Comments on politics, the culture, economics, and sports by Paul Tuns. I am editor-in-chief of "The Interim," Canada's life and family newspaper, and author of "Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal" (2004) and "The Dauphin: The Truth about Justin Trudeau" (2015). I am some combination of conservative/libertarian, standing athwart history yelling "bullshit!" You can follow me on Twitter (@ptuns).

 
Comments

Send 'em to paul_tuns@yahoo.com. I will be slow to respond. Tonight was a rare chance to spend some time on the computer. Blogging will resume midweek.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:53 AM

 
And I thought the mullahs were all throwbacks to another age

In recent years, Tehran has been busy moving into the 20th century. First it was nuclear engergy (or so we're told), then it was nuclear weapons, and now it's a space program. From New Scientist:

"Iran is ready to enter space, according to a report in Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine.

The report quotes Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, as saying that a space launcher has been assembled and "will lift off soon", carrying an Iranian satellite.

The launch vehicle is thought to be based on Iran’s Shahab-3 Missile, which has a range of 1300 to 1600 kilometres (800 to 1000 miles). The fear is that it might be intended to test technology for a long-range ballistic missile."

And, if you read on a bit, spying on Israel.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:50 AM

 
Shocking headline

From the Daily Telegraph: "Young, British Muslims 'getting more radical'." Here's the key stat:

"Forty per cent of Muslims between the ages of 16 and 24 said they would prefer to live under sharia law in Britain, a legal system based on the teachings of the Koran. The figure among over-55s, in contrast, was only 17 per cent."

Okay, not a shocking headline or even a surprising figure. But this is an alarming photo:


posted by Paul Tuns at 3:42 AM

 
America's all-in bet

Robert Kagan in the Sunday's Washington Post:

"I would think that anyone wanting to be president in January 2009 would be hoping and praying that the troop increase works. The United States will be dealing with Iraq one way or another in 2009, no matter what anyone says or does today. The only question is whether it is an Iraq that is salvageable or an Iraq sinking further into chaos and destruction and dragging America along with it.

A big part of the answer will come soon in the battle for Baghdad. Politicians in both parties should realize that success in this mission is in their interest, as well as the nation's. Here's a wild idea: Forget the political posturing, be responsible, and provide the moral and material support our forces need and expect. The next president will thank you."

A comment and then a question for Kagan. First, congratulations on joining the (too small) ranks of neocons to recognize that Iraq has sank into chaos and destruction. The question then is this: considering that there is no guarantee that the surge will work, would it not be better to leave now than to further drag America down with this hopelessly lost Iraq adventure?

I don't believe that Iraq can be about just Iraq any longer. The worse it gets in Iraq, the more America's reputation and thus influence takes a beating, hindering its ability to address other challenges and crises. America sits by and watches Iran and North Korea become nuclear powers while Baghdad burns. It's absurd.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:34 AM

 
Reaching out to the junkie vote

From a Globe & Mail story from last Friday:

"Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said he would expand supervised-injection sites to other communities and criticized the Conservative government for agreeing to fund the Vancouver facility only until the end of this year.

In a two-day swing along the West Coast, Mr. Dion visited Victoria for a $125-a-plate fundraiser Wednesday and finished the trip last night at a banquet hall in Fraserview before a crowd of supporters, including many from the Indo-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian communities."

Dion indicated he would give money to cities that want to replicate Vancouver's "harm-reducing" safe-injection Insite program. I guess that's pandering to city politicians and their electoral machines more than junkies. There probably weren't that many cocaine and heroin addicts were at the $125-a-plate Liberal soiree last week.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:25 AM

 
Rooney & Ronaldo



My son has a compilation of amusing photos and this is probably my favourite. It is apropos this weekend for two reasons.

1) Rooney, a late game substitute in Manchester United's fourth round FA Cup game on Saturday, scored two goals to lead the Red Devils over Portsmouth.

2) Cristiano Ronaldo is rumoured to be headed to Real Madrid in an $65 million transfer, although Man U's manager Sir Alex Ferguson says the 21-year-old superstar is not for sale. Ronaldo would fill the void on the right-wing that has been created by the benching of David Beckham. Not that Manchester needs the money; they are expected to turn a profit of more than 30 million pounds this year.

And for the record, I'm not all that happy about the other Ronaldo joining AC Milan although I like the possibility of obtaining Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard this summer.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:04 AM

 
McAsia



That's the less-than-delicious looking Rice Delight that's available in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore. From Business Week:

"India is a more challenging market, given local dietary preferences for non-meat dishes. Fenton points out that India's eat-out market is about $128 billion a year (compared to $132 billion in China) but is actually growing faster than China's. McDonald's currently has about 110 restaurants in Mumbai and Delhi, and plans to open 25 new outlets a year going forward.

And while beef burgers are something of a taboo for most Indian consumers, McDonald's thinks it has strong enough credentials in fish, chicken, and pork dishes to succeed there. Its outlets in India have developed some popular vegetarian dishes such as McCurry Pan."
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:20 AM

 
The Big ... Condom?

The AP reports:

"Available soon from City Hall: an official New York condom in a jazzy wrapper, perhaps one printed with a colorful subway map or some other city theme.

New York City hands out 1.5 million free condoms a month in ordinary wrappers, and health officials figure people would be more likely to actually use them if the packaging were more distinctive."

One and a half million free condoms distributed monthly and, if you read between the lines, health officials are not entirely sure people use them. Why else would they want to 'brand' them so people would be more likely to use them.

(HT: Dispel the Illusion)
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:07 AM

 
Healthcare in America

Eric Cohen, editor of the New Atlantis, and the ubiquitous Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and formerly chief of staff of the President's Council on Bioethics, write a long and thoughtful piece on healthcare in America in the February Commentary. The challenge, as they see it, is to provide enough care for the middle class and elderly to address their anxieties about healthcare, but to do so in a way that doesn't break the bank. Eschewing ideological fixes -- phony socialized vs. total laissez-faire systems -- they suggest those responsible for public policy to make modest but significant reforms (without offering much in the way of useful suggestions) while raising difficult and often ignored questions; it is a much-needed, sobering analysis.

Without denying the serious problem of the affordability of healthcare in America -- for both individuals and as a society -- it is important to remember that one of the reasons that healthcare is getting more expensive is that it is getting better: innovative new technologies, procedures and expertise all lead to more thorough and more successful treatments. There is a price to pay for that and it is a price worth paying. Cohen and Levin and one challenge (changing demographics) and the glass-is-half-full view of healthcare costs:

"Unfortunately, when it comes to paying for the health care of older Americans, there are few attractive options. Costs have risen steeply in recent years, while the economic footing of the Medicare program has been steadily eroding. Nor are demographic realities likely to change for at least a generation; to the contrary, they may only worsen. So the solution must involve some form of cost containment.

