There is some serious weirdness going on lately. I don’t like it. It’s creepy.
Our so-called “national broadcaster,” The Ministry of What You Should Think (aka the ceeb) has long been known as one of the great money pits of the Canadian taxpayer. It has also been consistently hostile to anything and everything that bears even the slightest resemblance to a conservative — big or small “c” — thought.
The ceeb long ago stopped being the “voice of the Canadian people.” If memory serves me correctly (and this was quite some time ago, remember), it was sometime around about the early 70s when the CBC stopped reporting on what Canadians were thinking and started telling Canadians what to think. The federal Tories have, during their time in both opposition and minority government, frequently criticized this blatant waste and bias. Rightly so, too.
So just why the hell are the Conservatives being so damn nice to it all of a sudden?? I think I might have an idea. That the ceeb was is the Liberal party’s propaganda arm has been one of the worst kept secrets in the country for years now. Are the Tories, now that they’re swinging the big stick of majority government, looking to put it to the same purpose? It’s the only explanation I can think of for some of what’s been going on lately. (more…)
If anybody out there is still wondering whether or not Stephen Harper is the best man to guide the economy through the coming uncertainty, just watch this.
Yes, I know it’s the Ceeb, but it’s still good. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut some days, right?
Now, I’ll be the first one to admit that Harper (surprise, surprise) doesn’t come off as even remotely warm and fuzzy here. Mansbridge also hits him with a few curve balls as well but the PM handles them damned well. (more…)
Ah, fer the love of… Some days, I just wonder if I understand anything at all.
I know that I promised yesterday that I’d have some footage of PM Harper’s appearance in London last night. Things went south from the get-go. Cam battery was deader than Elvis so I had to resort to using my phone (lovely quality, that). Then, when I tried to upload the damned thing to YouTube, it croaked because the vid was too long.
Not to worry, though, I’m not done yet. I’ll try to post the raw files later today and see if that works. (I apologize ahead of time for the crappy quality but, like I said, it was done with a phone…)
11:00 – Turner Trounced
Dang. The problem with staging a stunt is, when you don’t let the crew in on the joke, you might just get caught…
And to think that some folks still have it in their heads that the PM made a mistake by losing that loose cannon… Go figure.
19:05 – Update: AITGWN has more. this poor bastard just keeps digging himself deeper and deeper…
12:20 – Okay, let’s try this
Alright, I got the files uploaded to the server so let’s see how this works. It’s in two parts and, due to a bunch of technical mumbo jumbo that I’m not going to get into right now, it might or might not play properly in your browser. Sorry about that.
If they won’t play in your browser, the direct links are here, for the first part and here, for the second part. They’re in the .3GP format, so you’ll need something like QuickTime to play them. Again, sorry for the quality but it’s what I had to work with… 🙁
12:30 – Update to this: Okay, that didn’t work worth crap. Trying to embed the vids here made a mess of things and slowed down the loading of this post to a crawl. Sorry folks, but it looks like the links are as good as it gets…
13:05 – They’re still out there
Lest we forget about the malevolent HRCs in our midst, the National Post has an article yesterday by Joseph Brean to remind us:
The foremost legal precedent for deciding these cases is the 1990 Supreme Court of Canada decision about the neo-Nazi activist John Ross Taylor, in which Section 13 was held to be a justifiable violation of the Charter right to free expression.
It defined hate messages as those expressing “unusually strong and deep-felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification.”
Simon Fothergill, a lawyer for the Attorney-General of Canada, said Mr. Lemire’s challenge of Section 13 is “relitigation” of settled law, and amounts to “harassment” of the government, which won the Taylor case by a 4-3 decision. A decade later, in 2001, it amended Section 13 to include the Internet.
[…]
Mr. Fothergill answered that if Section 13 puts a chill on public discourse, it is only to be around the fringes of hate speech, and that this is not “a terribly bad outcome.”
“A little bit of chilling … is tolerable,” he said.
“TOLERABLE?” Is this asshole utterly out of his God damned mind??? And why the hell haven’t we heard so much as a peep out of ANY party on this subject so far in the campaign? Too uncomfortable an an issue, perhaps? Tough shit, bud; you wanna be in charge, you have to have the balls to do what needs to be done! And God knows, these things need to be reeled in.
Nest time some vote-hunting blowhard (from whatever party) bangs on your door, be sure to find out where they stand on this issue, because it’s just going to get worse if we don’t tackle it NOW.
13:22 – Another update: How’s this for a coincidence? I just got me a call from Steven at the CPC’s fundraising dept. What are the odds?Once again, the Tories were hoping for a buck or two to help out with the campaign. He was a nice enough guy (not as knowledgeable as Fred was on the issue, but still nice) but I had to tell him the same thing I’ve told the last four people that called me: No action on HRCs, no money from me.
17:49 – Holy crap!
I agree with Warren Kinsella. 😯 No, really, I actually DO. Yes, you heard me right. And don’t look at me like that.
