A Right Wing Pro-Market Think Tank thinks Canada under Harper was the Freest country on Earth. Kelly McParland thinks this actually proves something.

It comes a little late for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, but Canada has been named both the freest and most tolerant country in the world. It’s also one of the most prosperous and best-run, and trails only Australia in education. Good thing we changed governments eh? The latest accolade for Canada comes from a London-based think tank, The Legatum Institute, which publishes an annual “prosperity index.” Canada scores well overall – in sixth place out of 142 countries – but excels in the categories of personal freedoms and openness. Though always near the top of the order in the seven years the index has been compiled, the last year of the Conservatives’ mandate coincided with its rise to first place as “the freest country in the world.”

And who exactly is the Legatum Institute?

Legatum Institue (LI) is a right-wing think tank promoting "free markets, free minds, and free peoples". LI is a co-publisher of Democracy Lab (with Foreign Policy Magazine), a website dedicated to covering political and economic transitions around the world. LI is a project founded and funded by the Legatum Group, a private investment group based in Dubai.  LI is based in London.

So a right wing think tank were fans of Stephen Harper? Shocking.

Heard it too many times

Betraying a Hero

The wife of the first woman in space Sally Ride will receive no survivor benefits because of small minded, petty homophobes who support the Defence of Marriage Act.

Sally Ride was the first American woman in outer space. Upon hearing the news of her death last week, media outlets and celebrities alike celebrated Ride as a hero. But under federal law, Ride’s domestic partner of 27 years will not receive death benefits or Social Security payments. Is that any way to treat a hero?

Ignoring the Charter

Conservatives hate the idea of rights they can't just arbitrarily legislate away if they offend the reactionary bigots, you know, their base.

So blah blah blah divided history - that's an easy excuse, not a reason.  The real reason Harper and the Conservatives are so shamefully ignoring the Charter's anniversary is that they really do think the government belongs in the nation's bedrooms, and doctor's examining rooms and in our bodies and they really do think politicians should have the final say on human rights.

 And they hate that the Charter doesn't let them.

Meanwhile the Canadian Constitution and Charter have become the standard the rest of the world looks to instead of the centuries old US Constitution - and even an American Supreme Court Judge recommends the Canadian over the American Constitution.  This while the yokels in charge try to pretend the whole aniversary isn't even happening.

Petty schmucks.

Afraid to call a Liar a Liar

The Montreal Gazette headline is 'NDP accuses Tony Clement of doctoring Hansard'. 

Wow, thinks the reader, that's a pretty serious allegation, accusing someone of deliberately distorting the public record of Parliament is a big deal.  But look, the headline just says he's just accused of it, so if its just a case of he said, they said... what's that?

He unambiguously did it?  The Gazette article itself confirms he did in fact request that two times he answered in the affirmative to a direct question and said 'Sure' when asked if he would release records about G-8 spending be removed leaving a blank space in the record?

So then, wouldn't a more accurate headline actually be 'Tony Clement doctored Hansard'?

In the US, Willard 'Mitt' Romney lies about his own name and also releases a campaign commercial featuring Obama quoting a Republican - without including the few words before the quote saying that it was a quote.  That's unambiguously lying.  'Mitt' Romney is a liar.  But don't bother looking for articles in the American mainstream media printing the simple fact that 'Mitt' Romney is a lying liar who tells lies.

Because, as an exasperated Washington reporter once said, the mainstream media now "believe that being "balanced" means giving the same weight to a lie as you give to the truth"

And if that's the case, what possible use are they?

Alison Redford owes me an apology

Me and the millions of other Canadians and Albertans who care about the environment for suggesting that she has the right to go to Washington and lobby for the Keystone Pipeline but those who oppose the project shouldn't have the same right.

OTTAWA — Premier Alison Redford found herself Thursday embroiled in war of words with the federal NDP as she joined her federal Conservative counterparts slamming official Opposition MPs for travelling to Washington to speak to U.S. lawmakers against the Keystone XL pipeline.

In Ottawa, Redford made the comments the same day she sat down with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in their first official meeting to discuss federal-provincial relations.

The two Calgary politicians, who’ve known each other for almost three decades, spoke about issues such as health-care funding, immigration and a new Canadian energy strategy.