This will not be easy. As Arnold Kling points out in Crisis of Abundance, costs are rising not because of increasing prices for existing medical services but because of a profound transformation in the way medicine is practiced in America. Between 1975 and 2002, the U.S. population increased by 35 percent, but the number of physicians in the country grew by over 100 percent. The bulk of these were specialists, whose services cost a great deal more than those of general practitioners. New technologies of diagnosis (like MRI exams) have also become routine, and not just for the old, and the number and variety of treatments, including surgeries, have likewise increased. We spend more because more can be done for us."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:41 AM

 
Blogging will be intermittent

Blogging has been and will continue to be intermittent due to a number of factors: computer problems at home, production week at work, a story for Report magazine on ethanol, and exploration into another project that I might begin later this year. There are even sightings of me working on the book that's been on the backburner more often than not since last summer.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:15 PM

 
Jeb Bush: the best hope?

S.V. Dáte, the Tallahassee bureau chief for the Palm Beach Post and author of Jeb: America's Next Bush writes in the Washington Post about the former Florida governor's record and why he should "not be counted out of the national political scene." That record is sufficiently reformist to attract political moderates fed up with his elder brother's foreign policy shenanigans. What better way to get America's mind off of the electorally destructive Iraq War than focusing it on tax relief and educational reform? And, as Date says, the best argument for another Bush is that he wouldn't be another Clinton:

"And ultimately, if Jeb is hobbled by the myth or reality of 'Bush fatigue,' one cure seems certain: Hillary Rodham Clinton. Should the junior senator from New York run away with the Democratic nomination, Jeb would have a ready answer for those who lament a Bush Dynasty.

'We're going to have a dynasty either way,' he could respond. 'The question is: Which one do you want? My family or hers'?"

That would be great but for three things: 1) The country really is tired of Bush presidencies, 2) there is no indication that it is truly tired of Clinton presidencies and 3) there are very good reasons to believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton will not be the Democratic nominee.

Date says that if not 2008 then 2012 or 2016. Perhaps -- 2012 is five years away, several eternities in politics -- but that might still be too soon for another Bush presidency. As for Bush being the best candidate the GOP can offer, that is true if one considers only his resume and accomplishments. But it also says something about the state of the party that it cannot find someone who is not a Bush to be a strong candidate. In all likelihood, George W. has hurt not only the Bush brand but the Republican brand for the near future.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:08 AM

 
Just noting

The website of Young Drivers of Canada provides service in English, French and Chinese.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:05 AM

 
Fishy news about 'global warming'

From Reuters: "Parts of the North Atlantic are setting winter heat records, allowing species ranging from swordfish to jellyfish to thrive beyond their normal ranges in a shift linked by many scientists to global warming."

Warmer northern waters are also boosting stocks of cod and herring which should be, one would think, a good thing. Of course, to the experts Reuters interviewed, this is all bad -- new species entering new environments is a threat to existing species and warmer temperatures endanger certain ecosystems. Never mind that nature is always in flux. And even if it wasn't that it is not demonstrably catastrophic that certain coral reefs die off (especially when presumably others might grow). In economic terms, there are trade-offs, a concept that environmentalists, being zealots, cannot possibly comprehend.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:52 AM

 
Get real

Greg Staples rips Halifax Herald reporter Tera Camus for her incredulous reporting on the electoral prospects of Green Party leader Elizabeth May. Camus writes:

"Green party Leader Elizabeth May is trying to decide where to run in Cape Breton in the next federal election. The problem is she doesn’t know which of the island’s two Liberal MPs she wants to topple more — Rodger Cuzner in Cape Breton-Canso or Mark Eyking in Sydney-Victoria."

And:

"Wherever she decides to run, the national leader with 'Tommy Douglas-style' grassroots campaigning skills needs to factor in the long periods she will be away from Cape Breton to help other Green candidates win seats. She expects to win five to 10 seats nationally, but needs to be front and centre for that to happen."

Staples takes Camus to task for fawning coverage. It is completely uncritical coverage that seems to be written from the Green Party press releases. If the reporter took a moment to seriously question how likely May is to 'topple' candidates that won a minimum of 49.88% of the vote last time, she would not be taken to task by the likes of Staples who simply wondered aloud about a marginal fifth-place party leader's chances of defeating deeply entrenched MPs.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:40 AM

 
'The economic consequences of the abortion-contraception mentality'

That's the headline that Dispel the Illusion puts on its link to a Reuters story that begins: "Chairman Ben Bernanke warned the U.S. Congress on Thursday that failure to take action soon to deal with the budgetary strains posed by an aging U.S. population could lead to serious economic harm." DtI gets it exactly right although the story does not address the birth dearth nor is it likely that is what Bernanke meant when he said, "economic growth alone is unlikely to solve the nation's impending fiscal problems." Higher taxes? Reduced spending? That's the agenda beyond economic growth according to Bernanke, not, unfortunately, pro-natal/pro-family policies that will be an incentive for couples to have more childrne. The pro-growth agenda of fiscal conservatives must be pro-population growth.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:34 AM

 
'Mercy' killings

Norway's Afterposten reports:

"A train collided with a flock of [18] reindeer in the Norwegian mountains over the weekend, and passengers had to use a hammer to help put injured animals out of their misery."

The headline is ever better: "Reindeer hammered to death in mercy killings."

Reindeer herders and rail authorities want the ability to carry rifles on board trains so that they can more humanely kill the reindeer they hit. As Afterposten reports, "Reindeer herder Olof Anders Kuhmunen said he and colleagues will demand the return of rifles on board, to relieve injured animals' pain and suffering."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:08 AM

 
Argh!

Why does both the National Post and Globe & Mail, Canada's two national newspapers, have stories and pictures of Barack Obama on their cover today? A rookie senator from Illinois with no compelling ideas announces he's doing the paperwork associcated with a possible run for the Democratic presidential nomination and its front-page news in Canada. Lame.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:00 AM

 
The last, last straw

Every month the UN receives the Secretary-General's report on Darfur and every month it paints the same bleak picture and calls for action. The latest report which covers the continued genocide (without calling it that), progress or lack thereof on the peace process, the abuse of human rights and attempts to deliver humanitarian relief concludes:

"[T]he time has come to turn declarations into actions in order to achieve progress towards our crucial goal: bringing an end to the violence in Darfur, and restoring to its people the right to live a normal life, free of fear, with hope for a better future."
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:54 AM

 
The i economy?

National Post comment editor Jonathan Kay's conclusion in a web-exclusive column:

"The Holy Grail of personal technology is tripartite – software, hardware and design. And only one company has mastered all three. Some tech commentators have expressed skepticism about the iPhone, wondering about whether Apple is not overextending itself by venturing out of its comfort zone and into an already-mature market. But by shaking up the phone market with a daring new product, Apple will surely spur innovation by other manufacturers (just as its iPod begat Microsoft’s Zune). One only hopes Apple has plans for other iProducts. In every area of personal electronics, the world needs more i."

