customs of the little people:

If she were applying to be, say, an undersecretary of education in Barack Obama’s new administration, Caroline Kennedy would have to fill out a 63-item confidential questionnaire disclosing potentially embarrassing text messages and diary entries, the immigration status of her household staff, even copies of every résumé she used in the last 10 years.

If she were running for election to the Senate, Kennedy would have to file a 10-part, publicly available report disclosing her financial assets, credit card debts, mortgages, book deals and the sources of any payments greater than $5,000 in the last three years.

But Kennedy, who has asked Governor David Paterson to appoint her to succeed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — and who helped oversee the vetting process for Obama’s possible running mates — is declining to provide a variety of basic data, including companies she has a stake in and whether she has ever been charged with a crime.

Kennedy declined on Monday to reply to those and other questions posed by The New York Times about any potential ethical, legal and financial entanglements. Through a spokesman, she said she would not disclose that kind of information unless and until she becomes a senator.
Via Michelle Malkin

Ah, Obama's Washington... 'tis a silly place:

Stormwatch

2008-12-21T21:22:00.003-04:00

With winds forecast to gust to 100 k, power outages are a real possibility. Candles shmandles - these are more fun. (And if you have little kids &/or boisterous pets, they won't burn the house down either.)

Update: the bridge may be closing by 11 p.m. too. As for me, I'm sipping the last of of three-year old bottle of Remy Martin in the crystal snifter hubby bought me a few Christmas's ago, and listening to some Christmas tunes on my new Mac... Let it snow!

Where's a martyr when you need one?

2008-12-21T21:04:00.004-04:00

One can dream.

(Send the lamp to your favorite bailout-funding politician today.)

Fred on the economy

2008-12-19T20:45:00.003-04:00

If Fred ever decides to move to Canada, Rick Mercer will have some serious competition...

h/t Tim at The Black Kettle - thanks for the laughs, Tim - maybe this is where the Onion got their inspiration for this (h/t Andrew Coyne):

In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

No Virginia - and Linda - we’re not all Keynesians now

2008-12-19T09:56:00.000-04:00

So says Joseph Ben-Ami (thanks to Hunter for the link):

With the showdown over who will ultimately hold the reins of power in Ottawa in at least temporary abeyance, people are now focusing their attention on what if any action the government should be taking in response to still developing global financial crisis. Almost everyone seems to agree that Canada needs an “economic stimulus package”. What should such a “package” consist of though, and how big should it be?

Given the way politicians and journalists are talking these days, Canadians can be forgiven for assuming that the only way to “stimulate” economic activity is for the government to “inject” money into the marketplace through increased public spending. This is not the only option available to policy-makers though, nor is it even considered by many economists to be the best option.

The subject is not as complicated as one might think.

Read the rest here. Given all the recent signs that the federal Conservatives seem to be gearing up to spend like drunken Lib/Dip sailors in an effort to save their political hides, I don't hold up much hope for "the self-styled fiscal conservatives in the federal Conservative Party to prove how committed they really are to the core principles they have professed to believe" - I think they'll be walking the plank on this one. Bah humbug.

Stimulus Canada: we're all Keynesians now, whether we like it or not

2008-12-18T21:33:00.001-04:00

After reading this dismal news, the brilliant Terence Corcoran can be credited with saving the pumpkin patch from the damaging effects of a Category 5 hissy fit:

(click for full-size image)

I note that Corcoran's item is posted beside a link to the Post's "Junk Science" feature. I propose a new series: Junk Economics. Here's to this video going viral. I re-post it here for your convenience:

Keynesian Economics Is Wrong: Bigger Government Is Not Stimulus

Keynes: not dead enough

2008-12-17T11:35:00.000-04:00

(image courtesy of Michelle Malkin)

And it would appear to be too late for an exorcist, as the "spirit of stimulus" takes over the will of what's left of the - nominally - free world. That's one possible explanation for this madness. Here's the video Terance Corcoran references in this linked article - maybe if enough copies of it land in PM Harper's and Flaherty's email, they might recall that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results:

[Thanks to Daniel J. Mitchell, Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute, for this gem.]

In this recent article, Mitchell adds a few salient points:

Unfortunately, no matter how the issue is analyzed, there is virtually no support for the notion that government spending creates jobs. Indeed, the more relevant consideration is the degree to which bigger government destroys jobs. Both the theoretical and empirical evidence argues against the notion that big government boosts job creation. Theory and evidence lead to three unavoidable conclusions:

The theory of government-instigated job creation overlooks the loss of resources available to the productive sector of the economy. Frederic Bastiat, the great French economist (yes, there were admirable French economists, albeit all of them lived in the 1800s), is well known for many reasons, including his explanation of the “seen” and the “unseen.” If the government decides to build a “Bridge to Nowhere,” it is very easy to see the workers who are employed on that project. This is the “seen.” But what is less obvious is that the resources to build that bridge are taken from the private sector and thus are no longer available for other uses. This is the “unseen.”

So-called stimulus packages have little bang for the buck. Even if one assumes that money floats down from Heaven and we don’t have to worry about the “unseen,” government is never an efficient way to achieve an objective. Based on the amount of money that is being discussed and the claims of how many jobs will be created, Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw filled in the blanks and calculated that each new job (assuming they actually materialize) will cost $280,000. But since money doesn’t come from Heaven, this calculation is only a partial measure of cost. In reality, the cost of each government job should reflect how that $280,000 would have been spent more productively in the private sector.

Government workers are grossly overpaid. There are several reasons why it costs so much for the government to “create” a job, including the inherent inefficiency of the public sector. But the dominant factor is probably the excessive compensation packages for bureaucrats. According to Bureau of Economic Analysis data, the average employee for the federal government now earns gets paid nearly twice as much as workers in the productive sector of the economy.

Notwithstanding these points, it is quite likely that politicians in Washington will pass a boondoggle-filled “stimulus” bill. While there may be a few naïve folks who think a big increase in the burden of government somehow is a recipe for job creation, politicians have a self-interested motive to move in that direction because it increases their power and influence.

They win and taxpayers lose.

Et tu, "Conservative" Party of Canada? Some of us are smart enough to figure out that The Road to Serfdom isn't just another infrastructure project.

And now for something completely different: Our Lady of Guadalupe

2008-12-12T11:42:00.003-04:00

One thing I really love about being Catholic is all the feast days - there are so many reasons to celebrate during the year. Today's feast day is one of my favorites, and a great break from all the obsessing over recessions, coalition coups, corporate bailouts, Iggy-trivia, ad nauseum.

Today the Church celebrates the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The story surrounding this holy image of our Blessed Mother is repeated below, having been reported here on December 9, the feast day of Saint Juan Diego.

On December 9, 1531, Juan Diego, a 57-year-old Aztec, was taking his daily route to Mass. Walking by Tepeyac Hill, he heard beautiful music, like choirs of angels singing. He stopped to listen. The music stopped, but he then heard the sweetest voice he’d ever heard beckoning him, “Juan, Juan Diego, Juanito!” There before him stood a most beautiful young woman, a Mexican girl who looked like an Aztec princess. She was dressed in an embroidered scarlet gown. Over her head and shoulders hung a deep jade-colored mantle covered with golden stars and she was standing on a maroon crescent, held above the ground by an angel.

“Dear little son, I love you,” she said. “I want you to know who I am. I am the ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of the true God who gives life.” She then requested that Juan go to the bishop and request that a chapel be built on the hill for the Mexican natives for whom she expressed a special love. Juan rushed to do as she asked, and was able to get in to see the bishop. He was, however, dismissed without an answer.

On his second attempt the bishop asked him to bring proof that he had indeed seen the Mother of God. Juan left excited, feeling sure that the Blessed Mother would give him this proof. The next morning, though, before Juan could go and meet with the Virgin, he found his only surviving relative, an uncle, seriously ill. Juan felt his first duty was to bring a priest to his dying uncle and so he decided to take another route so as not to see the Virgin and thus be delayed. But the Blessed Mother intercepted him on the path and assured him that his uncle would recover. She then instructed him to gather flowers that were growing on the hilltop in his tilma (shirt) and carry them to the bishop. The Madonna arranged the roses, tied the corners and asked him not to open his shirt until he reached the bishop.

When Juan stood before the bishop and untied his shirt, releasing the flowers, the bishop didn’t seem to notice them. Instead, staring at Juan’s shirt, he fell to his knees with tears streaming down his face. Perplexed, Juan looked down at his shirt and saw that the Virgin had given him a sign even more miraculous than roses growing on the side of a mountain in winter. She had left an image of herself on his tilma, looking exactly as he had seen her. And when Juan returned home, he found that his uncle’s health had been completely restored. The Madonna had appeared to his uncle, as well.

The chapel that the Virgin requested was quickly built. The image she left has been given the name of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In the following seven years after this apparition, eight million formerly pagan Aztecs were baptized and became Christians. Today an average of 1,500 pilgrims kneel daily before the miraculous tilma — which has sustained its perfect image for almost five hundred years — at the new Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

[source]

And the image itself is packed with symbolism, as The Happy Catholic explains:

As with all good Catholic images there is abundant symbolism that was specifically designed to speak to the hearts of the people to whom she brought her message ... the Aztecs. I remember when our priest put out a flyer about this and I was just knocked out at how meaningful every single thing in the image is. I really like this explanation.
The miraculous image produced on the apron or tilma of Blessed Juan Diego is rich in symbolism. The aureole or luminous light surrounding the Lady is reminiscent of the "woman clothed with the sun" of Rev. 12:1. The light is also a sign of the power of God who has sanctified and blessed the one who appears. The rays of the sun would also be recognized by the native people as a symbol of their highest god, Huitzilopochtli. Thus, the lady comes forth hiding but not extinguishing the power of the sun. She is now going to announce the God who is greater than their sun god.

The Lady is standing upon the moon. Again, the symbolism is that of the woman of Rev. 12:1 who has the "moon under her feet". The moon for the Meso-Americans was the god of the night. By standing on the moon, she shows that she is more powerful than the god of darkness. However, in Christian iconography the crescent moon under the Madonna's feet is usually a symbol of her perpetual virginity, and sometimes it can refer to her Immaculate Conception or Assumption.

The eyes of Our lady of Guadalupe are looking down with humility and compassion. This was a sign to the native people that she was not a god since in their iconography the gods stare straight ahead with their eyes wide open. We can only imagine how tenderly her eyes looked upon Blessed Juan Diego when she said: " Do not be troubled or weighed down with grief -- Am I not here who am your Mother?"

The angel supporting the Lady testifies to her royalty. To the Meso-American Indians only kings, queens and other dignitaries would be carried on the shoulders of someone. The angel is transporting the Lady to the people as a sign that a new age has come.

The mantle of the Lady is blue-green or turquoise. To the native people, this was the color of the gods and of royalty. It was also the color of the natural forces of life and fecundity. In Christian art, blue is symbolic of eternity and immortality. In Judaism, it was the color of the robe of the high priest. The limbus or gold border of her mantle is another sign of nobility.

The stars on the Lady's mantle shows that she comes from heaven. She comes as the Queen of Heaven but with the eyes of a humble and loving mother. The stars also are a sign of the supernatural character of the image. The research of Fr. Mario Rojas Sanchez and Dr. Juan Homero Hernandez Illescas of Mexico (published in 1983) shows that the stars on the Lady's mantle in the image are exactly as the stars of the winter solstice appeared before dawn on the morning of December 12, 1531.

The color of the Madonna's dress is rose or pale-red. Some have interpreted this as the color of dawn symbolizing the beginning of a new era. Others point to the red as a sign of martyrdom for the faith and divine love.

The gold-encircled cross brooch under the neck of the Lady's robe is a symbol of sanctity.

The girdle or bow around her waist is a sign of her virginity, but it also has several other meanings. The bow appears as a four-petaled flower. To the native Indians this was the nahui ollin, the flower of the sun, a symbol of plenitude. The cross-shaped flower was also connected with the cross-sticks which produce fire. For them, this was the symbol of fecundity and new life. The high position of the bow and the slight swelling of the abdomen show that the Lady is "with child". According to Dr. Carlos Fernandez Del Castillo, a leading Mexican obstetrician, the Lady appears almost ready to give birth with the infant head down resting vertically. This would further solidify her identification with the woman of Rev. 12 who is about to give birth.
The link for the above excerpt is now dead. However, you can read about this apparition of Our Lady in more depth here.