The premier, who arrived back in Alberta late Thursday night, had just returned from her own mission to New York and Washington earlier this week to promote Alberta and the province’s energy interests in the United States.

While the contentious issue of the proposed Keystone oil pipeline came up when she met with U.S. lawmakers, Redford said she did not actively lobby regarding it — unlike federal NDP environment critic Megan Leslie and natural resources critic Claude Gravelle.

“It is not appropriate for us to be providing advice to American decision-makers in that context and to be political activists,” Redford said about the NDP trip this week. “So I am not at all supportive of that and I’m disappointed about it.”

Redford maintained her role is clearly different from that of a federal MP, saying a provincial premier “has a certain set of economic interests, social interests and environmental interests.”

“Whereas what we see going on right now is members of Parliament who certainly represent their constituencies, but that’s the extent of their representation in terms of the Canadian perspective on this issue.”

Linda Duncan, the lone NDP member of Parliament from Alberta, said she was stunned the premier would say that elected officials travelling to Washington is inappropriate.

“I find that absolutely reprehensible,” Duncan said. “How dare they suggest that we don’t have a right to interact with officials from other trading nations. Absolutely appalling.”

How dare you Premier Redford?  How dare you?

Arguing that Canadians who have science on their side - both the science of climate and the science of economics - don't have the right to have their point of view represented while making an insultingly specious and lamely hypocritical argument that the rules are somehow different for her is so contemptuously despicable its frankly breathtaking.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Precious Bodily Fluids

Public Health policy in Calgary now being run by General Jack D. Ripper.

New Blow to Carbon Capture Boondoggle

The claim that polluters could minimize or reduce their carbon footprint through carbon capture and storage has always been a laughable 'green' fig leaf to anybody who actually crunches the numbers.  Now its not even that.

A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world's largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases that were supposed to have been injected permanently underground are leaking out, killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken-up soda pop.

Cameron and Jane Kerr, who own nine quarter-sections of land above the Weyburn oilfield in eastern Saskatchewan, released a consultant's report Tuesday that claims to link high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their soil to the 8,000 tonnes of the gas injected underground every day by energy giant Cenovus in its attempt to enhance oil recovery and fight climate change.

"We knew, obviously, there was something wrong," said Jane Kerr.

Cameron Kerr, 64, said he has farmed in the area all his life and never had any problems until 2003, when he agreed to dig a gravel quarry.

That gravel was for a road to a plant owned by EnCana — now Cenovus — which had begun three years earlier to inject massive amounts of carbon dioxide underground to force more oil out of the aging field.

Cenovus has injected more than 13 million tonnes of the gas underground. The project has become a global hotspot for research into carbon capture and storage, a technology that many consider one of the best hopes for keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

By 2005, Cameron Kerr had begun noticing problems in a pair of ponds which had formed at the bottom of the quarry. They developed algae blooms, clots of foam and several colours of scum — red, yellow and silver-blue. Sometimes, the ponds bubbled. Small animals — cats, rabbits, goats — were regularly found dead a few metres away.

Then there were the explosions.

"At night we could hear this sort of bang like a cannon going off," said Jane Kerr, 58. "We'd go out and check the gravel pit and, in the walls, it (had) blown a hole in the side and there would be all this foaming coming out of this hole."

"Just like you shook up a bottle of Coke and had your finger over it and let it spray," added her husband.

The water, said Jane Kerr, came out of the ground carbonated.

"It would fizz and foam."

Alarmed, the couple left their farm and moved to Regina.

"It was getting too dangerous to live there," Cameron Kerr said.

In 2006, Cameron Kerr said, the province's New Democrat government agreed to conduct a year-long study to find out what was going on. That government fell to the Saskatchewan Party in the subsequent election and the year-long study was never done.

Carbon Capture has never been a realistic option. the numbers make it clear that even if it worked the expense to make any kind of real reduction in CO2 levels meant it was never a viable option.  It's purely about stalling on real action on climate change with the pretense of a solution that will allow companies to avoid making the real painful and difficult changes necessary.  Now we know it doesn't even do the limited job its theoretically supposed to.

Preston Manning writes bad Science Fiction

It's 2018 and Canada has answered the call of the professional right wing's fondest wet dreams on healthcare:

It is December, 2018, and at long last Canadian health care has been reformed. Long waiting lines are a thing of the past. Universal coverage has been maintained and expanded. The numbers of doctors and treatment facilities available to serve Canadians has been significantly increased. Health care for the vast majority of Canadians has dramatically improved and at lower cost per capita.