I have to admit that I am quite interested in getting the iPhone although I personally had little interest in a cell phone (I gave my cell up about five years ago).
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:38 AM

 
Me on Stephane Dion

You can read my cover story on Stephane Dion and how his environmental and economic policies might impact the West in the current issue of Report magazine.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:34 AM

 
Companies that support abortion

Life Decisions International has the up-dated list. LifeSiteNews.com has the story.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:30 PM

 
Off the record

In his National Post column, Warren Kinsella castigates a Maclean's reporter for actually quoting a friend of Justin Trudeau's about a likely political run: "Off the record, I think [Trudeau's] pretty much there." Kinsella begins his column thusly:

"Put down your pen. That's what some of us were taught in journalism school, anyway. When the intended subject of an interview says that what he or she has to say is 'off the record,' then that's the end of the interview, pretty much. The reporter in question should put down his or her pen and turn off any and all recording devices. No reporting of what is said. Period."

I don't know what J-school Kinsella attended, but at the one I went to, the instructors, all former journalists, said there is no such thing as off the record. I generally think that the decent thing for a journalist to do is not to use the comments. And frankly Nicholas Kohler was kinda silly to actually quote the "off the record" part of the quote. But sources shouldn't trust journalists because journalists have a certain obligation to report pertinent facts they know are true -- and a person's statement about his or her impression of what a friend is likely to do is a reportable fact. The understanding of every person dealing with a journalist is that their comments during interviews are fair game. If you don't want it appearing in print or being broadcast, don't say it.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:57 PM

 
A nuclear Iran

Writing in the Daily Standard, S. Enders Wimbush paints a frightening picture of the Middle East with a nuclearized Iran:

"Iran is fast building its position as the Middle East's political and military hegemon, a position that will be largely unchallengeable once it acquires nuclear weapons. A nuclear Iran will change all of the critical strategic dynamics of this volatile region in ways that threaten the interests of virtually everyone else. The outlines of some of these negative trends are already visible, as other actors adjust their strategies to accommodate what increasingly appears to be the emerging reality of an unpredictable, unstable nuclear power. Iran needn't test a device to shift these dangerous dynamics into high gear; that is already happening. By the time Iran tests, the landscape will have changed dramatically because everyone will have seen it coming.

The opportunities nuclear weapons will afford Iran far exceed the prospect of using them to win a military conflict. Nuclear weapons will empower strategies of coercion, intimidation, and denial that go far beyond purely military considerations. Acquiring the bomb as an icon of state power will enhance the legitimacy of Iran's mullahs and make it harder for disgruntled Iranians to oust them. With nuclear weapons, Iran will have gained the ability to deter any direct American threats, as well as the leverage to keep the United States at a distance and to discourage it from helping Iran's regional opponents."

And: "We have no idea how to deter ideological actors who may even welcome their own annihilation."

Of course, the United States might have had the opportunity -- the ability, the influence, the power -- to deal with Iran if it had defeated Saddam Hussein and got the hell out of Iraq. But its geopolitical position has been severely hurt by the debacle in Babylon and it is now powerless to stop Tehran.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:49 PM

 
For worse

It is very sad news indeed that Lynn Johnston will not be completely ending her miserable comic "For Better or For Worse." There were rumours she would but instead she will offer an "old/new hybrid" in which mostly previously published strips will be reprinted under the guise of one of the characters looking back at old photos and scrapbooks. There will be occasional new material and presumably the more than 2000 newspaper who carry the strip will continue doing so making millions of readers happy that the cartoon they grew up with for 28 years will live on. Unfortunately this strip does not get the Farley treatment.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:42 PM

 
Chances of a Spring election

Today was the second day in a row a Tory staffer has said this to me: "No snow, no election." The Conservatives, they both said, can't win if people in Ottawa and Toronto and southwestern Ontario can't remember snow on the ground sometime between now and the March break because it gives credence to the idea that global warming is a fact and that it is getting worse under the Tories. Now, a good snow between now and mid-March doesn't disprove global warming any more than a green winter proves it. Weather patterns change and have abnormalities without man's fingerprints being all over the big weather machine in the sky. And even if man is reponsible, it can hardly all be blamed on the government in power since last January. But none of that matters. Suburban middle class voters can't go skiing and will take it out on Stephen Harper's Conservatives if they don't get some quality time at the various ski resorts. Better, perhaps, for a good snowfall through the March break so the skiers can get in a good four or five days on the slopes, at least for the Tories, than having the white stuff dust the lawns and ice the roads for the next eight weeks. So if you want to know about the likelihood of an early 2007 election, stop watching CBC's Politics and turn it to the Weather Channel. In the meantime, enjoy the fact that you don't have to shovel the driveway.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:38 PM

 
Hacks and Wonks is back

He's on a break now but Hacks and Wonks returned to regular blogging at the beginning of 2007. It often provides an interesting take on politics, especially a prediction about the federal budget: it spawns provincial elections in Quebec and Manitoba but no mention of a federal campaign.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:19 PM

 
Episcopalians have abandoned Christ

For anyone who takes religious belief seriously, the column in the Washington Post by Rev. John Yates and Os Guinness, the rector and a parishioner repectively of The Falls Church, one of the handful of Virginia churches that severed ties with the Episcopal Church to follow the leadership of a yet-unnamed Anglican diocese in Africa, explaining their decision is heart-wrenching. And for Episcopalians who take their Christianity seriously but do not want to break their historic ties, it provides a pretty clear call for the importance of fidelity to Jesus Christ's teaching. This is about more than women's ordination or blessing gay unions; it is about a church that has lost its way, abandoning the very basis (Scripture) of its existence.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:56 PM

 
McGwire and the Hall of Fame

On Tuesday Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken -- two players who spent their entire careers with one team -- will quite rightly be elected to the Hall of Fame with near record numbers. Also, quite rightly Mark McGwire will not be. The Washington Post's Thomas Boswell, who is the most consistently interesting sports columnist and almost always right, says that the best approach to McGwire right now is agnosticism: don't elect him to the Hall of Fame as the whole steroids mess gets sorted out. Here's Boswell:

"In such a disturbing world of half-knowledge and impossible distinctions, baseball will probably get the best available outcome next week. Ripken and Gwynn will go to the Hall with huge ballot counts. And their deeds will seem all the more significant and appreciated because their level of performance -- and their body size -- were the same before the Steroid Age and during it. McGwire will not reach Cooperstown but will get more than enough votes to stay on the ballot.

