Brace Yourself

On the Value of Scorn

Of late we've been seeing a lot of bigots, kooks and reactionaries trying to adopt the language of victimization.

Gay rights advocates in the US are not being gracious in their victory over decent people who just wanted to go on treating a whole subset of humanity as second class citizens.  Now various laws designed in the last few years to attack, dehumanize and marginalize gay Americans  topple like dominos and they have the sads and gay rights supporters are being MEAN to them.

A conservative spokes clone accuses Bill Nye of being part of a vast conspiracy to bully people who believe that scientists must just be fibbing with this silly 99% of scientists believe global warming is real and human caused stuff. 

You big meanie!

Scorn is a useful social construct.  It exists for a reason.  In the marketplace of ideas scorn is the health department closure poster on a cafe door.

Some ideas and the people who promote them SHOULD be scorned.  Some positions should be career limiting and socially devastating. 

If you believe this nonsense you are wrong and you should feel bad.

That's how society evolves, less from the new ideas we adopt than from the ones we outgrow.

The next time the Sun or one of their odious commentators attacks someone else's patriotism...

Lets just stop and enjoy the irony for the moment, of the owner of the rabidly right wing, aggressively 'patriotic' Sun newspaper chain and the even nuttier far right Sun TV network being a Separatist candidate in Quebec with the avowed goal of breaking up Canada.

Steyn by name, Stain by Nature

One of Canada's biggest blowhard exports south of the border may have plunged a stake into the heart of one of their premier right wing media operations.

The National Review magazine, longstanding house news organ of the establishment right, is facing a lawsuit that could shutter the publication permanently. According to The Week, a suit by a climate scientist threatens to bankrupt the already financially shaky publication and its website, the National Review Online (NRO). 

Scientist Michael Mann is suing the Review over statements made by Canadian right-wing polemicist and occasional radio stand-in for Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn. Steyn was writing on the topic of climate change when he accused Mann of falsifying data and perpetuating intellectual fraud through his research. 

Steyn went on to quote paid anti-climate science operative Rand Simberg — an employee of the right-wing think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute — who compared Mann to Penn State’s convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.

Though the National Review likes to style itself as the genteel intellectual voice of American conservatism they are in fact a hard right operation that supported segregation, Apartheid South Africa and some of the most retrograde and reactionary ideas in American politics.  More recently on the website side of their operation they suggested that President Obama's mother must have been a communist because only a communist white woman could have married a black man.

They've been losing money for years and far from depending on the all knowing unseen hand of the marketplace of ideas have depended on subsidization by various sources - they probably can't survive either losing the suit or having to settle it.  Funny how calling someone a cheat and a fraud and comparing them to a child molester might have consequences isn't it?

Sitting back and enjoying the show.

Songs for Justin

Two songs dedicated to the Liberal Party, once again picking dreamy school girl crush as their leadership criteria.

Some offense.

Pop Quiz

Identify the true statement:

1. Trip Hop pioneers Massive Attack are writing the soundtrack to a Broadway musical version of King Kong.
2. Wrangler are releasing a line of jeans that are infused with skin cream and moisturize your ass while you are wearing them.
3. Socialist welfare state Norway is so much better at managing oil resources than the free market utopia of Alberta that its version of the Heritage Fund is 41 times bigger, they have a fraction of Alberta's income inequality and huge surpluses to spend on infrastructure and social programs.

Answer: ˙ǝɹǝɥ puɐ ǝɹǝɥ 'ǝɹǝɥ ǝǝs  ˙ǝnɹʇ ןןɐ ǝɹɐ ʎǝɥʇ 'uoıʇsǝnb ʞɔıɹʇ ɐ s,ʇı  ¡ǝɥɔʎsd

A sincere message to the Republican Party:

Meanwhile in Florida...

Republican outreach to Women:

Only Themselves to blame

Republicans. A couple months from now, the day after the election as you are feeling that dismal stomach churning angry despair over there still being a black man in the White House, please remember that you lost the election long before the final coup de grâce in the voting booth.

Let us have no whining about non-existent vote fraud. You rode that hobby horse as hard as you could to suppress the non-white vote as much as you could. Even wide scale Jim Crow style minority voter suppression can't save you this time.

Don't console yourself that the media was against you and you were treated unfairly by the press. It is in the media's interest to pretend there was more of a competition than there really was and they have spent most of the campaign propping you up and withholding the scrutiny you really deserved. Not to mention having an entire TV news network entirely in the tank for you.

When the media turned on you it was because you gave them no choice. If a Democrat had lodged his foot as deeply into his mouth as Aiken did would you not be enraged if the media soft pedaled it? And all Aiken did is say what Republicans actually believe out loud.

Republicans, the enormity of the defeat awaiting on election day will be purely and entirely your fault. You are the ones who chose to so completely alienate women, Latinos, young people, old people and independents.

And don't pretend you were given no chance to talk about real issues with the public - that's what killed you, you were.