How did they get to this heaven on Earth in Canada's green and pleasant land?  Let Preston guide you along through a future where Wikileaks exposes all the Canadian politicians and opinion makers who condemn private medicine but fly out of the country to use it when its their own health on the line.  On balance, trying to enlist Wikileaks in the cause of Canadian right wing politics is probably better than calling for the murder of it's founder like Manning's fellow Calgary school right wing insider Tom Flanagan - but also far less likely than some right wing western government actually following through on such threats and murdering Julian Assange the way Flanagan wants.

Then there's the finishing blow, after Manning conflates real and imagined courtroom victories against the public system and creates this condescending  final flight of fancy:

 Meanwhile, back in Ottawa, the Standing Committee on Health had invited Dr. Lars Aalborg, Nobel Prize-winner and a world-renowned expert on queuing theory, to propose means of reducing Canada’s health-care waiting lines. Dr. Aalborg said he would do so only on the condition that members of the House of Commons agreed to participate in a scientific experiment. Being near Christmas, the members were in a charitable mood and consented to this unusual request. When Dr. Aalborg arrived he closed all the doors to the House of Commons except one and then asked all 308 members to form a line outside that door. He then asked the members to enter the chamber through that door, one by one, while he timed the process. Approximately one hour and 15 minutes later, all the members had entered the chamber. Dr. Aalborg then opened two more doors to the chamber and divided the members into three uneven lines, one outside each door. Once again the members were instructed to enter while Dr. Aalborg timed the process. This time it took less than 45 minutes for all members to enter the chamber.

Leading members of the Liberal and NDP caucuses – those who could count, tell time, or both –  (This presumably is an example of the classy, gracious civility in politics that Preston Manning claims to support - Cliff ) immediately explained the meaning of the experiment to their bewildered brethren. By establishing three open doors to its health-care system – a public care door, a private not-for-profit door, and a private for-profit door – and with government responsible to ensure that the care available through each met acceptable standards, Quebec ensured that the average waiting time for getting into the health-care system and receiving quality care would be significantly lower than if everyone was forced to wait in a long line behind a single door.

Is it rude to point out the fairly glaring logical fallacy inherent in his snotty little fairytale, that whether entering the room through three doors or one there's still only one pool of doctors, nurses and hospital beds in the room serving all three doors?

In Australia and Sweden, the concrete evidence was that the two tier system created a 'perverse incentive' for doctors to cherry pick the easiest most lucrative patients into the profit door's line, while the more expensive and less lucrative public door's line got longer and longer because those who could afford to pay their way in front of them funneled through the profit door.

Of course to market ideologues like Manning, an inequity like this result isn't a bug in his preferred system it's a feature.

Adapted and expanded from a comment I made on Buckdog's quick out of the gate response to Preston's dribbling.

The UK's lessons for Canadian Progressives

In the UK support for the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition plummets as Labour's new leader ushers in polls that would mean a slim majority for Labour if an election were held today.  The coalition the British public reject is the one between neo-liberals and conservatives, you know, like the government we have in Canada now in all but name.

Maybe its the natural result for any government in power in times of such intense economic uncertainty, or the afterglow of Labour electing a new leader and potentially heading in a more progressive direction, or maybe the UK public just figured out who's side the Lib-Dems have shown they are on the first chance they got for power.

Nick Clegg bleats about 'new progressives' being more about social mobility while 'old progressives' are about 'reducing inequality'.  This after he announced his coalition's massive increases to tuition costs drastically reducing access to higher education for anyone below a certain economic level.

The deputy prime minister claims that Labour, under Ed Miliband's leadership, is becoming the new conservative group of British politics, wedded to outdated ideas and stuck in an anti-pluralist rut.
Labour, he says, is in danger of turning high marginal tax rates, a large state, and "snapshots of income inequality" into shibboleths. For old progressives, personified by Miliband, "reducing snapshot income inequality is the ultimate goal", he maintains, and for new progressives it is "reducing the barriers to mobility".

What else is education, expensive beyond the range of the few without starting life in crippling debt, but a barrier to 'social mobility'?