This will give all of us time to think, time for the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative investigation to play out, time for more players to retire and write their memoirs. Someday, much less than 15 years in the future, McGwire's name will still be on the Hall of Fame ballot. But our perspective on him and the period in which he played may -- for reasons we may not yet know -- be far clearer than it is now."

I think Boswell is wrong this time. Whether McGwire used steroids is the wrong question. So is whether it should be held against him if he did use steroids. Players are selected on two criteria: how do they rate against the best players of all time and how did they do compared to their contemporaries. That is a player among the all-time best and did the player dominate during the time you played. McGwire is close but he hasn't closed the deal, steroid use or not.

McGwire won a couple home-run races and was consistently good at smacking the ball out of the ballpark, but he never dominated. The year he broke Roger Maris's long-standing record, so did Sammy Sosa. Over his years as a power hitter, he hit about as many (over the same seasons) as others such as Sosa or Jose Canseco; as he geared down, Bonds was entering a new level of baseball domination (probably while on steroids).

Here are some things for Hall of Fame voters to consider: McGwire was often hurt and you can't contribute to your team when you are on the DL; he was aboslutely lousy with the glove (even if he did win a Gold Glove in 1990) and he played the simplest defensive position on the field (1B); he couldn't run; many other first basemen had seasons as valuable to their teams as McGwire had to his, even in his best year (the 1998 homerun chase during which he finished with 70); he didn't hit for a great average (lifetime 263 hitter, he never hit better than 300 in any season in which he had more than 425 at-bats and he batted a pitiful 201 in 1991). He won only one major award -- the 1987 Rookie of the Year award -- and he never won an MVP, despite leading his league in HRs four times.

McGwire did too things well: he hit homeruns (583 in his career, 49 in his rookie season, eleven 30 HR seasons) and drew walks (1317, including 162 BBs in the season he hit 70 HRs). The walks raised his career OBA to a very impressive 398. And his 'translated stats' (equalizing for park effect among other things) improves most of his offensive stats.

The New York Sun's Tim Marchman recently made an important distinction: the Hall of Fame differientates between the great and the best. There is no doubt that McGwire was great, but was he the best hitter or first baseman of his time? No. Others hit with as much power and 1B Jeff Bagwell was a superior player and few writers would consider voting him to the Hall of Fame. The case for McGwire is a result of a stats fetish on the part of baseball writers and in McGwire's case two numbers: 583 (career homers) and 70 (the single-season record for HRs until it was broken by Barry Bonds). I don't think that's enough. There will be no great injustice when McGwire doesn't get chosen for the Hall of Fame (it wouldn't be a great injustice if he did make it, either). What is unjust is for people -- fans, writers, all players -- to think that he is not in the Hall of Fame for the wrong reasons.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:37 PM

 
The 'surge' a recipe for failure?

Washington Post columnist George F. Will implies as much. Simply adding more troops to continue doing what America has been doing (policing incompetently) and permitting Iraq to continue not doing what it should have done long ago (policing at all) is not an effective strategy. Increasing the troops temporarily is tinkering with the game plan not seriously reconsidering the failed strategy; to use a baseball analogy, it is like a small-ball team calling for a sacrifice bunt in the bottom of the eighth when they are behind by ten runs. What is needed are lots of runs, not trading an out to advance the runner 90 feet. Be aggressive, be bold, be big. Or go home. A 30,000 troop surge is a bunt not the necessary swing for the fences. If you have nobody on the team who can belt the ball out -- if you don't have the 100,000 troops or more needed to impose peace -- don't bother at all; admit defeat and figure out how to get off the field without further embarrassing yourself.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:11 AM

 
A conservative infrastructure

Mark Wegierski wrote about the lack of conservative infrastructure at Enter Stage Right last week. Everyone on the Right knows that there just aren't the magazines, journals, think tanks and foundations necessary to win the battle of ideas. And while it is good that Ottawa is no longer funding other leftist endeavours (the Law Commission of Canada, the Court Challenges Program, etc...) there is nothing near a level playing field when it comes to debating public policy, let alone first principles. Much of this lack of infrastructure is well-covered ground, but Wegierski points out the cost of not being an equal participant in these debates:

"One supposes that one of the few possible reassurances for so-called 'small-c conservatives' is that they, after all, have human nature and commonsense on their side. However, what traditionalists call 'human nature' is considered merely a fiction by most left-liberals – who believe that human beings are almost entirely determined by their environment and can indeed be shaped in any direction left-liberalism chooses.

What most Canadian conservatives have failed to articulate is precisely what may be being lost in the transition from a more traditional society, to one characterized by the full-throated roar of late modernity.

There are indeed multifarious dimensions of this sense of loss.

For example, there is a loss of a more traditional sense of nationhood, of the feeling of living in a more homogenous, more rooted society. A more homogenous society is usually a society where people are friendlier and more courteous to each other, as they manifestly have something in common. A more homogenous society is also usually one with fewer economic disparities. The American state of Utah, one of the most homogenous in the Union, is also one with some of the lowest levels of economic disparity in America.

There is indeed in Canada a terrible cultural fracturing, under the pressures of the American pop-culture, of the extremes of multiculturalism and of excessive aboriginal claims. Ironically, the official champions of Canadian culture are among the greatest mavens of political-correctness.

And there is the multifarious crisis of family and morality. It has been pointed out by various commentators that no matter how many rights and benefits a given society offers, it may still be considered a failing society, if it fails in the most essential task of reproducing itself – both in the purely physical as well as cultural sense.

Related to the crisis of morality is the triumph of the 'permissive' society – the death of respect for legitimate authority and the sometimes absurdly lax operation of the criminal justice system.

Another possible aspect of social decline is the near-disappearance of praise for real masculinity and the continual devalourizing of the military and the police. Canada is a society with probably one of the lowest percentages of men under arms ever seen in human history.

This is also combined with a ludicrous, utopian contempt for the effective operation of legitimate security and intelligence functions in Canadian society.

The exercise of foreign policy has long fallen under the paradigm of 'soft power' – with development aid the preferred instrument of policy. Some Canadians imagine that they are seen as a uniquely virtuous nation in many parts of the Third World, on account of their 'do-gooder' policies. It is more likely that they are simply seen as credulous 'suckers'.

All of the various syndromes which characterize the current-day Canada are frequently enough seen as signs of a 'healthy' society by left-liberals. It is up to serious conservative thought to challenge some of the core presuppositions of the currently-regnant left-liberalism. It could be argued that it is only by contestation in the area of so-called first principles, that some kind of major intellectual and cultural shifts to societal presuppositions could be effected, which would indeed only later find an instantiation in concrete electoral victories and government policies."