You've claimed for years that you want to run on the issues and values you stand for, that any defeats in the past were because you held back from running on your real beliefs, goals and governing history. Well you are going all in on the right wing extremism this election and the voters are abandoning you in droves.

You are going to lose and lose badly and you will own your defeat utterly.

Republicans debating their Social Welfare policy:

Resolved: It's funny when bad things happen to bad people

THE CANADIAN PRESS — Conrad Black's ailing wife collapsed in shock Friday as the disgraced former media baron, his impassioned plea for leniency falling on deaf ears, was ordered by a U.S. judge to serve several more months behind bars.

Barbara Amiel, who suffers from an autoimmune condition and arrived at the courthouse looking fragile and unwell, keeled over moments after Justice Amy St. Eve revised Black's sentence to a total of 42 months.

"I still scratch my head as to why you engaged in this conduct," St. Eve told Black as she delivered the news to stunned onlookers during a moment of high courtroom drama.

"Good luck to you."

Having already spent 29 months in jail, and with additional credit for good behaviour, Black is now expected to spend between eight and 13 more months behind bars.

There are blogs that get more viewers than Sun TV

Not, you know, mine, but not by that much.

The so-called "Fox News North" specialty service initially struck estimated ratings of about 31,000 viewers on its evening launch of April 18, but has now dropped to as little as 4,000 and 5,000 viewers in the evening slots with hosts Brian Lilley and Charles Adler, CP reported.

CP said sources had provided it with overnight estimates from BBM Canada.

Ezra Levant’s program “The Source” received an estimated 31,000 viewers on launch day, but those numbers fell to 12,000 on Wednesday that week, and by the following Monday had reached an estimated 19,000.

CP reported that at 7 p.m. last Friday, Sun News Network journalist Theo Caldwell was drawing an estimated 11,000 viewers nationally while CBC News Network rated 263,000 and CNN 38,000 viewers in Canada.

We now rejoin the view from the couch in Ezra's mom's basement...

"Ezra's World! Party on! Excellent! The free market is bodacious and Muslims are bogus!"  etc...etc...

I encourage Quebecor and the Sun Chain to double down.  Pour money into this pit boys! Hold on by your fingernails until you've drained Quebecor dry the way the National Pest helped suck CanWest dry.  Ideology demands it.

The scent of Debacle

The new Fox News North, I mean SCTV, I mean the very professional and not at all amateurish looking Sun News TV operation has had a rough start.  A massive drop off in viewers after its initial half hour, mockery for its cardboard sets and pretty but vacant personalities and of course, Ranty McHatey Ezra Levant's fevered ego and ongoing car crash of a show.  Now they appear to have been evicted from their corner of the satellite TV bandwidth over a fee dispute.

Canada’s newest 24-hour news channel, Sun News Network, has been yanked off the air by Bell TV in a dispute about fees.

Quebecor Inc. (QBR-B), which owns the channel, sent a letter to BCE Inc. (BCE-T35.690.090.25%) on April 18, demanding the channel be removed from Bell’s satellite TV service if an agreement was not reached by May 3. Bell did just that at 10 a.m. on Tuesday. Now, Quebecor plans to file a complaint with the federal broadcast regulator, charging that BCE is discriminating against channels that it does not own.

After Canadians rejected their last minute desperate smear against Jack Layton and their falling out with Harper's campaign team before that its hard to miss an aura of frantic impending catastrophe emanating from Quebecor 's headquarters.  This should be the best of times for them - instead they seem to be circling the drain.

My Mommies help me with my homework

Arbitrary school rankings designed by the Fraser Institute to promote an anti public school privatization agenda?  Absolutely worthless.

Having a school for cultist polygamist kids get a perfect score?  Absolutely priceless.

A school for children in the polygamous commune of Bountiful, B.C. is among the highest ranking on the 2011 Fraser Institute Report Card. 

Bountiful Elementary-Secondary scored a perfect 10 mark. 

It tied with 12 other schools, mostly private schools in the Vancouver area, that also achieved perfect 10s. 

The Fraser Institute rates 875 public and private elementary schools throughout B.C. based on 10 key indicators using data from province-wide testing, known as the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) test. FSA tests are mandated by the B.C. Ministry of Education.
Fraser Institute spokesperson, Peter Cowley, said not much is known about what made Bountiful so successful on FSAs. 

“With regard to what techniques they may have used or how they taught in math, for instance, between kindergarten and grade 4, all those things may be interesting but we don’t have any long term record of success yet,” Cowley said. 

Jane Friesen, the director of Simon Fraser University's Centre for Education Research and Policy, said people should look at these rankings carefully. 

“It’s simply telling you how is a particular cohort of students in a school doing in a particular year. I think we have to be careful to not interpret those results as a measure of the effectiveness of the school and I think that’s where the real issue comes in,” she said

The Evolution of Palin?

Sarah Palin writes off the Tea Party candidate in Alaska and quotes a shout-out for evolution.

It seems unlikely that Palin is aware that Darrow was a big wig at the American Civil Liberties Union given her penchant for scoffing at...civil liberties. And one wonders whether Palin knows that, in the Scopes trial, Darrow defended John Scopes, who violated Tennessee law by teaching evolution. But there you have it.