No, there's nothing new about Nicholas Clegg's warmed over quasi-libertarian Thatcherism with a dose of sunny Reaganism.  Revealing that you are just another neoliberal who has abandoned Keynesian economics and progressive policy because you're still captive to the long since discredited cult of deregulation and starved government trickle down economics doesn't make you a 'new progressive' just an old fashioned sell out.

Speaking of Michael Ignatieff,

The Liberal caucus is clearly split over Mr. Ignatieff’s decision to support the Harper government. The leader’s support was given even before the details of the new training mission were announced.
The government formally laid out its plan on Tuesday. Last Friday morning, however, Mr. Rae told The Globe and Mail he supported the government, saying there was no need for a debate or vote in the House of Commons. Later that day, Mr. Ignatieff supported Mr. Rae’s view.
Liberal insiders believe Mr. Ignatieff would not win a vote and that is why it is being avoided. The Liberal leadership does not want to reveal a split in the ranks.
“If there was a vote, I think Michael would lose the vote,” the insider said. “He would lose the vote. I don’t think caucus would support him.”

Sour Grapes

The Calgary Herald's Mark Milke thinks Naheed Nenshi only won because of right wing vote splitting:

On the first phenomena, Nenshi should be congratulated. He ran a smart campaign, albeit occasionally negative (few are not), and he used social media to thump front-runner Ric McIver and the big blue federal Conservative machine. That was no small task in a Tory town. Still, Nenshi won with 40 per cent of the vote. McIver scooped 32 per cent and Barb Higgins won 26 per cent. That McIver-Higgins total of 58 per cent was arguably drawn mostly from Calgary's centre-right voters. Thus, had the centre-right vote not split (as it regularly does in local politics), the headlines this past Tuesday morning would have been starkly different.

Except Higgins was endorsed by, among others, CUPE and the most left leaning candidate Bob Hawkesworth when he dropped out.  Blogger and Rabble columnist David Climenhaga, who no one will ever mistake for a conservative argued a vote for Higgins might be the best way to keep hard right candidate McIver out and was by no means the only one making the same argument.

The percentage of Higgins votes that were of the 'anybody but McIver' motivation rather than the desire to vote for a mainstream moderate conservative would be instructive here, and fatally undermine Milke's argument.  Add in those who only voted for her for reasons ranging from wanting to vote for the sole female candidate or just because she was a local TV celebrity and it becomes purely ludicrous.

Do you think I like hitting you?

Shorter Ross Douthat:
"Minorities should be grateful to bigots for prodding them into becoming better Americans."

Run out of town

Christie Blatchford continues her long running series 'Scheming, Violent Dark People and the Pure and Innocent White People they Abuse' today with a remarkably one sided opinion piece presented as a news story on page 8 of the Globe and Mail.

The entire Ontario Provincial Police detachment at the remote Pikangikum First Nation was marched off the reserve five weeks ago by a rock-throwing mob of elected councillors and residents.
The stunning forced departure of 11 OPP members from the isolated community, reached in summer only by air or water, went publicly unacknowledged by the force until now.
It was also almost entirely unreported, with only a couple of small stories, none with any detail, appearing locally about a week after the June 30 incident.

It isn't until more than halfway through the piece, 14 paragraphs in, that she even addresses the reason for the angry mass eviction, the OPP beating of a disabled elder, and then she only presents the OPP version that the deaf/mute elder was trying to grab the officer's gun. This is the classic accusation to justify police over-reaction, one that we've seen most recently as the lame defense of a Vancouver officer caught on video shoving a disabled woman to the ground and then walking away as if nothing had happened.

Context matters, and the context is that Pikangikum First Nation is a community repeatedly described as a third world hellhole, underfunded, disrespected, and abandoned. The context is that they've been calling for a local independent police force staffed by First Nation officers for some time.

But Christie Blatchford never saw a complex situation she couldn't reduce to 'Dark People abuse white people and don't respect the law'.

Fadden Doubles Down

OTTAWA — The director of Canada’s intelligence service told a committee in Parliament on Monday that he thinks two provincial cabinet ministers, as well as some municipal politicians and public servants, are under the influence of foreign governments.

Richard B. Fadden, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, was summoned to an unusual summer hearing after making similar accusations during an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that was broadcast two weeks ago. Those comments provoked widespread criticism, particularly from the Chinese-Canadians.