In other words, winning elections are important but they are not the only thing. Winning hearts and minds are important. The failure to do so over the past four decades (some might argue longer) has made the job of righting this country (no pun intended) much more difficult when elections are won by conservative parties.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:59 PM

 
Khan and Dion

David Mader writes about Wajid Khan leaving the Liberal Party for the Tories and concludes with an important observation about Liberal leader Stephane Dion's possible role in all this; after all, it seems very likely -- if you take Khan at his word, at least -- that what ultimately forced him to cross the floor was Dion's ultimatum earlier this week:

"The other possibility is that Dion actually thought he could strong-arm Khan back into the party. But that would indicate a bigger problem for Dion, I think, in that a) it suggests that Dion thought the defection was anything but a done deal, and b) it suggests that Dion wants to rule the Grit caucus with an iron grip. Any which way you slice it, though, Dion's reaction to Khan's defection suggests a tinniness to the leader's ear that would make me quite uneasy if I were a Grit."

In other words, Dion lacks the necessary political instincts for effective political leadership. There are very few people capable of playing serious federal-level politics and Dion might not be one of them. That spells trouble for the Grits. This is not to write Dion off already but to note that he may not have what it takes to lead the party back to the promised land of governing party.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:41 PM

 
Weekend list

Nine issues I don't care about

9. Quebec -- Although I find the effect of Quebec on Canadian politics fascinating, I don't care whether Quebec remains part of Canada or not.

8. Aboriginals -- I think they got a bum deal. Get over it. It's time to join the larger society.

7. Drinking and driving -- I don't condone drinking and driving but we've become positively fascist about it and I won't condemn people who drive after a drink or two. Certainly a couple of drinks an hour or so before driving is not that dangerous. I also think that punishing people for potentially harming others stands traditional principles of justice on its head.

6. Space exploration -- The issue is not at all interesting to me. I understand that there is important research (military and civilian) associated with the space program. Let me know when they find something.

5. Spouse abuse -- This is a personal issue for those involved (the abused and the abuser) and a criminal issue, not a social policy issue. Great personal tragedies need not become society's problems.

4. Politician pay raises -- I think the job of elected representative is both woefully underpaid and under-appreciated, but few current politicians deserve more money than they get. I don't necessarily begrudge them a pay raise but I'd like to see a system which forced politicians to be more accountable for giving themselves one. Or, preferably, delaying all pay raises until after the next election. But unlike many conservatives and libertarians, I don't get upset about this issue.

3. AIDS in North America & Europe -- My heart goes out to women and children in the developing world who contract AIDS/HIV; the socio-legal realities in many countries make them innocent victims of not just a deadly disease but the injustices (abusive and philandering husbands, the devaluing of females, the helplessness of children, etc...) that permit the disease to spread wildly and indiscriminately. But for almost all North American adults suffering from the disease, it is a result of lifestyle choices and I'd rather see society's time and energy used to curb the social pathologies that lead to the spread of AIDS than wasting one second fretting about not-so-innocent victims.

2. Obesity -- As a public policy issue, I don't care. (As a personal matter I'm also indifferent.) I don't think the government should care either. It is an issue best left for individuals and their priests (sloth & gluttony are sins after all) and politicians should keep their minds off our guts.

1. Breast cancer -- Other than AIDS, is there a more politicized issue. I am suffering pink ribbon fatigue. Is there a need to push for greater 'awareness'? Like really, is there a woman on the continent who doesn't know what to look for?
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:10 AM

 
Wow!

That's not a good wow!, more of an astonish wow! I thought I lost my capacity to be wowed but apparently not. Over at thestar.ca, in the opinion section, the Toronto Star has a "best of the web" section for editorial comment. It has three links. The New York Times. As America's "paper of record" and mouthpiece for conventional liberal pieties, that's understandable. The Guardian. The British equivalent of the New York Times. But above those two is rabble.ca. Rabble!
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:41 PM

 
Dilbert has gone down in my estimation

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, writes about the utility of torture in the Washington Post. I don't care too much what Adams thinks about torture, although there is nothing wrong with his view (he wants to ensure it works if the U.S. is going to torture people), but I did find this noteworthy: "The other day I was watching Bill Maher on his HBO show, 'Real Time.' That's where I turn for useful political opinions. (I wish I were joking about that.)" The point Adams quotes is probably the smartest thing Maher has ever said (in Adams' words: "if the situation arose where torturing some terrorist would clearly save American lives, it's going to happen no matter what the law says") but that does not detract from the point that Adams goes to Maher and Real Time for his "useful poltiical opinions."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:35 PM

 
It wasn't under the tree but it was in the mailbox today

Why am I up so late tonight? In part because Amazon delivered two of my Christmas presents today, including Ray Charles: The Complete Country & Western Recordings 1959-1986. Not the single-CD Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music but the four-volume set. It is quite amazing. The highlight is Take Me Home, Country Roads. The other gift is a two-DVD history of the New York Yankees. Haven't had time to check it out yet but it should be thorough; it's five and a half hours long. My wife gives incredible gifts. I, on the other hand, gave her oven mitts and a cutting board.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:18 AM

 
So cool

Amazon is selling meat online, including a line of elk meat. You can have elk tamales, elk steaks and elk bratwurst.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:12 AM

 
Are car seats helpful?

Consumer Reports says that while cars and car seats "can’t be sold unless they can withstand a 30-mph frontal crash," that "most cars are also tested in a 35-mph frontal crash and in a 38-mph side crash," but that "car seats aren’t." So CR decided to test them at the higher speeds and found that they "crash-tested infant car seats at the higher speeds vehicles routinely withstand, most failed disastrously. The car seats twisted violently or flew off their bases..." Only two of 12 car seats tested adequately withstood the higher speed impacts. Furthermore, most of the models tested worse with the federally mandated LATCH system. For those who are interested:

"Three seats failed all our tough tests: the Evenflo Discovery, the Graco SafeSeat, and the Britax Companion, formerly our top-rated seat based on earlier tests that mirrored the federal standard. Most other tested seats passed either the front- or side-crash test in some configuration, though only the Baby Trend Flex-Loc and the Graco SnugRide with EPS passed all our tests."

Some European models did better than the U.S. makes. CR is calling for more vigorous testing of car seats. At the very least, parents need to know how limited the safety is that car seats provide.

In 2005, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven J. Levitt of Freakonomics fame wrote on their blog that federal (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) propaganda on car and booster seats are misleading because the claim that they reduce fatalities by 54% is misleading -- 54% compared to unrestrained children. Dubner and Levitt look at the data from 1975 on from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. They say:

"Even a quick look at the FARS data reveals a striking result: among children 2 and older, the death rate is no lower for those traveling in any kind of car seat than for those wearing seat belts...