Bullyboy Bluster

Stephen Harper keeps saying "My way or the highway."

The response keeps being "Ok then, the highway it is."

By most accounts, Stephen Harper and his government were humiliated Tuesday at the United Nations, losing a coveted Security Council seat to Portugal. The defeat is still the buzz of official Ottawa and political spin doctors have been working overtime.

Cabinet ministers and even the Prime Minister's own communications director, Dimitri Soudas, are blaming Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff for torpedoing the deal. This, after he publicly declared Canada did not deserve the seat because of the Harper government's foreign policy.

The Liberals, meanwhile, are blaming Mr. Harper and his international policies for the loss. Mr. Ignatieff has accused the Conservatives of ignoring the United Nations.

Potentially having even more dire consequences than the Security Council seat loss is the recent dust up with the United Arab Emirates, where the government's tough guy, 'take it or leave it' bluster ended with Canada having to walk away from a multi-million dollar air base and featured Canadian government ministers being banned from entering a putative ally's airspace - all to protect the business interests of a private corporation.

Ottawa's eviction from a Mideast military base has exposed a rift within the Harper cabinet over how far Canada should go to satisfy its Arab hosts: an internal debate in which Stephen Harper cut Defence Minister Peter MacKay out of negotiations.

Canada is set to vacate Camp Mirage, a once-secret military installation, by Nov. 5 after failing to reach an agreement with the United Arab Emirates over what would amount to compensation for nine years of accommodation near Dubai.

The UAE has been seeking additional lucrative landing rights for two state-backed air carriers at Canadian airports, and Mr. MacKay was one of several ministers, including Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and International Trade Minister Peter Van Loan, who had favoured doing more to help the Arab ally, a senior Conservative MP said.

The Prime Minister ultimately cut these ministers out of negotiations, the official said, favouring the forceful arguments against big concessions advanced earlier this year by former transport minister John Baird.

The loss of the base has left some cabinet members frustrated and angry at how Mr. Harper handled it.

"[It's] all gone because of a fit of pique and a hard [core] position that is truculent and unreasonable against Canada's short- and long-term interests," the MP said.

'Out of touch, arrogant and dictatorial' are by now well established descriptions of this, the most secretive and PMO dictated government in Canadian history.  We knew that Harper's machivellian scheming always has a tendancy to slam up against his own bitter hatred of dissent and opposition, his bully boy need to 'stick it' it to anybody who challenges him. 

He'll never learn and we can expect further sudden reversals as those he deals with refuse to take having sand kicked in their faces lying down.

Today's Irony Moment

Atheists and Agnostics understand religion better than believers:

Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.

How much do you know about religion? Try answering a sampling of questions asked in a phone survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.

Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

“Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew.

That finding might surprise some, but not Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, an advocacy group for nonbelievers that was founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people,” Mr. Silverman said. “Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”

At the stroke of Midnight the Sun turned into a pumpkin

Dateline, exactly one minute after midnight, Saturday Sept. 18. Let the groveling commence:

Retraction and apology to George Soros

September 18, 2010 12:01am

On September 5, 2010, a column by Ezra Levant contained false statements about George Soros and his conduct as a young teenager in Nazi-occupied Hungary.

Upon receiving a letter of complaint from Mr. Soros’s legal counsel on September 13, 2010, Sun Media Corporation always intended to publish a retraction and apology for this column. Despite constant efforts on both sides, Sun Media and Mr. Soros’s counsel were unable to reach agreement on the content of a retraction.

The management of Sun Media wishes to state that there is no basis for the statements in the column and they should not have been made.

Sun Media, this newspaper and Ezra Levant retract the statements made in the column and unreservedly apologize to Mr. Soros for the distress and harm this column may have caused to him.

Translation: "Please sir, have mercy, don't sue us into greasy stains."

I sincerely hope that the apology is not accepted and Soros' lawyers administer the kind of punishment that makes grown hatemongers and Quebecor executives cry like little children.

If anything calls for Schadenfreude...

...its the prospect of Ezra Levant getting raked over the coals in a libel and defamation suit by George Soros and ending up living in a refrigerator box.

Billionaire George Soros is threatening to sue the Sun Media chain over a column penned by a conservative gadfly expected to play a key role in the media giant’s Sun TV venture.
Soros spokesman Michael Vachon said the chair of Soros Fund Management was deeply upset by a early September Sun Media column by right-wing activist and author Ezra Levant.
In the piece, which has since been removed from Sun chain news websites, Mr. Levant offered his opinion of how Mr. Soros, a Hungarian Jew born in 1930, survived the Nazis.
Mr. Vachon said Sun Media was notified of Mr. Soros’s reaction earlier this week.
“It made false, defamatory and offensive statements and as a result Mr. Soros has notified the relevant parties of his intent to sue,” he said.
“What is of concern in the article are the false assertions that Mr. Levant makes regarding George Soros’s conduct as a 13-year-old child in Nazi-occupied Hungary.”