Some more about conditions in Mexico at the time Our Lady appeared as well as a prayer for abortion victims can be read at Ave Maria.

The Curt Jester has some myth-busters about this apparition, which he hastens to assure us he does regard as a miraculous event. However, it is a good reminder that it is just too tempting sometimes to make a miraculous thing even better by embellishing ... tch, tch, tch.

The Advent Conspiracy

2008-12-05T10:50:00.001-04:00

Find out more here.

... or how about a gift of 'five golden ducks'?

Another way to improve the world is this little book - it should be given out to all the knee-jerk "economic stimulus" cheerleaders that you know (including some corporate executives) - read the first chapter here. I wonder if PM Harper has read it?

When market failure is outlawed

2008-11-20T09:19:00.001-04:00

It was the institution of government that unleashed those vices of greed and avarice encouraging people to build on sand. It did so by first placing a policy priority on the good idea of home ownership but pursued it with a fanaticism that neglected other goods such as prudence and rational risk assessment.

Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute:

In a very familiar parable, Jesus tells the story of two home builders. One built a house on sand, the other on rock. The house on the rock withstood the weather. The one built on sand did not fare so well: "The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof" (Matthew 7:24-29).

If the parable were retold today, it might include an episode in which treasury officials and members of Congress cobbled together a bailout program for the owner and lender of the house on the sand. No matter how much money they spent, however, the ending would be the same.

Six weeks ago, when the $700 billion bailout of failing financial firms was being considered, the country was swept up in the debate. The bill, which created the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), passed with thin public support. Washington claimed that the bill was necessary to keep the world from an economic Armageddon. Many people suspected that it amounted to little more than welfare for Wall Street.

Who was right? Consider the dramatic change made to the way the program works, as announced last week by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. He said that the government would no longer purchase toxic assets from failing institutions. It would now start giving the money directly to lenders. In other words, the entire rationale of the bailout changed overnight.

Why the change? The problem with the original idea is that it violated every common-sense rule of business. The government would pay far more than the market would bear and then, no doubt, we would watch as the market price slid to the bottom. Every time a supporter claimed that this was a good deal for taxpayers, you could almost sense the rise in deep skepticism. If you believed them, I've got a house built on sand to sell you.

The rest.

ACLU defends "Joe the Plumber"

2008-11-17T21:43:00.000-04:00

Hell must be freezing over...

Quote of the day

2008-11-17T11:10:00.001-04:00

A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let's be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves.

- Rupert Murdoch

Change Dispenser

2008-11-13T10:50:00.000-04:00

Dispenser comes pre-loaded with Pez-flavored soma*

(However, just wearing the t-shirt seems to induce the same state of bliss)

* By this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles.

- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Island veterans of the Devil's Brigade awarded U.S. Bronze Star Medal

2008-11-11T11:54:00.002-04:00

Raymond and Lawrence Durant, August 8, 2006, Naufrage, P.E.I.

Jim Day, The Guardian:

Two Island veterans of the Second World War who served with the fearsome Devil’s Brigade have been awarded the prestigious U.S. Bronze Star Medal.

Lawrence (Junior) Durant of Charlottetown and his cousin Ray Durant, who now lives in Ottawa, can add the bronze star to their impressive list of military accolades.

The medal is awarded to those who distinguished themselves while serving with the U.S. Army by “heroic or meritorious achievement or service . . . in connection with military operations against an armed enemy.’’

Both of the Durants volunteered at the same time with the First Special Service Force (FSSF) — the joint Canadian-American commando unit better known as the Devil’s Brigade.

The one-of-a-kind military unit was perhaps most noted for conducting silent night raids on the German lines, their faces smeared with black boot paste, leaving casualties in their wake and a special calling card that read, in German: “The worst is yet to come.’’

The FSSF was known for special training that included parachuting, skiing and mountain climbing, as well as conducting extreme marches with immensely heavy packs on their backs.
But for the reinforcements who volunteered later, like Ray and Junior Durant, this commando skills list was considerably shorter.

Junior Durant, in an interview with The Guardian last year, noted he wished he had special training when he saw battle at Anzio beachhead in Italy, where he came under heavy shelling.
Every night, he and others in the Devil’s Brigade were behind enemy lines, taking part in covert operations.
“All our work in Anzio was behind German lines, every night we were in behind German lines, every night,’’ said Junior.

“It was scary, I tell ya.’’

The U.S. Bronze Star Medal has arrived in time for Junior to add to his uniform for Remembrance Day ceremonies along with his 1939-45 Star, Italy Star, France/Germany Star, Canadian Volunteer Service Medal and the Defence Medal.

“I feel great about getting it,’’ Junior told The Guardian Friday.

Ray Durant, 86, a native of Summerside who now lives in Ottawa, said he was very proud and very honoured to receive the Bronze Star Medal.

He called the distinction one of the high points of his life.

Junior, who turns 85 in December, was a 19-year-old farm labourer in Wilmot Valley when he signed up as an infantryman in May 1943.

He was in a holding camp in Avellino, Italy, in 1944 when he volunteered for the FSSF.

Ray was coincidentally there at the same time and also joined up. Junior was posted with 4th company, 2nd regiment and his cousin, Ray, with 3rd company, 3rd regiment.

Related: The Devil's Brigade

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
H. L. Mencken

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

Geriatric cyberpunk

2008-11-07T10:07:00.002-04:00

Gizmodo:

Honda's first foray into robotizing old peoples' haunches looked pretty tame, but this new one, on which geriatrics are supposed to mount like some sort of meat trophy, feels like a glimpse into a horrible, dystopian future where up is down, right is wrong and grandmas and grandpas amble through Sears on mechanized rectal steeds instead of walkers. The machine, which I'm 90% sure is just the missing half of this Battle Droid from Attack of the Clones, is more a passive support device than it is a set of active robot limbs, though it does have a small electric motor.

Obamanation

2008-11-07T09:54:00.002-04:00

Click.

Lemmings as a projection of existential angst**

2008-11-06T16:04:00.003-04:00

When one narrative fails, simply substitute another one.

**

Oprah has her first porta-potty experience!

2008-11-06T10:46:00.001-04:00

"Spreading the wealth" has begun.

Bricks - no, not brickbats - for Obama

2008-11-06T00:20:00.000-04:00

[The Lego artist]

“What people are not dealing with is the fact that we’re going up against a culture that finds it acceptable to do the things the rest of the world left behind with the barbarians in the 6th Century. I’m a little tired of people worrying about being polite.”
– Frank Miller, the creator of 300, in the L.A. Times

300 is the movie to watch. Also, I guess the DVD will sell like hotcakes.

Indeed, this is the most controversial war film since Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and young men are flocking to cinemas, in spite of denunciations from mad Iranian ayatollahs, or because of them, one would hope.

Narrated by Australia’s David Wenham, 300 tracks a small band of Spartan warriors through the Battle of Thermopylae, a battle in which democracy-loving Greeks take on the all-powerful dictator-worshipping Persians.

For the most part it “is excessively, cheerfully violent – and it is gorgeous to behold,” observes Richard Roeper, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist. “It looks like the world’s most sophisticated and expensive video game, and I mean that in a good way.”

Sophisticated, indeed.

The cutting edge visuals (from lifelike computer-generated battles to the hypertechnical digital back lots) are, no doubt, enchanting Australian audiences too. This is a smash, bash, clash of civilizations, and our nation’s top grossing film.

Director Zack Snyder, 40, focuses on the fog of appeasement, as opposed to the fog of war. This is critical. In 300, one doesn’t have to watch smiley-face, happy clappy, kids flying red kites in King Xerxes’s land, or hear a fat guy telling us what to think.

When you enter 300, you’re opening the door to harsh realism. In 300 democracy is the imperfect good guy, where one is exposed to a “make no apologies” culture. The enemy, of course, is Persia (Ancient Iran), where real evil resides, and “reason” is a dirty word.

300’s Spartan ground-pounders are sword-happy patriots, hawks driven by testosterone-fuelled dreams of battle. Moreover, Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and his fellow troops reject “diplomatic” gabfests in favour of chummy in-jokes, spellbinding military stratagems, and verbal attacks on pro-appeasement elitists.

The rest.

Only 77 days left till we find out the meaning of "Hope" and "Change"

2008-11-05T22:28:00.001-04:00

God bless America. And may God bless President-elect Barack Obama with true wisdom, faith, and courage for the responsibilities he has been entrusted with.

God of power and might, wisdom and justice,
through You authority is rightly administered,
laws are enacted, and judgment is decreed.
Assist with your spirit of counsel and fortitude
the President and other government leaders of the United States.

May they always seek the ways of righteousness, justice and mercy.
Grant that they may be enabled by your powerful protection
to lead their country with honesty and integrity.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Mark Steyn:

I congratulate Senator Obama on a remarkable and decisive victory. It was in many ways the final battle in a war the Republican Party didn’t even bother fighting — the “long march through the institutions.” While the Senator certainly enjoyed the patronage of the Chicago machine, he is not primarily a political figure: Whether “educators” like William Ayers or therapeutic pop-culture types like Oprah, his closest associations are beyond the world of electoral politics. He emerged rather from all the cultural turf the GOP largely abandoned during its 30-year winning streak at the ballot box, and his victory demonstrates the folly of assuming that folks will continue to pull the lever for guys with an R after their name every other November even as all the other institutions in society become de facto liberal one-party states.

Bill Bennett asked me on the air the other day why voters were so hot for this hope’n’change mush, and I suggested that it’s the dominant vernacular of the age. Go into almost any American grade-school and stroll the corridors: you’ll find the walls lined with Sharpie-bright supersized touchy-feely abstractions: “RESPECT,” “DREAM,” “TOGETHER,” “DIVERSITY.” By contrast, Mister Maverick talked of “reaching across the aisle” and ending “earmarks,” which may sound heroic in Washington but ring shriveled and reductive to anyone who’s not obsessed with legislative process. This dead language embodied the narrow sliver of turf on which he was fighting, while Obama was bestriding the broader cultural space. Republicans need to start their own long march back through all the institutions they ceded. Otherwise, the default mode of this society will be liberal, and what’s left of the Republican party will be reduced (as in other parts of the west) to begging the electorate for the occasional opportunity to prove it can run the liberal state just as well as liberals can.

Thankfully, the conservative (not to be mistaken for the Republican) "long march - back - through the institutions" has already begun. Rev. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute spoke recently on "The Way Forward":

Today we find institution after institution “in the tank” for unrestrained government intervention. One is reminded of Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s call for the left to begin a long march through the institutions of Western Civilization. The left, it seems, got the memo. How will we respond to this disheartening situation? Now is no time to retreat in disarray. Now is no time to stumble. There remains a remnant … a potent remnant who has not bowed the knee to big government. My call to you tonight is a transparent one: strengthen the soldiers of that remnant. In particular—strengthen that band of brothers gathered with you tonight, the Acton Institute.

Never in Acton’s nearly 20 year history has our message been more essential than right now. As an institution that cherishes the free and virtuous society, we are living through this thing with all of you, and we need your help to continue. Our history of integrity; the quality of our products and programs; the responsible tone with which we approach the questions at hand, all speak to the fact that this work is worthy of your investment. I humbly ask for it with the promise that we will use it well and prudently.

The fact of the matter is that too many of us have become much too comfortable and yielded to a perennial temptation, the temptation to take our liberty for granted. Those of you who have invested in the work of the Acton Institute over the years know—and especially those of you who have had a chance to see our latest media effort “The Birth of Freedom” know—we believe the time has come for a renewal of those principles that form the very foundation of civilization, the same principles that make prosperity possible and accessible to those on the margins.

Liberty is indeed, as Lord Acton said, “the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” As such it is in need of a nutritious soil in which to flourish. In this sense you and I are tillers of the soil, if you will.

Liberty is a delicate fruit. It is also an uncommon one. When one surveys human history it becomes evident how unusual, how precious is authentic liberty, as is the economic progress that is its result. These past few weeks are a vivid and sad testimony to this fact. As a delicate fruit, human liberty as well as economic stability must be tended to, lest it disintegrate. It requires constant attention, new appreciation and understanding, renewal, moral defense and integration into the whole fabric of society.