But no matter what you control for in the FARS data, the results don't change. In recent crashes and old ones, in big vehicles and small, in one-car crashes and multiple-vehicle crashes, there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seat belts in saving the lives of children older than 2. (In certain kinds of crashes -- rear-enders, for instance -- car seats actually perform worse.) The real answer to why child auto fatalities have been falling seems to be that more and more children are restrained in some way. Many of them happen to be restrained in car seats, since that is what the government mandates, but if the government instead mandated proper seat-belt use for children, they would likely do just as well / without the layers of expense, regulation and anxiety associated with car seats."

Got that? In some collisions (rear-enders), car seats are more dangerous than simply buckling up the kids. And there are workable alternatives. As Dubner and Levitt say:

"Considering that Americans spend a few hundred million dollars annually on complicated contraptions that may not add much lifesaving value, how much better off might we be if that money was spent to make existing seat belts fit children? Some automakers do in fact make integrated child seats (in which, for example, the car's seat back flips down for the child to sit on); other solutions might include lap-and-shoulder belts that vertically adjust to fit children, or even a built-in five-point harness."

Instead of more CR's suggestion of more government regulations, perhaps what is needed is a more common sense, less onerous, child-restraint law.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:55 AM

 
Frogs will jump out of boiling water

Al Gore uses the well-worn story of a boiling frog not jumping out of pot of boiling water to illustrate a point about gradual habituation. Whit Gibbons of Ecoviews who reports that Dr. Victor Hutchison at the University of Oklahoma says the parable of the boiling frog is untrue:

"The legend is entirely incorrect! The `critical thermal maxima' of many species of frogs have been determined by several investigators. In this procedure, the water in which a frog is submerged is heated gradually at about 2 degrees Fahrenheit per minute. As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so."

Now Gibbons does say that there is still a point to be made by environmentalist by the boiling frog analogy. Noting that, "Naturally, if the frog were not allowed to escape it would eventually begin to show signs of heat stress, muscular spasms, heat rigor, and death," Gibbons says:

"So where does that leave us with the metaphor for the human response to environmental degradation? Well the idea that you can induce a frog to remain in boiling water if you start it off in cold water is not true biologically. But that does not diminish the need to keep an eye out for the gradual relaxation of environmental laws and regulations. The metaphor lies in the frog's ability to escape from the container: if there's no way out, then the frog's fate is a foregone conclusion."

Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias comes to a different conclusion:

"Now the whole point of the movie is that it shows a talk Gore supposedly gave over and over and over. What are the odds no one ever told him or his staff the frog story was wrong? What does that tell you about how well the rest of the movie was fact-checked?"
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:34 AM

 
Predictions about the future oil supply

Normally the reporting about the 'coming oil age' is atrocious. But not this from Newsweek:

"How much oil lies beneath the Earth's crust? The only thing we know for sure is that history is littered with estimates so far off the mark—usually below the mark—that they border on the comical. In the 1920s, for instance, the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (now BP) refused to take a stake in Saudi Arabia, thinking that the country didn't hold a single drop of oil. In 1919, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that the United States would run out of oil in nine years. Yet by the time nine years had passed, huge discoveries, topped by the Black Giant field in Texas, had created a massive oil glut that almost destroyed the industry. In the 1970s, the consensus turned grim again: oil production would peak in the mid-1980s and then drop precipitously. A famous CIA report predicted the 'rapid exhaustion' of accessible fields, while President Jimmy Carter warned that oil wells were 'drying up all over the world.' Instead, in 1986, oil prices collapsed in the midst of a huge supply boom, as they had done many times before."

And this:

"[T]he perception that we are running out of oil retains such a deep hold on the popular psyche, it's worth correcting. The reason we have seen so many bad guesstimates is that even the most advanced technology can't tell us how much crude the Earth holds. No method has been devised to search for new reserves with precision, or even to gauge the true size of known reservoirs. While the mainstream view is that oil resources are finite, no one knows just how finite they are. And to complicate matters further, we are witnessing a minor revival of interest in an old Russian theory that oil can be born of chemical reactions in deep inner Earth, not of fossils decaying closer to the surface. This holds the dim but intriguing prospect that oil might be a renewable resource."

I favour getting away (conventional) oil dependence because I don't want petrodollars paying for the tickets that turn airplanes into weapons of mass destruction -- or to pay for more regular WMDs. I don't really care about the effect of tens of millions of SUVs on the environment, specifically their possible contribution to global warming, but I do care if the massive amounts of fuel required to power them funds the enemy (Iran, Venezuela) or other bad guys (Libya, Russia). Yet I don't share James Woolsey's optimism that we can easily introduce an infrastructure for an alternative or alternatives to our current oil dependency. I like the idea of "encourag[ing] a portfolio of inexpensive fuels, including electricity, that requires very little infrastructure change and let[ting] its components work together," I just doen't think its practical. Are we going to have conventional gas stations, electricity recharging stations, ethanol stations, etc..., or is one station going to provide a plethora of fuel options? Or are all cars going to have to be switched over to another fuel overnight? The 'switch' from conventional fuels to other fuels cannot be seemless or simple, or even managable or affordable, and thus is very unlikely to happen.

What is clear is that the need for finding alternatives to our current 'carbon economy' (as critics of the status quo call it) may be needed but not because the lack of supply will force us to adopt other fuels.

One last thought -- if environmentalists don't like the damage that the oil-fueled economy causes, shouldn't they be happy we are supposedly racing towards the end of oil?
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:11 AM

 
Home of the taxed

Andrew Moylan at the National Taxpayers Union blog noted that countries that have lower corporate tax rates than the United States include socialist Sweden and Denmark and communist Cuba and Cuba. The only countries with higher corporate tax rates than the U.S.? Cameroon, Canada, Guyana, Italy, India, Syria.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:45 AM

 
New York Times already playing favourites

Daniel Freedman at The Sun Shines for All (the New York Sun's blog) examines the New York Times coverage of the GOP presidential candidate front-runners has whitewashed McCain while going after Giuliani. For GOP primary voters this should be read as an endorsement of the former New York City mayor.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:35 AM

 
Socon voters

David Frum earlier this week:

"Ramesh expresses wonder that Rudy Giuliani seems to have done no thinking about his social conservative problem. I am sorry to be recycling so much old material today, but I was thinking about this back in 2004 . (Not my headline on the article by the way.) So why wasn't the mayor? The social conservatives are crucial to the Republican party. They cannot get their way 100% of the time any more than anybody else can - and most social conservatives appreciate that. But they have to be taken seriously 100% of the time. That's just basic big time ball."