I don’t know how it happened, either, but there it is. And it’s not just on one thing, strangely enough; I agree with him on a whole bunch of stuff. Like:
Things are going badly for the Lieberal campaign
Free advice is worth what you pay for it
Warren is a has-been
I guess it just goes to show you, even a blind squirrel finds a nut some days.
18:10 – Practicing what he preaches
Say what you want about Steffy Dion, he sure does practice what he preaches. He’s always going on and on about how we should do this and that for the environment and, lo and behold, Steffy turns out to be one dead serious recycler. Trusty Tory has the goodies:
That’s right, folks, the old 1993 election campaign promise. This goes hand in hand with Dion’s continued election campaign against Brian Mulroney!
But, hang on a second. Didn’t Paul Martin promise this in the 2004 campaign? See for yourself.
Recycle, recycle, recycle! Because it’ll actually happen this time. They really, really mean it. Besides, it’s not as if the Green Shaftâ„¢ is earning them any love…
23:23 – Ker-SPLAT
Coincidence? Poetic justice? Prophecy? You tell me…
MONTREAL – Stephane Dion’s aging plane was forced to make an emergency landing on its way to London tonight in what Liberals hope doesn’t become a symbol of the party’s faltering campaign.
The leased 29-year-old Boeing 737 was en route to London from Sherbrooke, Que., when it made an unexpected stop shortly after 8 p.m. at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport.
On the bright side, at least I don’t have to put up with that waffling weasel in London now. 😉
Welcome, boys and girls, to my 501st post! 😀 How the hell did it ever get to this point?? 😕
Well, the upgrade to the software seems to have gone okay so far, so I’m going to get on with blabbing about what’s on my melon today: HLCs … again. If you’re one of those dimwits that is still having trouble figuring out why these things need to be gotten rid of, you really should read Lorne Gunter’s column in the Edmonton Journal today:
All you need to know about how rotten the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) is — how undemocratic and anti-freedom it has become — is that in hate-speech complaints, the commission has a 100-per-cent conviction rate.
No one who has ever been hauled before it for allegedly uttering hate speech has ever been acquitted.
[…]
You can see this in the words of lead CHRC investigator Dean Steacy. Asked by Lemire’s lawyer, Beverley Kulaszka: “What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate one of these complaints?” Steacy replied, “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value. It’s not my job to give value to an American concept.” Pardon me? Freedom of speech is entrenched in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And, of course, we inherited hundreds of years of English constitutional protection of free expression before that.
It gets a lot better than that. Read the whole thing here.
Meanwhile, even the Ministry Of What You Should Think has finally figured out that they can neither ignore this nor sweep it under the rug. CBC Sunday did themselves a mini-documentary on the out-of-control HLCs today (although, as you can imagine, it tries to put that typical CBC gloss over the ugliness of this Leftist farce). Grab a coffee and check out the vid (it’s about 15mins or so long): (more…)
No matter how you slice it, this is more good than bad. Yes, Avi Lewis is downright embarrassing in his blatant idiocy in comparing “fundamentalist Christianity” and the USA with countries that have the boot of Sharia law on their necks but hey, I got used to being embarrassed by the Ministry Of What You Should Think a looooong time ago…
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is, in all probability, more qualified to speak on the topic of Islam and Islamofascism than any other woman in the Western world. It’s absolutely wonderful watching her occasionally rolling her eyes while Lewis gets more and more flustered as she methodically picks his idiocy to its bones with a calm and grace that is all too often lacking in public discourse on this subject (and yes, I know I’m guilty of going off half-cocked myself, every couple of minutes now and then).
I think the best probably has to be her blunt statement, “there is no Islamophobia, it’s a myth.” Check out the vid for yourself (you can download it here, if you have trouble viewing it in your browser)… (more…)
Here, at long last, is the final and conclusive proof that several of those old adages that your mom, dad, grandma and grandpa were flinging about for all those years were really right after all. I’m talking about those little homilies that left you scratching your youthful head in utter befuddlement, wondering whether or not the old folks had finally reached that point that people referred to as “ready for a home,” whatever the heck that was supposed to have meant. Those little nuggets of wisdom that so often only make any sense at all in hindsight.
You know the ones I’m talking about:
“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”
“Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.”
You can now add another one to that list:
“Even the CBC will broadcast some sense sometimes.”
I even found proof…
Okay, show of hands now… Who would have ever guessed that the Ministry Of What You Should Think’s redeeming virtue would be found in Rex Murphy??? 😯
There is some serious weirdness going on lately. I don’t like it. It’s creepy.
Ah, fer the love of… Some days, I just wonder if I understand anything at all.
[…]
17:49 – Holy crap!
Here, at long last, is the final and conclusive proof that several of those old adages that your mom, dad, grandma and grandpa were flinging about for all those years were really right after all. I’m talking about those little homilies that left you scratching your youthful head in utter befuddlement, wondering whether or not the old folks had finally reached that point that people referred to as “ready for a home,” whatever the heck that was supposed to have meant. Those little nuggets of wisdom that so often only make any sense at all in hindsight.