In a trenchant analysis of the free society, Friedrich Hayek once offered a sobering speculation:

“It may be that as free a society as we have known it carries in itself the forces of its own destruction, and that once freedom is achieved it is taken for granted and ceases to be valued…” and then he goes on to ask, “Does this mean that freedom is valued only when it is lost, that the world must everywhere go through a dark phase of socialist totalitarianism before the forces of freedom can gather strength anew?”

He answers, “It may be so, but I hope it need not be.”

Read the rest here.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself?"

2008-11-04T10:15:00.001-04:00

The great Binks cuts to the chase:

Duh. Sounds like someone who never met a bear or had appendicitis.

Any sensible non-Utopian should rightly and deeply fear the Obama Scam winning the Presidency. Fear partisan politics as enforced national policy. Fear Blue Shirt truthsquad tactics and messianic government. Fear playing communist games with the engine of the world economy. Fear what all the bad people will do when the world cop goes AWOL with social engineering, redistribution, and other communistical experiments on people.

Fear is not the worst thing. Bad people with bad ideas and power to do bad things?– much, much worse than a little fear.

Today and tomorrow the world holds its breath. Heaven itself seems watchful.

If Mr. McCain wins, it will be a very near thing, and all the Utopians will not be happy, and the new president will have to sort out a nation more divided and more entrenched in a state of political cold war than ever before. The increasingly extremist Democrats bear the burden of blame, but so do slack Big-Gov Republicans, and conservatives who’ve been dropping the ball in the culture wars.

David Warren says:

The United States is on the verge of electing a man whose sweet promises include an end to rising sea levels, and the change you can believe in. Should he win, and should his party form the supermajority in the U.S. Congress that is currently predicted in the polls, we can be assured of at least four years of American self-destruction — probably on a scale beyond that of the Carter presidency — with consequences to the entire free world.

Look at all the souls who gather in the mass rallies for this eloquent demagogue! We have seen this kind of thing so many times before in history. People believe because they want to believe. But when their faith is transferred from God, to politicians; and when their rational judgment is suspended, from the illusion of hope — well. My own earthly prayer is a simple one, that Truman will somehow defeat Dewey, in this instance, letting us return to our real problems, with whatever our wallets still contain.

Hear us, O Lord, in heaven thy dwelling place.

And let all the people say ‘Amen!’.

Binks

And Fr. John Corapi, preacher extraordinaire with a doctorate in Catholic dogmatic theology, concisely confutes convoluted Catholic 'conscience' claptrap. The money quote is in the second clip: "Now read my lips: any Catholic who votes for a pro-abortion candidate is cooperating in gross moral evil."

h/t Linda Keefe-Trainor, The Explainor

UPDATE: The Sheepcat states it perfectly: "I tell you, some people will say, à la Matthew 25, "Lord, Lord, when did we see you dying abandoned in a hospital utility closet?"

Choose wisely.

2008-11-03T10:07:00.005-04:00

The furnace kicked in an hour early again this morning, as we'd forgotten to reset the programmable thermostat along with all the clocks on Saturday night, so I found myself wide awake just after 5 a.m. from the sudden blast of heat. (As my proud ownership of two vintage Snoopy "I'm allergic to mornings" mugs attest, early awakenings by yours truly rank as unusual events of historic proportions.) And seemingly out of nowhere, the words, "I have set before you life and death" started rattling around in my head. Now, as much as I would like to claim that I often wake up with Bible verses upon my lips, this is, alas, an altogether too infrequent occurrence. And not being blessed with a good memory for particulars, like chapter and verse, I got a cup of coffee going, and googled. Right - Deuteronomy - I knew that... (ahem).

"For this command which I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you.

It is not up in the sky, that you should say, 'Who will go up in the sky to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?'

Nor is it across the sea, that you should say, 'Who will cross the sea to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?'

No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.

"Here, then, I have today set before you life and prosperity, death and doom.

If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving him, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous, and the LORD, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy.

If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen, but are led astray and adore and serve other gods,

I tell you now that you will certainly perish; you will not have a long life on the land which you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy.

I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land which the LORD swore he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." (Deuteronomy 30:11-20, New American Bible)

Tomorrow, the United States will have to choose, and for Catholics, as George Weigel explains, it "is not too mysterious and remote... it is not up in the sky... nor is is across the sea." In fact, there can be no equivocating:

As Cardinal George's letter indicated, the Catholic Church's teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion involves a first principle of justice that can be known by reason, that's one of the building blocks of a just society, and that ought never be compromised—which is why, for example, Catholic legislators were morally obliged to oppose legal segregation (another practice once upheld by a Supreme Court decision that denied human beings the full protection of the laws). Questions of war and peace, social-welfare policy, environmental policy and economic policy, on the other hand, are matters of prudential judgment on which people who affirm the same principles of Catholic social doctrine can reasonably differ. The pro-life, pro-Obama Catholics are thus putting the full weigh of their moral argument on contingent prudential judgments that, by definition, cannot bear that weight.

This is an election about life and death. Here in Canada, we didn't really have a choice - or a voice for that matter - beyond considering the views of individual candidates. Americans do. Canadian musician and evangelist Mark Mallett has recorded a video for American Catholics that I'd like to share. (Yes, he knows he flubbed the U.S. election date - a minor point - as he notes in the post related to the video. Now, contrary to the polls, media onslaught, and general hysteria, I don't agree that Obama's necessarily got a lock on this election. It ain't over till it's over. And I know that Mark would agree that our cooperation with God's grace and mercy may yet turn the tide. However, I concur with him on the rest: "This is not about another round of debates on women’s rights or the right to choose. This is an illumination of conscience on perhaps the most pivotal social issue in the modern world."

The Hour of Decision from Mark Mallett on Vimeo.

UPDATE: Two excellent related articles:

"An open letter to our fellow Catholics on Election Eve" by Edward Morrissey and Elizabeth “The Anchoress” Scalia

and

"The Pro-Life Case Against Barack Obama . . . and Doug Kmiec" by Ryan T. Anderson & Sherif Girgis

Happy Hallowe'en!

2008-10-31T14:06:00.005-03:00

It's a busy day in the pumpkin patch - as you can well imagine - so I'll leave you with this post, first published October 31, 2005:

“Oh, Great Pumpkin, where are you?”

- Linus Van Pelt

One of pop art’s great emblematic figures of human spirituality stands only three inches high, sucks his thumb like a lollipop, and perpetually carries a blue blanket wherever he goes, clutching it close to him for security from a hostile world. By choosing to keep his feet firmly planted in a forbidding pumpkin patch on Halloween night, rather than partake in his peers’ holiday festivities, Linus proves that his clear-eyed conviction, his single-minded religious philosophical questing, separates him from the crowd. This 1966 CBS television special presentation and 25-minute ostensible children’s film, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, directed by Bill Melendez and written by Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, provides us with one of American filmmaking’s most lucid depictions of the struggle between existentialism and religious determinism. It is a film that skirts the line between the secular and the sacrosanct, a children’s work that finds the spiritual in the mundane, and specifically attempts to locate the divine in the pagan. The Great Pumpkin himself, defined at once by his presence and non-presence, looms large over cartoonist Schulz’s world, witnessing as we do the interactions of these little people way down below, all of them stuck in a deceptively benign universe, beset by ironic turnabouts, lacking any sort of parental authority, trapped within the same clothes day in and day out, never aging. There must be a greater, controlling being to whisk them from this stasis.

Read the rest here (and you'll learn a bit more about how/why I chose the name of my blog...) And may The Great Pumpkin visit your pumpkin patch!

Great Pumpkin Eve

2008-10-30T21:35:00.001-03:00

This time of year I get a lot of visitors searching for info on The Great Pumpkin, and pumpkins in general. (I won't mention some of the weirder search terms...) So, here you go.

The Great Pumpkin trivia game - yes, of course I aced it.

I had no idea my tax dollars funded an online government recipe book, but in the spirit of the season...

And for some entrepreneurial balance, if you or a loved one would like to be immortalized on a pumpkin, check out That Pumpkin Guy, in Summerside, PEI.

Australian Christian Lobby's dangerous move

2008-10-30T18:52:00.003-03:00

John Bosch at Acton's PowerBlog:

Via Drudge, Australia is joining none other than China in censoring the internet. Here’s a surprising endorsement/justification the writer uses to bottom line the article:
The Australian Christian Lobby, however, has welcomed the proposals. Managing director Jim Wallace said the measures were needed. “The need to prevent access to illegal hard-core material and child pornography must be placed above the industry’s desire for unfettered access,” Mr Wallace said.
I’m not endorsing porn. But earth to Mr. Wallace: Scan up a few ‘graphs and note how Chinese Keepers of Internet Purity shield their masses against illegal “spiritual movements.” Makes me wonder how long the internet will be available to Christian “industries” like outreach and evangelism. Not too long, considering some Christians are readily turning those reigns over to government.

Jesus didn’t condemn prostitutes or demand that His disciples lobby for nanny states. He offered them grace and holiness and a new life, and people took Him up on it.

Not to mention that these measures won't even "prevent access to illegal hard-core material and child pornography":

Human Rights Watch has condemned internet censorship, and argued to the US Senate "there is a real danger of a Virtual Curtain dividing the internet, much as the Iron Curtain did during the Cold War, because some governments fear the potential of the internet, (and) want to control it"
Groups including the System Administrators Guild of Australia and Electronic Frontiers Australia have attacked the proposal, saying it would unfairly restrict Australians' access to the web, slow internet speeds and raise the price of internet access.
EFA board member Colin Jacobs said it would have little effect on illegal internet content, including child pornography, as it would not cover file-sharing networks. [emphasis added]

"If the Government would actually come out and say we're only targeting child pornography it would be a different debate," he said.

Exactly. Perhaps the Australian Christian Lobby should have a little chat with Reverend Stephen Boissoin. They might find it instructive.

Sarkozy views Obama stance on Iran as 'utterly immature'

2008-10-28T12:13:00.001-03:00

Haaretz:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is very critical of U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama's positions on Iran, according to reports that have reached Israel's government.

Sarkozy has made his criticisms only in closed forums in France. But according to a senior Israeli government source, the reports reaching Israel indicate that Sarkozy views the Democratic candidate's stance on Iran as "utterly immature" and comprised of "formulations empty of all content."
...

The French intelligence community believes that Iran has already obtained about 40 percent of the enriched uranium it would need for its first bomb, and that at its current rate, it will obtain the rest of the uranium it needs in the spring or summer of 2009.

Now isn't that encouraging. Unlike his countrymen and women, Sarkozy sees the empty suit for what it is.

The Wealth Redistribution Gospel according to the Obamessiah

2008-10-27T12:18:00.004-03:00

The One speaks (ignore the captioning, and just listen):

The entire audio is here. Fox News:

A 7-year-old radio interview in which Barack Obama discussed the failure of the Supreme Court to rule on redistributing wealth in its Civil Rights rulings has given fresh ammunition to critics who say the Democratic presidential candidate has a socialist agenda.
The interview -- conducted by Chicago Public Radio in 2001, while Obama was an Illinois state senator and a law professor at the University of Chicago -- delves into whether the civil rights movement should have gone further than it did, so that when "dispossessed peoples" appealed to the high court on the right to sit at the lunch counter, they should have also appealed for the right to have someone else pay for the meal.
...

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said Monday the comments on the tape have "nothing to do with Obama's economic plan or his plan to give the middle class a tax cut."
"Here are the facts. In the interview, Obama went into extensive detail to explain why the courts should not get into that business of 'redistributing' wealth. Obama's point -- and what he called a tragedy -- was that legal victories in the civil rights led too many people to rely on the courts to change society for the better. That view is shared by conservative judges and legal scholars across the country," Burton said..
"As Obama has said before and written about, he believes that change comes from the bottom up -- not from the corridors of Washington. ... And so Obama's point was simply that if we want to improve economic conditions for people in this country, we should do so by bringing people together at the community level and getting everyone involved in our democratic process," Burton continued.
National Review reporter Byron York, a FOX News contributor, said the U.S. government already has a progressive tax system that gives money earned by one group to another group, but it's a matter of degree. He added that Obama's outlook on that system hasn't changed.
"It seems clear from listening to this that the Obama of 2001 and probably the Obama of today feels that the government doesn't do that enough, and I think that's probably the big point in this tape," York said.
"You've got to take him at his word," York added. "It seems to me that the tape shows that this is simply a goal he has had for a long time." [source]

Lawyer Bill Dyer comments:

Fairly considered in context, this radio program demonstrates Obama's recognition that the Warren Court failed to redistribute America's wealth. It should, however, be deeply troubling to conservatives on a more fundamental level: Even back in 2001, Barack Obama was already focused on building a "coalition of power" in the executive and legislative branches that could indeed bring about a national redistribution of wealth which even the most activist courts couldn't achieve on their own.