There's a lot of wisdom there, at least about American politics. I'm not sure it is true in Canada. In Canada, socon voters are not taken seriously because for too long too many socially conservative voters have been unsophisticated voters; too often their votes are bought too cheaply. The self-marginalization of Canadian social conservatives has resulted in a situation today that all most want is to be paid a little respect. That's selling their votes too cheaply, but that is less the fault of politicians than the voters themselves.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:25 AM

 
Canada -- theocon and neocon

Writing at The New Republic Online, Gregory Levey, a Canadian citizen and former Israeli speechwriter at the UN, the Stephen Harper has become extremly hawkish in its foreign policy and beholden to the Religious Right in domestic affairs. Perhaps Thomas Sowell is wrong and reality is optional -- at least for those who make a living writing.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:41 PM

 
The Bush political dynasty

James Forsyth writes at The Spectator Online that former Florida Jeb Bush is not running for president or vice president ... so his son George P. Bush can run for national office sometime in the future:

"[M]ost importantly, though, there’s a dynastic reason for Jeb to stand aside from the presidential scene both in 2008 and subsequently. If he ran it would be nigh on impossible for his son George P. Bush to run for national office. The American public would likely balk at someone who is the grandson of a president, the nephew of a president and the son of a president or vice-president. Even if Jeb didn’t get elected the family brand would be damaged."

It seems doubtful that Americans would elect another George Bush president, whether or not Jeb runs on the GOP ticket in 2008 or any other time.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:34 PM

 
Funny headline

From LifeSiteNews.com: "Jewish Rabbi: If Catholic Leaders Rally, Jews and Evangelicals Would Follow." Are there Muslim rabbis? Catholic rabbis? I never thought that 'rabbi' would need the adjective 'Jewish.'
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:30 PM

 
John Edwards courts women's vote with radical pro-abort

Kate Michelman, former head of NARAL, has joined the presidential presidential candidate campaign of former Senator John Edwards. Her job is to help Edwards court the women's vote. Although Michelman hasn't yet said so, no doubt she is upset with Hillary Clinton's reaching out to middle AMerica by pretending to give teeth to the Clintonian pro-abortion formula of keeping baby killing safe, legal and rare. According to the pro-abortion feminists, there is nothing wrong with abortion so as long as its legal there is no reason for it to be rare.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:25 PM

 
Correction

I had noted earlier that yesterday's Toronto Star had a front-page article on Alexandre Trudeau's new baby boy. It was not the Star but the Globe and Mail that put the story and picture about young Pierre-Emmanuel Trudeau on the front page. I apologize for the sloppy error.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:21 PM

 
Argh!

The Toronto Star's front page yesterday had a picture of Pierre-Emmanuel Trudeau, the recently (December 22) born son of Alexandre Trudeau and his partner Zoe Bedos. (CTV story here.) The baby is cute but it must be a slow news week when three-week old baby pictures from an extremely minor Canadian celebrity make the front-page. But then again, it is a Trudeau, and this one even has the right initials. How long 'til the media starts doing puff pieces on little Pierre in anticipation of his run for the Liberal leadership in 30 years?
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:43 AM

 
Cool

Pete Townshend on the acoustic guitar performing 'Baba O'Reily'.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:34 AM

 
Quotidian

"Even when there is question of the execution of a condemned man, the State does not dispose of the individual’s right to life. In this case it is reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned person of the enjoyment of life in expiation of his crime when, by his crime, he has already dispossessed himself of his right to life."
-- Pope Pius XII on the death penalty, quoted by Avery Cardinal Dulles
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:31 AM

 
100 things you might not have known

BBC News magazine monitor has a list of 100 things you might not know, "unexpected" facts that were discovered or reported in 2006. Among them:

* There are 200 million blogs that are no longer being updated.

* Standard-sized condoms are too big for most Indian men.

* The lion costume in the Wizard of Oz was made from real lions.

* There is one fatality for every ten attempts to climb Mt. Everest.

* The word 'time' is the most common noun in the English language.

* The egg came first.

* Cows have regional accents.

* Teenagers better behaved today than 20 years ago.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:34 AM

 
Hunting to save Africa's wildlife

The London Times reports that Westerners paying to hunt African critters such as elephants, lions, leopards, water buffalo, zebra, rhinos, impala, warthogs, bongos, giraffes, wildebeests, crocoldiles, springboks, and mountain nyalas are helping preserve the species. The paper reports on a study that finds:

"Hunters are prepared to pay thousands of pounds for the chance to shoot trophy species. The money they bring in to the 23 African nations that permit trophy hunting provides jobs and encourages people to preserve the landscape rather than turn it into farmland. According to a report in New Scientist, a proportion of the money reaches conservation organisations, who use it to promote wildlife and protect the natural habitat.

The study, published in the journal Biological Conservation, concludes that where game areas are well managed, the death toll from hunters is outweighed by increases in animal populations made possible by conservation initiatives."

At least three rare species (the bontebok, the black wildebeest and the Cape mountain zebra) are recovering from their extremely threatened status due to the controversial conservation plan. Furthermore, the hunting fees help the local economy, employing locals in areas in which there is little or no eco-tourism. As the Times reports, "Legal trophy hunting in 23 sub-Saharan African nations is worth £100 million annually." If you give human beings an economic interest in maintaining (or growing) animal populations, and hunting fees are one such incentive, entrepreneurss will find ways to keep the animals around.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:35 AM

 
Pro-life Democrats

Robert Novak says that the seven self-described pro-life new Democratic Congressman and two self-described pro-life new Democrats Senators will be put to the test when the party's priority bill on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is introduced. The votes of the seven House Democrats, Novak says, won't matter because of the House of Representatives had a 50-vote margin upholding the president's veto of federal monies for ESCR -- the GOP losses in November reduce the margin but are insufficient to jeopardize a presidential veto. Still, they, the pro-life Democrats, will be pressured to support a piece of legislation that was championed by the Democrats in the midterm election campaign. In the Senate, an over-ride of a presidential veto is possible. Five pro-life Republicans lost in November, and in two states, they were replaced by pro-life Democrats: Pennsylvania (Robert Casey Jr.) and Montana (Jon Tester). They say they are pro-life but the opportunity to embarrass the Bush administration might win the day. If they do vote pro-life on this bill, they would be joining only one other Democrat, Nebraska's Ben Nelson. It will be difficult for either man to stand against the vast majority of his party on this issue. My guess is that at least of them will support ESCR, making some bogus excuse that his ethical concerns are supposedly addressed in how the legislation is worded. If only one abandons his pro-life principles, a presidential veto would survive (assuming Nelson and the returning 31 pro-life Republicans vote the same way). But as Novak says, it will be an important test of the new Democratic Congressman's pro-life principles. Some, unfortunately, will flunk.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:17 AM

 
George F. Will on a federal minimum wage

Washington Post columnist George F. Will makes a sensible suggestion for what level the federal minimum wage should be set: $0. Yes, zero dollars per hour. As Will explains, "Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities' prices. Washington, which has its hands full delivering the mail and defending the shores, should let the market do well what Washington does poorly." That's the conclusion Will comes to after assaulting liberals with facts about why a minimum wage is not even necessary, let alone a good idea:

"Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6 percent (479,000 in 2005) of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor. Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum lives in families with earnings below the poverty line. Sixty percent work part time, and their average household income is well over $40,000. (The average and median household incomes are $63,344 and $46,326, respectively.)