While Mr. Fadden had initially issued a statement in which he appeared to backtrack from his claim, he repeated the accusation on Monday and said that his agency planned to file a report with the government about the situation “within weeks.”

As he had before, Mr. Fadden cited national security laws in declining to identify the elected officials who he thought were under the influence of foreign governments. And while he did not explicitly name a country, he again broadly suggested that it was China.

While some members of the committee on public safety and national security asked Mr. Fadden to resign and questioned his judgment in making the remarks, he offered no apologies.

For those astonished he still hasn't been fired, wonder no more. The PMO web and the gruesome spider king at it's center have decided there are more votes to win from scape-goating, dark implications and vague accusations against the sinister 'yellow peril' than there are in apologizing for Fadden's original bizarre McCarthyite rant.

I don't even recognize this country anymore.

Quote of the Day

KRAKOW, Poland — Intolerant governments across the globe are "slowly crushing" activist and advocacy groups that play an essential role in the development of democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday.

She cited a broad range of countries where "the walls are closing in" on civic organizations such as unions, religious groups, rights advocates and other nongovernmental organizations that press for social change and shine a light on governments' shortcomings.

Among those she named were Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia.

"Some of the countries engaging in these behaviors still claim to be democracies," Clinton said at an international conference on the promotion of democracy and human rights. "Democracies don't fear their own people. They recognize that citizens must be free to come together, to advocate and agitate."

Does this mean Clinton will be pushing our government for an independent probe of the G20 police response? Will she condemn government attacks on critical NGOs in Israel and Canada?

Will she be publicly asking her own country's police force to renounce tactics like 'kettling' or other elements of the Miami model?

Or is this just a display of hypocrisy and calculation, referencing countries that are either international competitors or compliant client states that the US could administer more control over if they wished?

The more things change...

"We're in fact a bit worried in a couple of provinces that we have an indication that there's some political figures who have developed quite an attachment to foreign countries,"

"The individual becomes in a position to make decisions that affect the country or the province or a municipality. All of a sudden, decisions aren't taken on the basis of the public good but on the basis of another country's preoccupations." -Richard Fadden, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, 2010

Flashback:

"The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department." - Joe McCarthy, 1950

And what a coincidence, just before the G20 another government official offering dark, yet non-specific warnings of vague security threats. The climb-down has begun but the damage is already done.

UPDATE THURSDAY: Gary Mason makes the same connection I made yesterday.

Let her speak you BASTARDS!

The government of Stephen Harper is fighting tooth and nail to keep Suzanne Trepanier, the grieving widow of Remy Beauregard from being allowed to speak to parliament. The reason is straightforward; Trepanier believes that the vicious harassment from the partisan ideologues Harper's government appointed to the board of Rights and Democracy drove her husband to an early grave.

Tory filibuster keeps widow from speaking
OTTAWA (CP) — Conservative MPs are thwarting the grieving widow of former Rights and Democracy president Remy Beauregard from testifying at a Commons committee.
Suzanne Trepanier has requested permission to appear at the Foreign Affairs committee to defend her husband’s record and provide her version of events that she believes contributed to Beauregard’s fatal heart attack in January following an agency board meeting.
But Tory MP Jim Abbott’s hour-long filibuster Thursday ran out the clock on a committee decision, and Abbott made of point of reminding the committee chairman that he holds the floor when the group next meets.
Abbott told the committee that hearing from Beauregard’s widow "would be an emotional reaction to a situation over which this committee has absolutely no control."
Rights and Democracy, an arms-length, taxpayer-funded agency, has been in turmoil for months as factions on the government-appointed board battled over three small grants to Middle East rights monitoring groups that are critical of Israel.

Can there be anything more contemptible than blocking a grieving widow from speaking out because you don't like what she's going to say?

They're quite willing to let their own partisan appointees at the center of the scandal speak and expand the witness list to include 'academics', as long as Trepanier or any other actual witnesses who might say something that would embarrass the government are NOT allowed to speak.