Read his analysis of the audio here. He concludes:

The reason for conservatives and moderates to be concerned about Barack Obama is not simply that he's a hard-left liberal — it's that he's an ambitious and talented hard-left liberal. He's seen where the Warren Court fell short. Barack Obama is now literally only days away from, in his words from this radio program, possibly "put[ting] together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change." Of that, we ought to all be duly terrified.

Jeff Goldstein:

In Obama’s America, we’ll finally be able to break free of the “constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution” — and in so doing, achieve “social justice” through “redistributive change.”

Well, then. Fine .

But this is not the America I knew…

Jennifer Rubin:

First, a person often identified for the Obama Supreme Court actually does believe in an extreme version of the Constitution, a version which confers all sorts of economic “rights,” so I’m not sure even his supposed caution about using the courts as welfare agencies is to be given credence. Second, it is fairly obvious that Obama was saying nothing extraordinary in his own mind. This is the sort of thing left-leaning “intellectuals” bandied about. It’s the outlook that underscored the bent of not just his closest comrades at the time ( e.g. Reverend Wright and Father Pfleger), but the activist organizations he and Bill Ayers supported through the Woods Fund. It is absurd, really, to write off all these associations as an aberration or exaggeration, or to ignore them as some imagining of paranoid conservatives. What comes through loud and clear was that Obama shared the classic anti-capitalist, redistributionist philosophy accepted as dogma by many on the Left.
Remember, this isn’t ancient history. Obama was sharing Socialism 101 with radio listeners just seven years ago. At the same time, he was sitting on the board of the Woods Fund, going to Trinity United Church, and a enjoying a robust professional relationship with Bill Ayers. Has he given all that up? We don’t know, because no one in the media has taken seriously Obama’s intellectual and professional development. No one has asked him basic questions about the past (e.g. Did he share the ideological vision of the Woods Fund grant recipients? Did he agree with Ayers’ radical educational theory?) or even his current economic philosophy. Doesn’t he still believe in spreading the wealth? He certainly did seven years ago.

UPDATE: More Protein Wisdom.

UPDATE: A coherent conservative response to the Gospel of O:

The Moral Case Against High Taxation

2008-10-26T15:25:00.004-03:00

Taxation can never be substituted for the virtue of charity. In fact, as one of the commenters in the following post puts it, "Replacing charity with welfare replaces the opportunity for virtue with the incentive for vice. " Kate Wicker explains:

As a pro-life Catholic, I wouldn't vote for a politician with radical pro-choice views. And, for the most part, even those who disagree with me respect that position. But people begin to raise eyebrows when I say I believe that raising taxes on the wealthy to benefit the less well-off is wrong as well.

How do I reconcile my obligation to promote social justice and embrace Jesus' teaching that "whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me" with my strong beliefs that high taxation is wrong?

Let me count the ways.

There's the economic standpoint, which has little to do with my Catholic faith -- the fact that high taxation results in sluggish economies where enterprising individuals and businesses sustain such a heavy tax burden that they either look to do business elsewhere (as in abroad) or cut jobs and stop hiring.

But standing on its own, my economic arguments do little to show why, in my mind, high taxation does not only hurt economies, it hurts humanity.

Let me explain.

Income should not be distributed; it should be earned. There is something morally wrong with coercively taking people's money and punishing diligence. That's exactly what "redistributing the wealth" does: We give government the power to determine who is in need and who isn't. We take away a person's ownership of their work. Creation belongs to the creator.

Do we have a Christian duty to share our God-given blessings with others? Definitely. But not through government coercion. When government becomes the central hub for the distribution of wealth, people's work no longer belongs to them; it belongs to the greater society, the "common good." As Americans, we are entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." By burdening upper-income earners with tremendous taxes in order to "restore fairness," we're saying that some of us are entitled to happiness without the pursuit.

The rest.

UPDATE: More economic analysis of O's plan.

***UPDATE: Via Instapundit (background on the audio is here, via Michelle Malkin):

It's The Great Obama, Charlie Brown

2008-10-26T13:55:00.001-03:00

Gary McCoy

h/t Celestial Junk

UPDATE: Related - an easy costume!

"Joe the Dumber"

2008-10-23T09:57:00.001-03:00

Iowahawk has some fun.

h/t Deborah Gyapong.

Steyn's prescience

2008-10-21T19:30:00.001-03:00

Almost 10 years ago to the day, in his first National Post column:

Canada’s much-vaunted niceness is smug and suffocating, but it’s our national characteristic. It’s what all those National Lampoon non-jokes boil down to: “How do you get 40 Canadians into a phone booth?” “You say, ‘Pardon me, but would you please all go into the phone booth?’” Etc. The truth is it requires a vast panoply of restrictive legislation to shoehorn us in: Canada’s “niceness” has always been somewhat coercive. It’s not just anti-totalitarian demonstrators being denied the right to protest, but also fellows like that Mayor of Fredericton, forced by New Brunswick’s Human Rights Commission to proclaim officially the city’s Gay Pride Week.

Canada’s famous “tolerance” has become progressively intolerant. It’s no longer enough to be tolerant, to be blithely indifferent, warily accepting, detachedly libertarian about gays – as the Mayor and his electors were. For tolerance is, by definition, somewhat grudging. Instead, gays must be accorded official mandatory fulsome approval, no matter that enforcing Gay Pride means inflicting Straight Humiliation on a hapless mayor and displaying a cool contempt for his electorate. As the Queen put it a couple of Canada Days back, “Let us celebrate the unique Canadian ability to turn diversity to the common good.” But the uniquely Canadian thing about “diversity” is the ruthless uniformity with which it’s applied.

I’ll bet those B.C. students protesting against Suharto would approve of the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission’s ruling that Hizzoner was guilty of discrimination. But the trouble with letting the state restrict free expression in the interests of nice cuddly causes like gay liberation is that you make it a lot easier for them to restrict free expression in the interests of non-nice causes like Suharto. In Canada, we’ve let the state go too far in policing dissent. Our official niceness has led, inexorably, to official intolerance – or to put it in culinary terms: If you cook up something that bland, it’s bound to get covered in pepper.

The rest. And for a spicy antidote, click on that Tyranny of Nice icon in the sidebar - or if you don't mind the extra shipping cost, Mark can personally autograph a copy for you - he's penned a nice, long introduction from what I hear - Canada Haste should be delivering my copy any day now...

And the Political Darwin Award of the Year goes to...

2008-10-21T14:50:00.001-03:00

... smirky Joe the Senator, who now unequivocally OWNS the term "demotivator".

But in case that's not enough of a disincentive for ya, here's a few more.

Dion

2008-10-21T08:31:00.002-03:00

As Oscar Wilde said, “It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame."

However, we can take comfort in the fact that Dion is taking a page from Kyoto - the dog, that is - at least for a few more months.

UPDATE: in the category of things that make you go "hmmmm..." - why is it that whenever I post something about the Libs I get one or more visits from China? You'd think that a site like the Blogging Tories would be verboten there - except perhaps to foreign reporters? Just wondering.

Chinanet Jiangsu Province Network (121.229.179.92) [Label IP Address]

Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, 0 returning visits

Date	Time	Type	WebPage
21st October 2008	11:37:14	Page View	www.bloggingtories.ca/btentries.php?start=0 pumpkin-watch.blogspot.com/2008/10/dion.html

Transformational: "from the land of the free and the home of the brave into another socialist swamp."

2008-10-20T20:05:00.001-03:00

Roger Kimball responds to Colin Powell's endorsement of the Obamessiah:

Obama represents the union of two distinct radicalisms: the old-style socialist radicalism of the 1930s and the cultural-radicalism of the 1960s. One emphasizes increased government control of business, increased government intrusion into family life, health care, education, higher taxes more regulation. The other emphasizes the agenda of multiculturalism and political correctness and the politics of redress. Obamas’s greatest triumph has been to amalgamate these different radicalisms into a smiling rhetorical mantra called “Change.”

Will it sell? In an earlier post, I said that “Whatever else it is, this election is a referendum on two very different visions of America. Obama’s vision is of country crippled by sin; McCain and Palin’s vision is of a country fired by high ideals and expansive opportunity.” Which has more traction? To a large extent, it depends on how successful the left’s “long march through the institutions” has been. In my book The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America, I wrote that

The Age of Aquarius did not end when the last electric guitar was unplugged at Woodstock. It lives on in our values and habits, in our tastes, pleasures, and aspirations. It lives on especially in our educational and cultural institutions, and in the degraded pop culture that permeates our lives like a corrosive fog. . . . .

The question is how far outside the precincts of elite opinion that fog has penetrated. I suspect most Americans side with John McCain and Sarah Palin and Joe the plumber against the socialist mandarins who have plotted out a socialist future for America, and one that is inflected, moreover, by the antinomianism of class warriors like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. If I am right, you should not be surprised to wake up on November 5 and find that John McCain has been elected the forty-fourth president of the United States.

The rest.

Enraged Manhattan Democrat Beats Female McCain volunteer with a Stick

2008-10-17T23:38:00.003-03:00

Will the media run with a story of an Obama supporter who went berserk at the sight of McCain signs and repeatedly struck a woman volunteer on the head with a stick?

[**crickets chirping...**]

I said, “What are you doing? You can’t do that!” And he was red in the face screaming, “You people are ridiculous!” And I said, “Yeah, whatever, but you can’t do that.”

So I reached for the sign that he ripped up, and he grabbed another sign, broke it, and ripped it to shreds. And when I said, “You can’t do that,” he took the stick from the sign and started beating me on the head with it. He broke the skin on my head, he scratched my wrist, and almost broke my glasses, and then he left.

I followed him down the stairs to the subway until I could get the police and I said, “You’re not going to get away with it.” And as soon as he saw the police he immediately went calm. He still had the stick in his hand, and you could see the injury on my face, and he admitted it. He was arrested. He actually said, “I don’t know why I did this. It’s just those signs, and this election, it has me so upset.”

Some people are losing control, and it’s not the people on the right. Never have I seen that behavior with any of the people on my side of the fence. … It’s just not our way. Look at us, most of us have never been protesters. … Do I feel that the left is aggressive and potentially violent? Yes, because we’ve all seen it. I certainly have … firsthand!

The rest.

The Audacity of Plumbers: Thoughts on Living the American Dream

2008-10-17T20:27:00.000-03:00

[Larger view available here.]

John McCain:

We had a good debate this week. You may have noticed — there was a lot of talk about Senator Obama’s tax increases and Joe the Plumber. Last weekend, Senator Obama showed up in Joe’s driveway to ask for his vote, and Joe asked Senator Obama a tough question. I’m glad he did; I think Senator Obama could use a few more tough questions.

The response from Senator Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe. People are digging through his personal life and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn’t ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn’t recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.

The question Joe asked about our economy is important, because Senator Obama’s plan would raise taxes on small businesses that employ 16 million Americans. Senator Obama’s plan will kill those jobs at just the time when we need to be creating more jobs. My plan will create jobs, and that’s what America needs.

Senator Obama says that he wanted to spread your wealth around. When politicians talk about taking your money and spreading it around, you’d better hold onto your wallet. Senator Obama claims that wants to give a tax break to the middle class, but not only did he vote for higher taxes on the middle class in the Senate, his plan gives away your tax dollars to those who don’t pay taxes. That’s not a tax cut, that’s welfare. America didn’t become the greatest nation on earth by redistributing wealth; we became the greatest nation by creating new wealth.

[source]

CRTC going after the last free speech zone: the internet

2008-10-17T15:00:00.001-03:00

I'm thinking that our Conditioners are worried about "how far our campaign to denormalize these rogue and abusive ["Human Rights"] commissions has come" and are wasting no time in seeking another avenue for control.

Deborah Gyapong:

They're asking for submissions and holding hearings on how government can regulate the Internet.

Let's make sure they don't put the kybosh on the last free speech zone there is and use Google the way China does to suppress dissent. Let's make sure that the Mainstream Media does not make sure that only their portals to the Internet are available and those that have a conservative or traditional or Christian or otherwise religious viewpoint are no longer available or only at a higher cost to state-registered "approved" sites.

The rest.

Dreams of My Plumber

2008-10-17T07:59:00.002-03:00

More at The Anchoress:

To my way of thinking, Joe the Plumber - singing the psalm of the common man, and representing the views of the middle class and what we once used to call “the Silent Majority” - has completely terrified the left, the Obama camp and the press.

And so…he must be destroyed.

So what happens to Mr. Wurzelbacher for expressing his views?

Reports in the mainstream media appear claiming that he is unlicensed (even though he doesn’t need one as an employee of a business or as a contractor working on a residence), and that he apparently has a tax lien filed against him.

Not to be outdone, the Daily Kos published his home address for all the world to see.

The rest.

Perspective

2008-10-15T20:44:00.001-03:00

David Frum:

To win re-election in the midst of the worst financial panic since 1929, with your soldiers taking casualties in a costly war on the other side of the planet, with a recession visibly gathering, and with your local currency dropping against the US dollar - that alone is an achievement. Actually to gain more seats (even if not as many as one might wish): well that's an astounding achievement.

The rest.

In PEI, the Culture of Defeat® recedes by 25%

2008-10-15T01:23:00.001-03:00

Congratulations to Gail Shea, our new Conservative MP for PEI!

Party	Candidate	% of Votes		Votes
	Shea, Gail		44.0	8,122
	Milligan, Keith		43.6	8,060
	Lewis, Orville		9.0	1,670
	Ridlington, Rebecca		3.4	626

[source]

And a big round of applause for excellent campaigns waged by Tom Deblois, Mary Crane and Sid McMullin.

Goodnight all!

Blogger outage - they say for 10 minutes

2008-10-14T21:52:00.000-03:00

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Blogger will be unavailable Tuesday (10/14) at 8:00PM PDT for about 10 minutes for maintenance.

Vote for freedom in pumpkin patches everywhere

2008-10-14T14:23:00.001-03:00

Vote for freedom.

I am a free Canadian.

I am a Canadian,
a free Canadian,
free to worship God in my own way,
free to stand for what I think right,
free to oppose what I believe wrong,
free to choose those who shall govern my country.
This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and for all mankind.

-Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker, from the House of Commons, Debates (on the Canadian Bill of Rights), July 1, 1960.

As the Blazing cool cat says:

Our last best hope to end the perversion of Canada's thought crime law, Section 13(1), remains with a Conservative Majority. A vote for any other party is a vote for censorship and the continued abuse of the rule of law by the unelected demagogues of our rogue Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Join the blogburst @ Blazing Cat Fur

The good ship Liberal

2008-10-13T21:58:00.003-03:00

To paraphrase writer Jules Ormont:

A ship, to run a straight course, can have but one pilot and one steering wheel. The same applies to the successful operation of a political party. There cannot be a steering wheel at every seat."

Liberal strategists should perhaps have taken this truism to heart when the "Dream Team" boarded the party ship almost two weeks into the campaign . Although it was a worthy attempt to take the focus off the leadership vacuum created by Dion, the Liberal brain trust might have been better served by recalling that old adage about nature and said vacuums. Predictably, much hilarity ensued. As Greg Weston reported back in September:

For the past week, Ignatieff, Rae and other high-profile Grits have been doing ever more of the talking for Dion.
Other times, Dion is simply replaced as he was yesterday at the Economic Club.
This rather embarrassing state of affairs for the Liberals has spawned no end of creative explanations.
Yesterday, it was Iggy’s turn to try to describe how he is not really fronting for a leader that his party is really, honestly, not trying to hide in the faint hope maybe Canadian voters won’t notice.
We asked Ignatieff point blank how he feels about having to be the surrogate leader for a guy who, not 20 months ago, beat Iggy for the leadership.
“I feel good about being in a team of experienced men and women,” Ignatieff said with a straight face.
Perhaps sensing the assembled media was about to double over in open guffaw, he continued: “Look, I’m serious about that. This team stuff is for real. We have confidence in a team.”
According to Ignatieff’s logic, Canadian voters should ignore the Liberals’ weak leadership and focus entirely on the rest of the party’s political bench-strength.
Hear ye! Hear ye! Okay, so the prime minister will be a dud, but the rest are okay. [source]

Speaking of duds, Iggie & Rae were so lacking in enthusiasm for the central plank of the Liberal campaign that they had to issue a press release:

For Immediate Release

October 9, 2008

Statement by Liberal Deputy Leader Michael Ignatieff and Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae

There have been recent media reports of confusion regarding our position on the implementation of the Liberal Green Shift plan.

We want to be perfectly clear we are in complete agreement with our leader, Stéphane Dion, regarding the implementation of the Liberal Green Shift plan. Like our leader, we have said clearly and consistently that we believe it will be good for the Canadian economy and we support our platform commitment of having this policy phased in over four years by a new Liberal government.

Our commitment to the Liberal vision of a richer, fairer and greener Canada is unwavering.

Uh-huh. And with that, all hopes of an outright mutiny were dashed. At least till Wednesday morning.

The problem with ACOA-style corporate welfare

2008-10-11T23:09:00.001-03:00

According to ACOA, three businesses owned by brothers of Charlottetown Liberal MP Shawn Murphy's were awarded a total of $1,825,797 in grants (nearly all in "repayable contributions") during the 10-year period of 1995-2005. Although only $452,679 of this amount was handed out while Shawn was in office, all of it occurred during federal Liberal rule:

Client Name / Project Description	Project Location	Total Government Funding	Public Access Date
K.W. Murphy Inc. Install elevator and ramps to improve accessibility	CHARLOTTETOWN	$96,014	2003-05-16
K.W. MURPHY LTD. Modernization of 73 unit Wandlyn Inn	QUEENS ROYALTY	$497,518	1997-06-16
K.W. Murphy Ltd. Property Management System consultation upgrade & training	CHARLOTTETOWN	$63,137	2004-06-07

Client Name / Project Description	Project Location	Total Government Funding	Public Access Date
Murphy Investments Ltd. Brewery	CHARLOTTETOWN	$98,000	2000-05-01
Murphy Investments Ltd. Gahan House Brewery Expansion	CHARLOTTETOWN	$14,561	2002-07-07

Client Name / Project Description	Project Location	Total Government Funding	Public Access Date
Great George Properties LTD. Upgrade furnishings and decor of inn.	CHARLOTTETOWN	$17,600	1995-04-14
Great George Properties LTD. Convert Gt George Prop to sole use Heritage Inn accommod	CHARLOTTETOWN	$760,000	1996-10-14
Great George Properties Ltd. Upgrade telephone internet voice mail and reservation sys.	CHARLOTTETOWN	$19,756	2003-06-01
Great George Properties Ltd. Upgrade from 3 to 3½ star	CHARLOTTETOWN	$152,001	2004-07-17
Great George Properties Ltd. Upgrade existing rooms for new rating guidelines	CHARLOTTETOWN	$107,210	2005-07-05

Now it can certainly be argued that businesses seeking to optimize their bottom lines, as the Murphy brothers most certainly were, would be foolish to go to a bank for traditional financing when the ACOA office down the street offered nice risk-free grants** instead. However, this misses the larger point of whether or not businesses - especially successful businesses like those owned by the Murphy's - need corporate welfare in the first place. (Not to mention the sticky issue of public perception when recipients are well-connected.) As author and policy analyst Mark Milke has written:

The problem with corporate welfare is that it is largely about winning votes and the redistribution of tax dollars and jobs, not about the creation of new tax revenue or new jobs.

For example, back in 1995, the Auditor-General highlighted a fish-processing plant in Quebec that was awarded a $2.2-million grant to finance construction of the facility; the claim was that 250 jobs were created. But, as the Auditor-General noted, another fish-processing plant soon shut down, with an equivalent number of jobs lost. This pattern repeats itself whether the enterprise in question is down the street or across provincial and national borders: One firm is subsidized at the expense of others.

For those who think such subsidies are smart national policy because an occasional subsidy may prove the exception to the rule of useless redistribution, they should recall that, according to the latest estimates available from the World Trade Organization, more than $300-billion is spent on business subsidies by governments across the world every year. Given that Canada is heavily dependent on trade, it is in our interest to work against subsidies at home and abroad, precisely because other jurisdictions, such as the United States, the European Union or China, can out-subsidize us in any sector.

In addition, rather than pick winners and losers among individual businesses or industries, Canadian governments could end corporate welfare, level the playing field and dramatically reduce corporate taxes with the amount now spent on subsidies.

For example, if the federal government had ended corporate welfare in 2004, calculated to have cost $6.6-billion that year, Ottawa could have reduced the federal corporate tax rate to 14.6% from its then-current rate of 21%. In other words, the elimination of federal corporate subsidies could have resulted in a 30.5% reduction in federal corporate income tax rates. An end to provincial and municipal corporate welfare would produce similar dramatic reductions.

Back in 2004, then opposition leader Stephen Harper said he would only cut corporate taxes to the extent that corporate welfare was reduced. Such a reduction was clearly his preference. It's why he argued that "government should concentrate on creating a favourable tax environment, rather than try and pick winners and losers."
Current corporate-welfare recipients would no doubt fight hard to keep their taxpayer-financed flow of funds [now that's an understatement, as Harper well knows], but the Prime Minister and the business community at large should ignore them. They should instead reach a deal on corporate welfare in the interests of the wider business community: slashed corporate tax rates in exchange for an end to corporate welfare. [source]

Of course, an end to corporate welfare would also mean an end to speculation about the role of family and political connections in getting a place at the trough in the first place.

Related: KPMG's 2008 survey of business tax rates

Charlottetown: a final salvo before election day

2008-10-10T23:04:00.001-03:00

Charlottetown Conservative candidate Tom Deblois's team is distributing a detailed 4-page flyer (reproduced below in 5 parts to fit my scanner bed) summarizing the issues at stake in the upcoming vote. The Liberal Carbon Tax is front and center - and rightly so. As John Ivison wrote today:

Assertion after unchallenged assertion created a picture of the sunny uplands to which a Dion government would lead Canadians. But there seemed to be a sense in the crowd that it was all too good to be true. Increasing government spending at a time when your tax revenues are drying up has the same logic to most people as putting your foot on the gas as you hurtle toward a brick wall.
Mr. Dion says his plan would "unleash" a welter of economic opportunities. "Two hundred and thirty of Canada's leading economists have written a letter advocating for the principles of the Green Shift.... They have all said this is good for the economy and good for the environment -- good for your wallet and good for the planet," he said yesterday.
Not quite. While the economists did say that government should put a price on carbon, they admitted that "substantive action will involve economic costs," not financial benefits.
Some Liberals are starting to admit that rolling out a transformative overhaul of the tax system at a time of economic uncertainty is about as sound an idea as Howard Hughes' plywood Spruce Goose.
Michael Ignatieff told the editorial board of La Presse that the plan could be modified if the economy was still rocky when a Liberal government came to power. Mr. Ignatieff said Mr. Dion would not drop the essential elements of the plan, but it may need to be adjusted to account for economic realities. Details could be changed, he said.
Not according to Mr. Dion. The Liberal leader maintains a messianic zeal for his plan and insists it will be introduced as planned by a Liberal government in its first budget, regardless of economic circumstances. The Liberal leader is convinced he has a vision that is invisible to lesser politicians --details to follow.

Gee, I feel better already. (Read the rest here.)

Here's to sanity prevailing in Charlottetown with a solid win for Tom - a good man, a true leader, and the best person to represent us in Ottawa.

(Click on each image to enlarge)

The creation of a thousand voters is in one ACORN**

2008-10-10T16:33:00.003-03:00

[As Steve in the comments noticed, the original link to the video is no longer available - but I've updated with another link. Hopefully this one stays up!]

Michelle Malkin has the details behind the ad here.

** (with apologies to Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Can I live?

2008-10-10T16:30:00.002-03:00

For the millions of Canadian children for whom the answer is "NO" - due to this man and his influence - you are not forgotten.