Conservatives have agreed to hear from newly appointed president Jacques Gauthier and board chairman Aurel Braun, although both the Conservative appointees cancelled an appearance Thursday for scheduling reasons.
"The reason why we want the witness list limited to that is because we see no value in having people who can make their positions clear in public in other fora at this committee," Abbott told The Canadian Press following the committee meeting.
"It doesn't accomplish anything."
Abbott, however, said he was not averse to expanding the witness list — as long as it doesn't include Beauregard's widow and three senior agency employees recently fired by Gauthier.
"We're also completely in favour of people who may have differing points of view — professors, people of knowledge — who may have differing points of view from an academic perspective as to what should be happening."
Conservative disdain for academic expertise has been frequently stated, including a frank assessment last spring by Ian Brodie, Harper's former chief of staff, who told a McGill university forum the government actually benefits politically from such critics.
But first-hand testimony by the widow of a man whose supporters say he was harassed and maligned by stoutly pro-Israel members of the Rights and Democracy board is another matter.
"Given the extraordinary efforts that were made by some people to review Mr. Beauregard's conduct and the impact of that review on Mr. Beauregard, I think she's fully entitled to appear," said Liberal MP and committee member Bob Rae.
"I think they're frankly very concerned about what Suzanne Trepanier would say," NDP Leader Jack Latyon said in an interview.

UPDATE: Go see Alison's excellent post about the 'honorable' Mr Abbot's sickening display.

UPDATE TWO:

Jim Abbott :

Telephone: (613) 995-7246
Fax: (613) 996-9923
EMail: AbbotJ@parl.gc.ca

Deliberate Dumbing Down

Thomas Jefferson is out, the civil rights movement caused 'unrealistic expectations' and the U.S. isn't a democracy. These will become the standards in textbooks for MILLIONS of American children in the coming decades. The deliberate dumbing down of the American public is about to accelerate.

The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum's world history standards on Enlightenment thinking, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

From the Texas Freedom Network's live-blog of the board hearing:

Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.

Ridiculous double standard!

Women's hockey team members compelled to apologize for celebrating their Olympic win with beer and cigars.

The Canadian women’s hockey team apologized Friday for their post-victory party, which featured beer and cigars, moving back onto the ice at Canada Hockey Place.

Photos of several players celebrating about an hour after their 2-0 gold-medal victory over the Americans made their way onto the internet late Thursday. That angered Gilbert Felli, the IOC’s executive director of the Olympic Games, who was quoted as saying that, “I don’t think it’s a good promotion of sport values.” He also promised an investigation.

“We realize we should have kept our celebrations in the dressing room,” national team veteran winger Jayna Hefford said Friday. “It was well after people had left the building. We had done it before and some of our favourite memories are going and sitting on the ice and getting a picture by a logo or taking in the atmosphere of the arena once everybody leaves.

How Mr Felli could manage that pompous little speech with that enormous stick rammed up his ass I'll never know.

Can we expect a huge public scandal if the men's team tip a few beers after their last game? I suspect that might be a the mild end of celebrations that may be more Fellini's Satyricon than beer and cigars on home ice.

After the absurdly lame justifications for refusing to allow women to ski jump (and reveal the embarrassing fact that there are female jumpers with better distance than the top men.) it seems more and more that the men at the top echelons of the Olympics have serious issues with women and particularly women athletes.

UPDATE: What CathiefromCanada said!

Have the courage of your convictions

What an incoherent jumble of views!

Danielle Smith believes Albertans need to 'stop apologizing'.

“We’re tired of being a victim, we’re tired of cowering, we’re tired of apologizing,” she said. “We have an immense amount of pride in our entrepreneurship, we have an immense amount of pride in the fact that we’re a society that take care of each other.”

Smith believes that 'the science on climate change remains 'unsettled' the standard big polluter paid for disinformation trying to pretend there's a controversy on a subject with overwhelming agreement among climate scientists, but she still wants some kind of vague 'real' action on climate change just to protect Alberta's reputation.

“The approach a lot of politicians have been taking is to acknowledge this is a target we want to reach, then do precisely nothing,” Smith said. “If we don’t do something material and important on the issue of CO2 emissions reductions, we will never be able to gain the credibility of our neighbours and the international community.”

So she thinks we have nothing to apologize for, she claims to believe that the overwhelming consensus on man made global warming is actually 'unsettled' but she still believes we need to do something 'material' and 'important' about it to protect our provincial reputation.

What this could actually be beyond the same bullshit con of carbon capture that the Tories are promoting is of course completely undefined.