CAN I LIVE?
by Nick Cannon

[Nick Talking]
Talking Ma
I know the Situation is Personal
But it something that has to be told
As I was making this beat
You was all I could think about you heard my voice

[Verse 1]
Yeah Just think Just Think
What if you could Just
Just blink your self away..
Just Just wait just pause for a second
Let me plead my case
It's the late 70's Huh
You Seventeen huh
And having me that will ruin everything huh
It's alot of angels waiting on their wings
You see me in your sleep so you cant kill your dreams
300 Dollars thats the price of living what?
Mommy I dont like this clinic
Hopefully you'll make the right decision
And dont go through with the Knife incision
But it's hard to make the right move
When you in high school
How you have to work all day and take night school
Hopping off da bus when the rain is pouring
What you want morning sickness or the sickness of mourning

[Chorus]
I'll Always Be a part of you
Trust Your Soul Know it's always true
If I Could Talk I'd Say To You
CAN I LIVE
CAN I LIVE
I'll Always Be a part of you
Trust Your Soul Know it's always true
If I Could Talk I'd Say To You
CAN I LIVE
CAN I LIVE

[Verse 2]
I am a child of the king
Ain't no need to go fear me
And I see the flowing tears so know that you hear me
When I move in your womb that's me being scary
Cause who knows what my future holds
Yo the truth be told you ain't told a soul
Yo you ain't even showing I'm just 2 months old
Through your clothes try to hide me deny me
Went up 3 sizes
Your pride got you lying saying ain't nothing but a migraine
It ain't surprising you not trying to be in Wic food lines
Your friends will look at you funny but look at you mommy
That's a life inside you look at your tummy
What is becoming ma I am Oprah bound
You can tell he's a star from the Ultrasound
Our Sprits Connected Doors Open Now
Nothing But Love And Respect Thanks For Holding Me Down She Let Me Live...

[Chorus]
I'll Always Be a part of you
Trust Your Soul Know it's always true
If I Could Talk I'd Say To You
CAN I LIVE
CAN I LIVE
I'll Always Be apart of you
Trust Your Soul Know it's always true
If I Could Talk I'd Say To You
CAN I LIVE
CAN I LIVE
[Repeat 2]

[Nick Talking]

It's uplifting foreal yall
I ain't passing no judgement
Ain't making no decisions
I am just telling ya'll my story
I love life
I love my mother for giving me life
We all need to appreciate life
A strong woman that had to make a sacrifice
Thanks for listening
Thanks for listening
Mama thanks for listening

My response to the Four Horsemen....errr...persons of the Apocalypse and their minions

2008-10-09T20:56:00.001-03:00

The Toronto Star editorial, Dion bests PM in crisis response, closes comments after only 5.5 hours... of getting trashed in the comments.

Meanwhile, the editors of Torstar subsididary, The Record, should all get a free t-shirt for stellar acuity.

(Get your ThinkGeek-y t-shirt here.)

Ghosts in Obamessiah's closet?

2008-10-09T16:21:00.002-03:00

The Anchoress isn't the only one to think so:

Prior to 1990, when Barack Obama contracted to write Dreams From My Father, he had written very close to nothing. Then, five years later, this untested 33 year-old produced what Time Magazine has called -- with a straight face -- "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician."

The public is asked to believe Obama wrote Dreams From My Father on his own, almost as though he were some sort of literary idiot savant. I do not buy this canard for a minute, not at all. Writing is as much a craft as, say, golf. To put this in perspective, imagine if a friend played a few rounds in the high 90s and then a few years later, without further practice, made the PGA Tour. It doesn't happen.

And yet, given the biases of the literary establishment, no reviewer of note has so much as questioned Obama's role in the writing, then or now. As the New York Times gushed, Obama was "that rare politician who can write . . . and write movingly and genuinely about himself." These accolades matter all the more because Obama has built his political persona around his presumably superior intellect, Dreams being exhibit A.

Shy of a confession by those involved, I will not be able to prove conclusively that Obama did not write this book. As shall be seen, however, there are only two real possibilities: one is that Obama experienced a near miraculous turnaround in his literary abilities; the second is that he had major editorial help, up to and including a ghostwriter.

The rest.

Panem et circenses

2008-10-09T13:51:00.001-03:00

Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,
the People have abdicated our duties;
for the People who once upon a time handed out military command,
high civil office, legions — everything,
now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:
bread and circuses.
- Juvenal, Satire X

At the start of this federal campaign, it was being called a "Seinfeld election" - an election about nothing. Then came the perceived threat to the circuses. And now we have politically-motivated fear-mongering of the basest sort over... bread. What remains to be seen on October 14th is whether the majority of Canadians will be found to be mice - or Men.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

CBC tightens control over web content

2008-10-07T21:15:00.006-03:00

As I wrote recently in "Who's afraid of the big bad blogosphere?" there's been some changes going on at CBC's website lately:

A couple of weeks ago I was reviewing a post of local interest at a fellow blogger's site. It had several links to CBC-Prince Edward Island stories going back to 2003, which I also reviewed at the time. When I went back to that post today while researching a story I'm working on, I found that all the links had mysteriously disappeared. A quick bit of digging revealed that regional news "print" archives in general now appear to only go back to sometime in 2007. (Their Digital Archives section only covers tv/radio clips.)

I've made an informal inquiry, but have yet to get a satisfactory answer. Then this evening, I noticed yet another change - all reader comments on stories have disappeared, and have been replaced by a "send your feedback" link which opens a form flatteringly titled: "Your Report." The boilerplate intro reads:

CBC values your contributions and your opinions. We also appreciate that you have stories to tell. Be a part of the news, contribute to the coverage and understanding of issues we discuss.

Please complete all portions of this form in order for it to be correctly filed.

Reader comments are now restricted to carefully selected topics posted at the main site's Your Voice page. Why the changes? And why are they happening during a federal election?

Tightened media control never looks good, no matter how you slice it. Especially when taxpayers are footing the $1.1 billion bill.

THURSDAY UPDATE: Comments appear to be up again, but regional archives are still MIA.

Liberal MP Shawn Murphy's shift-shaping green albatross

2008-10-06T22:07:00.003-03:00

We weren't a week into the election campaign when Charlottetown Liberal MP Shawn Murphy was found distancing himself from the Green Shift, in response to concerns about increased costs for consumers:

“This winter, I don't think you're going to see the green shift even if the Liberals got elected.” (Shawn Murphy, Charlottetown, Sept. 12, 2008).
...
Ray MacNevin of Charlottetown said he’s fearful residents will have to pick up the tab for the country’s largest polluters. He said if the big polluters are taxed more, they will simply pass those additional costs on to consumers.

Murphy admitted it will be the consumer who pays the additional tax, “it’s not going to be absorbed by Exxon,” he said.

“There’s no question that they will, that’s the trickle down effect,” he said. “If the cost of business goes up, they are going to pass it on to the consumer. I’m not going to deny that.” [emphasis added]

In fact, the Green Shift isn't even mentioned by name in Murphy's household campaign mailer - there's just a small paragraph on the environment with an emphatic "NO IT'S NOT MORE TAX" in caps and the lame assurance that "taxes will be reduced for individuals and replaced by modest increases in taxes on carbon fuels."

That Murphy's campaign is a tad touchy these days on the subject of that Carbon Tax is obvious. Today's Guardian story by Wayne Thibodeau is hardly likely to improve their tempers:

A carbon tax, as proposed by the Liberals and other political parties, would cause electricity rates to increase across Prince Edward Island, warns the president and CEO of Maritime Electric.

Fred O’Brien made the comment in response to a question posed by The Guardian the same day the privately operated utility announced it was asking the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission to increase its rates by about 7.5 per cent for residential and commercial customers.

If approved, Islanders could expect to pay about $110 more annually for the average residential customer. The increases would be gradually implemented beginning in April 1, 2009.

The implementation of a carbon tax would force prices up even higher.

“A goodly portion of our supply is carbon-based fuels so there would be an impact on that and, of course, the people that we’re buying it from are going to pass that cost on to us,’’ O’Brien said.

To his credit, I think Murphy's political instincts were strong enough from the get-go to realize that the Green Shift would be a tough sell in PEI. Our fuel and electricity rates are among the highest in the country, we have to truck in just about everything, and our primary industries are all very price-sensitive and reliant upon carbon-based fuels. So contrary to Murphy's fairy-tale-like assurances that "The Green Shift won't tax everything, just the things we don't want like dirty fuels that produce greenhouse gases," most taxpayers are well aware that for all intents and purposes, prices on nearly everything they use will go up if the Liberals are elected.

In fact, Murphy's solicitude for the price-sensitivity of the tourism industry once earned him the sobriquet of rebellious vanishing Liberal MP. As Paul Wells succinctly put it:

Mr. Murphy's riding is on a big island frequented by airplanes full of tourists with good money. The security levy could cripple tourism to P.E.I., he said.

Ah yes, tourism. Something near and dear to the Murphy family heart. Given that Murphy's brothers Kevin, Danny, and Mike - not to mention brother-in-law, Mike Cassidy*, co-owner of Trius Tours, which just today announced an important expansion - are all involved in tourism-related, price-sensitive &/or carbon-fuel-reliant businesses, Murphy's lack of enthusiasm for the Liberal Party's carbon tax is, perhaps, understandable. Not to single out Murphy's family, however - there are numerous other Island businesses owned by high-ranking members of the Liberal Party who would likewise be affected - so I'm sure Murphy's been getting an earful.

Related:

* Mike Cassidy might want to talk Green Shift with these two Ottawa city councillors
Ghiz supports Liberal campaign, lukewarm on Green Shift
Liberals continue to distance themselves from Dion Carbon Tax

h/t Kate for sign generator and SDA commenter Cal2 for content.

UPDATE: Economist blogger Clangmann delves into the economics of the Green Shift - definitely worth a read:

Green Shift, Green Shaft, or Green Pie in the Sky
Green Shift II: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
The Green Shift Raises CO2 emission by 7.15 Mega tonnes

The Great Canadian Pumpkin

2008-10-05T21:52:00.002-03:00

Well, you knew I'd have to at least mention this, right?

h/t Drudge

Are stop signs the next target for Charlottetown Liberal Shawn Murphy's campaign?

2008-10-03T17:48:00.005-03:00

Folks may be forgiven for wondering.

The Guardian:

The executive director of the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island is apologizing after he was caught on camera removing political signs put in place by local Conservatives.

Patrick Ross, a Conservative campaign worker, photographed Mark O’Halloran removing the lawn signs less than five hours after they were put up.

Those lawn signs read: “Say no to the Dion tax!” The signs were strategically placed below Liberal billboards throughout the capital city. Photos provided to The Guardian show a close-up of the back seat of O’Halloran’s car, which was stacked to the roof with lawn signs, many of which had their stakes snapped in two.

When I first heard about this story earlier today, I thought perhaps that the deed had been perpetrated by an ill-informed, inexperienced and overenthusiastic Murphy volunteer. Far from it. Mark O'Halloran is not only executive director of the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island, but also past president of the Young Liberals of Prince Edward Island. According to the minutes of their annual general meeting on April 26, 2008, special guest Shawn Murphy, MP for Charlottetown "thanked Mark O’Halloran for all his work and congratulated him on his new position."

That's O'Halloran on the left, along with Brenda Hackett, president of the provincial Liberal party, Murphy, and Tim Cullen, new president of the Young Liberals of P.E.I. [Guardian photo]:

The Guardian:

Outgoing Young Liberals president Mark O’Halloran, who has been appointed executive director of the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island, said the youth are a powerful force within the party.

“The young Liberals truly have a strong voice within the party here . . . (they’re) voice does make a profound difference.”

Charlottetown MP Shawn Murphy agreed, saying the youth effort helped bring the provincial Liberals to victory during last year’s election.

“A lot of the credit goes to those in this room. You really put your whole heart and soul in that election.”

Shawn Murphy is likely now wishing that O'Halloran had put a little less heart and a bit more brains into that effort.

That O'Halloran, of all people, should be familiar with Elections Canada rules as to election advertising should be blindingly obvious. The section in question is short, sweet, and to the point:

Message must be authorized

320. A candidate or registered party, or a person acting on their behalf, who causes election advertising to be conducted shall mention in or on the message that its transmission was authorized by the official agent of the candidate or by the registered agent of the party, as the case may be. [emphasis added]

In fact, the recent issue over possible electoral improprieties regarding a last-minute MP mailer by Murphy's office should have made everyone in Murphy's camp intimately familiar with this little clause. So the Liberals' excuse in this case is pretty tough to swallow:

Mary Lynn Kane, a spokeswoman for Charlottetown Liberal Shawn Murphy, described it as a miscommunication and added the Conservatives are making a mountain out of a molehill.

“Nobody knew where they were from because there did not appear to be any authorized official agent. A call was made to Elections Canada and Elections Canada told them to take them down,” Kane said, in an interview.

“I haven’t seen it but I guess the ‘authorized by’ is minuscule.”

O’Halloran could not be reached for comment.

Kane said he would not be taking calls from the media but added that the executive director of the Liberal party did apologize to the Conservatives.

"Nobody knew where they came from"? "There did not appear to be any authorized official agent"? Elections Canada can authorize the Liberal Party to take them down? Can't Ms. Kane, who happens to be a lawyer like Shawn, do better than that?

There is no mention of size anywhere in Section 320 of the Elections Act, and as everyone knows from experience, mention of a candidate's official agent is, by convention, "miniscule" on most election advertising pieces. Here's an example of the sign in question (click on it for close-up):

The authorization is in the bottom right-hand corner, as better seen in this picture (click for enlargement):

Yep, it's tiny, but it's legible and in compliance with the law. That Mark O'Halloran, a university graduate, executive director of the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island, and I believe a gainful employee of a local accounting firm, should start yanking out the signs willy-nilly, breaking several in the process, without actually looking at them first, strains credulity. And Shawn Murphy's reaction?

Charlottetown Liberal Shawn Murphy said the signs should not have been taken down but he stopped short of apologizing for the actions of the executive director.

“If anyone was taking down signs that were put there by another party, then they should not have been and they certainly weren’t doing so with my authorization or blessing and it’s unfortunate,” said Murphy.

"Unfortunate." Yep, it's certainly unfortunate to be surrounded by such an impressive braintrust. It must certainly be comforting in this circumstance to have a handy scapegoat at hand, however thin and scraggly:

Dana Doiron, a spokesman for Elections Canada, admits an official from Elections Canada in Ottawa did tell the Liberals to take down the sign — something that should not have happened.

He said Elections Canada has apologized.

If an illegal sign is in place, a complaint needs to be launched with the Commissioner of Elections and it is the commissioner who decides if the sign needs to be removed — not Elections Canada.

“The error was in making a judgment remotely. It’s not our business.”[source]

UPDATE: CBC-TV-Prince Edward Island mentioned the story briefly on their 6pm newscast (available in sidebar here) and CTV's Mike Duffy announced that he will be covering it later this evening at 8pm Eastern.

UPDATE: Others blogging about this:

Right as Rain:

Will the Elections Canada staffer who mis-informed Mark O’Halloran be fired? This Elections Canada worker counseled a Liberal Party staffer to break the law. This is unacceptable. It could be incompetence or conspiracy, I lean more towards incompetence.
Will William H. Corbett, the Commissioner of Elections Canada resign for this mistake? If this was a staffer in a minister's office the opposition and media will be calling for the resignation of the minister.
Will the cost of the broken signs be reimbursed to Tom DeBlois?
Whom will reimburse the cost of the damaged signs? Elections Canada? Or Liberal Shawn Murphy have to reimburse? Someone else?
Will the cost of replacing these damaged signs count against the election spending limit of Conservative Tom DeBlois?

Stephen Taylor:

Conservative candidate Tom DeBlois posted signs throughout his riding advising constituents to “say no” to Dion’s carbon tax. These signs weren’t the standard blue with the standard Conservative logo but they were authorized by the official agent for Tom DeBlois.

Liberals, infuriated by opposition to their leader’s carbon tax, or perhaps just simply frustrated the plan isn’t going over as well as Al Gore’s private jet on the way to another Inconvenient presentation, drove throughout the riding and tore down the signs.

If this sounds like the standard campaign dirty tricks, read on. There’s an interesting twist. Turns out that Elections Canada actually authorized the take-down of the signs. Even if the signs were illegal, why did Elections Canada outsource it’s muscle to the Liberal Party? With pre-election suggestions by the Conservatives of Elections Canada working hand-in-glove with the Liberal Party, one would presume Elections Canada would be more careful and do better to try and dispel this allegation. The problem for the Liberals, and for Elections Canada in particular, the signs are completely legal and the subjective arbiter of elections fails to secure the democratic process from abuse once again and in this particular case they enabled it.

Christian Conservative:

We're not talking some low level volunteer folks... we're talking about Mark O’Halloran, the Executive Director of the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island.

Clear Conservative Thought:

Well I'm sorry Elections Canada, but this is apology is just not acceptable. This is but another in a long line of assaults on the Conservative Party's democratic rights. Elections Canada should not be telling party officials to remove signs, they should be investigating these things, and only then should they be instructing anyone to remove them.

It is utterly disgusting that Elections Canada failed to perform their duties and uphold the principles of a fair and equitable election in this region.

SATURDAY UPDATE: Wayne Thibodeau's second article on the story at The Guardian.

Pork, control, and moral hazard

2008-10-02T18:05:00.001-03:00

(It's not just the flu that's got me feeling queasy these last couple of days...)

"The Senate at its finest."

That's the claim that these guys are making after having passed what is surely the most ghastly piece of legislation since I don't know when. One after another of these Senators is stepping forwarding the mic to declare just wonderful, how courageous, how inspiring it has been to pillage $700 billion from American taxpayers to give it to failed but powerful market players, against the overwhelming opposition of the public and in defiance of every principle of economic logic. Some held out but changed their votes when the legislation was made ever worse with each additional inclusion of pork, control, and moral hazard. Such a hard, indeed, Senatorial, thing to do!

When it doesn't "work," and when we enter into a period of prolonged stagnation, who will look back on this day in the Senate and at all the Fed's "stabilization" attempts, and say: it's because of the interventions? On the contrary, we'll hear that they didn't go far enough, because, as we know, these people, who got us into this mess, are infallible. Only the market fails. [source]

Frank Shostak, chief economist of M.F. Global:

It is true that the financial system must be rescued; it must be rescued from the institutions holding bad debt that are currently draining capital while waiting for a bailout and adding little in return. It is they that are preventing wealth-generating activities in the financial sector and the other parts of the economy from expanding real wealth.

Allowing the market to do the allocation always leads to better results. Even the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, understood this when he introduced the market mechanism for a brief period in March 1921 to restore the supply of goods and prevent economic catastrophe. Yet for some strange reason, most experts these days cling to the view that the market cannot be trusted in difficult times like these.

If central bankers and government bureaucrats can fix things in difficult times, why not in good times too? Why not have a fully controlled economy and all the problems will be fixed forever? The collapse of the Soviet Union's centralized system is the best testimony one can have that controls don't work. A better way to fix economic problems is to allow entrepreneurs the freedom to allocate resources in accordance with society's priorities.

In this sense, the best rescue plan is to allow the market mechanism to operate freely. Allowing the market to do the job will result in some activities disappearing all together while some other activities will in fact be expanded.
Take, for instance, a company that has six profitable activities and four losing activities. The management of the company concludes that the four losing activities must go. To keep them alive is a threat to the survival of the company; these activities rob scarce funding from profitable activities.

Once the losing activities are shut down, the released funding can now be employed to strengthen the winning activities. The management can also decide to use some of the released funding to acquire some other profitable activities.

This is precisely what the government rescue package prevents from happening. The government package is not going to rescue the economy, but it will rescue activities that the economy cannot afford and that consumers do not want. It will sustain waste and promote inefficiency, draining resources from growth and efficiency. Remember: government is not a wealth generator; it can only take resources from A and give them to B.

The rest.

**The illustration, above, is from The Illustrated Road to Serfdom, "orginally published in Look magazine reproduced from a booklet by General Motors, Detroit in the Thought Starter series (no. 118)." It's too bad that thinking idea never really got off the ground.

Who's afraid of the big bad blogosphere?

2008-10-01T20:32:00.002-03:00

[re-posted due to technical problems - previous post will be deleted]

A couple of weeks ago I was reviewing a post of local interest at a fellow blogger's site. It had several links to CBC-Prince Edward Island stories going back to 2003, which I also reviewed at the time. When I went back to that post today while researching a story I'm working on, I found that all the links had mysteriously disappeared. A quick bit of digging revealed that regional news "print" archives in general now appear to only go back to sometime in 2007. (Their Digital Archives section only covers tv/radio clips.)

Why the change? Could the CBC be feeling threatened - their own feature story about blogger influence notwithstanding - and have therefore decided to circle the wagons by removing regional archives from the public domain? Just wondering.

Liberal MP Shawn Murphy's subliminal advertising

2008-10-01T12:36:00.001-03:00

Given the gloomy outlook for Liberals these days - pathetic electoral prospects, non-existent leadership, political infighting, and general existential despair, it would be understandable if Shawn's heart just really wasn't in this campaign. Maybe Charlottetown's electorate will have mercy on him this time around, and at the same time choose to have a strong and effective voice at the table in Ottawa.

As to the subliminal meaning of this particular product placement ad during the last election...

... the mind simply boggles.

In search of a Conservative policy on arts and culture

2008-09-26T16:42:00.002-03:00

As a follow-up to my two previous posts on the topic (The art of extracting government funds and What's wrong with government funding of the arts?), I'd like to continue the discussion, as there's obviously a lot of issues to be thought through. The Conservatives have been accused of not having articulated a policy on arts and culture. It's not on their Key Issues page, so that very well might be the case. (If someone is aware of such a policy, let me know.) But whether or not there is one, it's obvious from the brouhaha over recent funding cuts/increases (depending on how it's interpreted and by whom) that Canadians are indeed very opinionated and interested in the issue. But it's also clear that nothing is gained by 'the politics of divisiveness' either, and that like any other issue, Canadians would be better served by listening to one another rather than sniping. So here's part 3 of my little grassroots effort. I'll lead off with two commenters on the latter thread. One anonymous commenter said,

You could make the point that many, many people believe that any number of things that are deemed to be for the good of society and are taxpayer-supported should not be funded. What about schools? Some people could say "I don't have any children. I don't want to pay for their schooling." A short-sighted attitude to be sure, but possibly a fair comment. Many people don't want abortions paid for by the government. Others don't want very premature babies with significant disabilities kept alive. Some think children should be able to get enough exercise without fancy rinks and sports fields. I think it's important to look at what thrives without public funding and see if that is what we want to base our society on. Pornography has no problem making a profit. Do we want that to represent our culture? Gossip magazines sell in the millions. Is that our literature? Gore/slasher movies are blockbusters. Does that uplift us as a nation? I want the government that represents me to look beyond profit to what can inspire us; what can lead us to think and see the world in new and inspired ways. I want a Canada that will support the symphony because it is important to hear the music that much of today's music is based on. I want a government that supports museums because it is vital to know where we come from. I want a nation that supports art galleries because some art is beautiful, some is challenging and it helps to see the world through another eyes. None of those institutions would survive today without taxpayer funding.

MK Piatkowski, artistic director of One Big Umbrella theater company shared the following:

First off, Pinsent is an actor who has shot off his mouth without understanding WTH is actually happening. Serious, I'm in the industry and have no idea what he was talking about. Thanks for playing into the rhetoric, Gordon.

Second of all, the increase that has been talked about comes from two sources - the raise in the annual funds to the Canada Council that was allocated in the final Liberal budget to be implemented the following year, and an increase in funds to Canadian Heritage for programs on the sports and community side, which is classified as culture. On the arts side, money has actually gone down. This most recent round of cuts went directly to the Olympic Torch relay, so it still shows as part of that increase.

The problem is that the government has obscured what the eliminated programs actually did. The cuts were to eliminate programs that provided industry support - training programs for cultural workers, research and development programs, seed money and venture capital programs. All supports to promote work internationally have been eliminated.

Most artists are small businesses. Small business don't have the resources to leverage expansion on their own when they're first expanding their markets. That's why there are government assistance programs. Bank loans are impossible to come by because banks won't fund artistic ventures because the way it is sold doesn't fit into their cost/benefit analysis. There are no venture capital funds for arts, unless you're writing a Broadway music or making a Disney film. So we look to the government to provide assistance, as do other industries.

Again, it's the specific programs that were eliminated that were the problem. We understand it's a tight economy, but we also understand that right now is a growth period for our industry internationally as there is a much higher demand for entertainment product. These cuts will stop the forward growth we've been experiencing. Remember, Canada is a small market. To develop alternative funding sources, we need to expand. And there was no discussion with the industry about how we were going to move forward before the programs were canceled.

But instead of actually talking about what these programs did, the government chose a few grants to people they didn't like and used it to paint the programs as wasteful and unnecessary and to rile up their base of supporters against supposed "elitist art". And now Mr. Harper drops a comment that implies that artists are rich off government funding, completely ignoring the convenient fact that the majority of artists live at or below the poverty line and the successful ones live a middle-class lifestyle, with only the rare, odd exception.

There's also a misconception out there that the government funds the projects 100% and that it's easy money. No proposal to any government program that looks for more than 40% funding gets accepted. And there's a whole competitive process to go through with no guarantee of seeing money at the end. I've blogged about the process if you're curious.

And btw, the C-10 fallout has made it much more difficult for films to find investors because there is no trust that the government will honour their commitment. You see, the dirty secret of arts funding is that private investors will not commit until they see the government has. This is how they secure their investment.

The point is, artists are average Canadians too. We work hard to create something of value for society. We're just asking for our industry to be treated like the important economic engine it is. If only the film actors would shut up and let the industry speak.

I have some definite thoughts in response to the above, but find myself crunched for time over the last few days. So, I'm just going to get the ball rolling here again by inviting responses to the above. Some of the questions that seem to arise from these comments are:

Would institutions like art galleries, museums, symphonies, etc. survive without government funding?
Should government be in the business of funding any industry? If so, which ones and on what basis should the decisions be made? If not, why not?
Would the country be better served by moving toward a more indirect or arms-length form of government subsidization of the arts/culture by providing tax credits to supporters of the arts, who would donate to the theater group, orchestra, gallery, museum, foundation, etc. of their choice (much like charitable donations are handled)?
Would funding for the arts from private sources and (even banks) increase if government was no longer in the business of direct grants?
Can arts and culture be defended purely from an economic point of view? If not, art, beauty and culture have values attached to them, and differ from person to person and culture to culture. How do you best avoid contention over how those values are expressed and respect varying beliefs and values in our country?

Must run. I've opened up the comments thread (moderation off) so to borrow from Raphael (thanks!): "Any opinions expressed are the exclusive property of the individual and do not necessarily represent the blog author. Any decision by the blog author not to comment on remarks considered partisan or inappropriate does not in any way imply complicity or approval of such comments unless expressly written by the author."

The corny season...

2008-09-25T22:34:00.000-03:00

... is upon us. First it's Rick Mercer, now Palin.

Now, maybe it's just the angle, or the difficulties inherent in the chosen medium, but my first impression of the image was not of Sarah...

(Click for larger image)

(It's been a long day, with lots of housekeeping re getting ready to migrate over to my new iMac, so I'll take up the arts debate (in a more serious manner) and more again tomorrow, and respond to commenters who were kind enough to join the debate since I last checked in.)

What's wrong with government funding of the arts?

2008-09-24T13:43:00.004-03:00

"I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people at a rich gala ... all subsidized by the taxpayers -- claiming their subsidies aren't high enough when they know those subsidies have gone up -- I'm not sure that's something that resonates with ordinary people."

Stephen Harper

Of course, we're not really having a discussion about the arts, culture, and what role, if any, the government should have in it - it's all about soundbites and 'gotchas' and who is ponying up the biggest amount of $$ at the trough. So, I've decided to open things up a bit. As a follow-up to this post, here are some thoughts on the topic from U.S. economist Lawrence Reed that are equally applicable to Canada :

[T]he fact that the arts are wildly buffeted by political winds is actually a powerful case against government funding. I’ve always believed that art is too important to be dependent upon politicians, too critical an aspect of culture to be undermined by being politicized. Furthermore, expecting government to pay the bill for it is a cop-out, a serious erosion of personal responsibility and respect for private property.

But those “studies” that purport to show X return on Y amount of government investment in the arts are generally a laughingstock among economists. The numbers are often cooked and are almost never put alongside competing uses of public money for comparison. Moreover, a purely dollars-and-cents return — even if accurate — is a small part of the total picture.

The fact is, virtually every interest group with a claim on the treasury argues that spending for its projects produces some magical “multiplier” effect. Routing other people’s money through the government alchemy machine is supposed to somehow magnify national wealth and income, while leaving it in the pockets of those who earned it is somehow a drag. Assuming for a moment that such preposterous claims are correct, wouldn’t it then make sense from a purely material perspective to calculate the “average” multiplier and then route all income through the government? But isn’t that what they do in Cuba and North Korea? What happened to the multiplier in those places? It looks to me that somewhere along the way it became a divisor.

What if, for instance, “public investment” simply displaces a certain amount of private investment? (Arts subsidy advocates never raise this issue, but I know that I personally am far less likely to make a charitable contribution to something I know is on the dole than I am to something that I know rests upon the good hearts of willing givers). What if “public investment” brings with it some baggage like political manipulation that over time erodes the integrity of the recipient institutions? How does that fit into the equation? What if I, as a taxpayer who earned the dollars in the first place, could keep what the government would otherwise spend on the arts and invest it in my kid’s college education and end up getting twice the return on my money than the government would ever get on the arts?
...
Sometimes, those of us who put faith in such things as the individual, private property, the marketplace, etc., are accused of being focused solely on dollars and cents. But I think that usually, it’s those on “the other side” who are more guilty of this. The arts funding issue is a case in point. Public funding advocates are focused on dollars — more of them, always more of them, and no matter how much public funding of the arts we have, it will never be enough for some. Those of us who wish to nurture the arts privately stress many other, and far more important values. I believe, for example, that money that comes voluntarily from the heart is much more meaningful than money that comes at gunpoint (which is ultimately what taxes are all about). You’ve won so much more when you convince people to do the right thing, or support the right causes, because they want to instead of because they have to. For that reason, I don’t believe in shotgun marriages either.

I can think of an endless list of desirable, enriching things in life, of which very few carry an automatic tag that says, “Must be provided by taxes and politicians.” Such things include good books, nice lawns, nutritious food, and smiling faces. A rich culture consists, as you know, of so many good things that have nothing to do with government, and thank God they don’t. We should seek to nurture those things privately and voluntarily because “private” and “voluntary” are key indicators that people are awake to them and believe in them. The surest way I know to sap the vitality of almost any worthwhile endeavor is to send a message that says, “You can slack off of that; the government will now do it.”
...
Now, I know that art is just about everything to some people, especially those whose living derives from it. But as adults, we have to resist the temptation to think that what we are individually doing is somehow the greatest thing since the proverbial first loaf of sliced bread and that therefore it must receive more than what people give it willingly (that is, that it should also get some of their money unwillingly through taxes).

...

When some people hear me say that [funding the arts is not a legitimate role of government], they think I must be denigrating the arts or somehow assigning them an unimportant role. Not at all. I think child-rearing is pretty darned important. But that’s a parental responsibility first and foremost. I think reading good books is pretty darned important, but that doesn’t mean it’s a government function to make us do it. Making sure there’s food in the grocery stores is important, but as we know, there’s always less of it in places where the government says it will grow it and stock the shelves for us (North Korea being one good example). As I said earlier, lots of things are critically important in life and sometimes all we do is endanger or trivialize them when we turn them over to the government.

The rest.

UPDATE: I think this about sums it up:

"Subsidy is for art, for culture. It is not to be given to what the people want. It is for what the people don't want but ought to have. If they want something, they'll pay for it themselves."

Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes Minister

[source]

UPDATE: What the hell does this mean?

“We should be the landlords of our own industry, not the tenants,” said veteran actor and CBC presenter Gordon Pinsent. [source]

Note to Mr. P. - landlords are, by definition, owners. So if by your statement above you are signaling your intent to encourage your friends toward the risks and rewards of genuine entrepreneurship - by all means, be my guest - this taxpayer at least would thank you.

A few from the (668 so far) comments to the Globe article above:

Last time I checked though receiving gov't subsidies and dipping into slush funds to travel the globe to promote one's work doesn't make you a 'landlord'.

As any landlord will testify , you need enough for the down payment.

If you can't contribute the 10% needed , then stick with renting and cease the panhandling whine.

Mr. Pinsent a landlord has made a heavy investment into his/her property in order to be able to rent it out to tenants and in turn to hoepfully collect a return on his/her investment.
Similarily the arts and culuture community should invest in itself, or seek private investment, if it is to succeed in this country. Only then can it truly become self-sufficient. For example, if a production company is consistently producing flops how long would private investors continue to back a bad product. Here in Canada we seem to back prenneal losers. We must find a balance.

And on, and on, and on. Perhaps a few of Mr. Pinsent's supporters show up further down in the thread...

UPDATE: And a good discussion about that Harper quote I opened this post with (which does not imply I agreed with it - I don't) over at Raphael Alexander's.

The art of extricating government funds

2008-09-24T09:44:00.001-03:00

Roy Clancy:

Talk about a clash of cultures.

On one side, you have arts groups and opposition parties warning reduced government funding threatens the very survival of Canadian culture.

On the other, Prime Minister Stephen Harper dismisses artful attempts to paint the Conservatives as a party ideologically opposed to culture.

"Ordinary people understand we have to live within a budget," he said, calling the furor over arts funding "a fringe issue."

The Liberals accuse the Tories of making $45 million in cuts over the summer to programs directly geared to supporting the arts, while conveniently ignoring the chops to the CBC, Canada Council and Canadian Heritage made during their own reign.

A rally protesting Tory arts funding was planned last night in Quebec.

NDP Leader Jack Layton accused Harper of "grabbing hold of the aorta and putting the squeeze" on Quebec culture.

To hear him talk, you'd think the arts in La Belle Province were in cardiac arrest, when in reality the scene there puts the rest of Canada to shame.

That's because Quebec consumers support their artistic industries and not necessarily as the result of massive injections of government grants.

It would be nice if the same could be said about English Canada.

No one should underestimate the richness and texture arts and culture add to our lives in Canada.

But there's troubling evidence too many of the beneficiaries of Canada's cultural cash cow are mostly gifted in the art of extricating government funds. These are the people screaming loudest.

Too many middlemen and hangers-on are more focused on getting grants than creating "art" that can be enjoyed and appreciated by the multitudes.

Ordinary Canadians are aware of this and are voting en masse with their wallets and channel changers.

Rather than feeding more dollars into this morass of mediocrity, it's time for a radical overhaul that will see more of the money go to the gifted artists -- performers, writers, musicians and filmmakers -- who actually craft our culture.

Personally, I don't think it's possible for governments to pick "gifted artists" any more than it is possible for them to pick winners and losers in business. Let the market, augmented by private charitable donations and foundations, decide.

h/t National Newswatch

"But Paulson's plan basically says, 'I am the Lord thy God,' and that's crazy."

2008-09-23T21:43:00.004-03:00

Jonah Goldberg:

Anyway, not that anyone has been waiting with bated breath to know what I think about the bailout, but I've decided I'm against it. I've talked to a bunch of folks I respect, listened to Mike Pence on C-Span this morning, read various pieces and examined the exposed viscera of a financially literate goat and I've decided there must be a better way. Basically, I think the bad paper should stay with the people who bought it. If we need to further capitalize the banks, create short term rules or cobble together other backstops, fine. But Paulson's plan basically says, "I am the Lord thy God," and that's crazy. Also, it seems to me that Newt and the editors of NR are right when they worry that the Paulson plan essentially opens the door to unending government control of capital markets and that, too, is just crazy. Even if I completely trusted the wisdom of Paulson and his bureaucrats — which I don't — there's no way that I trust the Dodds, Franks or the next Treasury secretary. Every day the markets don't go off the cliff suggests to me that we can do this in stages and that Paulson's do-it-my-way-or-it's-the-Dark-Ages-for-us-all argument doesn't hold water.

Yep.

The Chopper Vote

2008-09-23T20:50:00.000-03:00

"So, I guess we can add motorcycles to the guns and religion…"

Heh.