Forty percent of American workers are salaried. Of the 75.6 million paid by the hour, 1.9 million earn the federal minimum or less, and of these, more than half are under 25 and more than a quarter are between ages 16 and 19. Many are students or other part-time workers. Sixty percent of those earning the federal minimum or less work in restaurants and bars and earn tips -- often untaxed, perhaps -- in addition to wages. Two-thirds of those earning the federal minimum today will, a year from now, have been promoted and be earning 10 percent more. Raising the minimum wage predictably makes work more attractive relative to school for some teenagers and raises the dropout rate. Two scholars report that in states that allow people to leave school before 18, a 10 percent increase in the state minimum wage caused teenage school enrollment to drop 2 percent."

Furthermore, while Democrats want to raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 by Spring 2009, there are currently 29 states, with 70% of the nation's workforce, with minimum wages between $6.15 and $7.93 an hour. As I noted yesterday, worrying about income disparities -- and, it could be added, the minimum wage -- is a cheap if dishonest way for the Left to score political points through moral posturing.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:09 AM

 
Most annoying liberals

John Hawkins at Right Wing News has the 20 most annoying liberals of 2006. How do you choose number 1? I'm sure it was close but the top two were Jimmy Carter and Keith Olbermann. Also on the list were John Murtha and the ladies of The View, and (deserving to be higher than Hawkins listed them) the Dixie Chicks, Andrew Sullivan, Harry Belafonte and Cindy Sheehan. Here's my list of the 20 most annoying Canadian leftists of 2006:

20. Alex Munter (gay rights activist and Ottawa mayoral candidate)
19. Jim Stanford (labour economist)
18. Marci McDonald (writer)
17. Buzz Hargrove (union president)
16. Paul Martin (former PM who would have rated higher if he held job longer)
15. Michael Ignatieff (professor turned Liberal MP)
14. John Filion (Toronto city councilor)
13. Olivia Chow (NDP MP & wife of NDP leader)
12. Craig Kielburger (child rights advocate)
11. Linda McQuaig (writer, columnist)
10. Jack Layton (NDP leader)
9. Warren Kinsella (Liberal flack dressed up as blogger and National Post columnist)
8. Jan Wong (pseudo-journalist)
7. Judy Rebick (feminist)
6. Robert McClelland (blogger)
5. James Loney (peace activist)
4. David Suzuki (environmentalist)
3. Peter Kormos (NDP Ontario MPP)
2. David Miller (Toronto's NDP mayor)
1. Justin Trudeau (presumptive future Liberal leader)
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:03 AM

 
Top Christian persecutors

Earlier today I noted a Release International study on Christian persecution. RI found that there were "four distinct Â?zonesÂ?: those of Islam, Communism, Hinduism and Buddhism." International Christian Concern has a report (pdf) on Christian persecution and has a list of the top ten countries were Christians facharassmentnt (and worse). They are: North Korea, Iraq, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Iran, Eritrea, China, Vietnam, and Pakistan. Also worth noting is the introduction (pages 2-3) which examines four reasons why Christians are especially persecuted in Islamic countries. They are: 1) persecution of other religions is "encoded" in Islam's holy books, 2) according to Islamic legal doctrine, there may be a "ceasefire" but "no true state of peace" between religions, 3) the radicalization of Muslims through the export of oil-funded Saudi Wahhabism, and 4) thsiegege (really, victim) mentality that infects the Muslim world that blames the West for all its ills. According to ICC, five of the top ten countries where Christian persecution takes place are majority Muslim countries.

(HT: Dispel the Illusion)
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:19 PM

 
'How do you know that the dolphins are f***ed?'

That was the subject line for an email from a friend with a link to UN's website noting 2007 is the Year of the Dolphin. My friend adds: "I hope the Dolphins don't get the same treatment that the Sudanese children did." For those who missed it, the Daily Telegraph reports that they have found 20 children (and there could be more than 100) who were sexually abused by UN peacekeepers and other UN personnel in southern Sudan.
posted by Paul Tuns at 4:19 PM

 
Comments

Send them to paul_tuns[AT]yahoo.com
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:56 PM

 
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, RIP

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was an honest scholar and her passing at the age of 66 is very sad news indeed. Robert P. George writes at NRO about how she courageously put the truth ahead of her standing and status as a feminist:

"At the heart of her doubts about secular liberalism (and what she described as “radical, upscale feminism”) was its embrace of abortion and its (continuing) dalliance with euthanasia. At first, she went along with abortion, albeit reluctantly, believing that women’s rights to develop their talents and control their destinies required its legal permission availability. But Betsey (as she was known by her friends) was not one who could avert her eyes from inconvenient facts. The central fact about abortion is that it is the deliberate killing of a developing child in the womb. For Betsey, euphemisms such as “products of conception,” “termination of pregnancy,” “privacy,” and “choice” ultimately could not hide that fact. She came to see that to countenance abortion is not to respect women’s “privacy” or liberty; it is to suppose that some people have the right to decide whether others will live or die. In a statement that she knew would enflame many on the Left and even cost her valued friendships, she declared that “no amount of past oppression can justify women’s oppression of the most vulnerable among us.”

Betsey knew that public pro-life advocacy would be regarded by many in the intellectual establishment as intolerable apostasy — especially from one of the founding mothers of “women’s studies.” She could have been forgiven for keeping mum on the issue and carrying on with her professional work on the history of the American south. But keeping mum about fundamental matters of right and wrong was not in her character. And though she valued her standing in the intellectual world, she cared for truth and justice more. And so she spoke out ever more passionately in defense of the unborn."

She also defended marriage as it has been understood for millenia and rejected sexual libertinism. Indeed, the pursuit of truth, as it does with many people, led her away from both liberalism and secularism. (Her conversion story can be read here.)

A few years ago, The American Enterprise interviewed Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. It is mostly about education, the South, the family and feminism and I particularly liked this bit:

"TAE: In Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life, you refer to mothers who 'work out of necessity.' Are the yuppies who place their 3-month-olds in day care buying into the materialistic culture you often criticize?

MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: Of course they are. I have enough respect for freedom, and enough horror at the sanctimonious bullying that surrounds us, not to tell other people what to do. But yes, I think that some significant percentage of the yuppie career women who are putting their kids in day care at a very early age are driven by some combination of the consumer culture and a misguided sense that they have to be as busy as their husbands. The necessity is more psychological than material; it’s tragic."

May she rest in peace.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:26 PM

 
John Edwards, class warrior

Former North Carolina senator John Edwards is running for the Democratic presidential nomination (again) and is running a class-baiting campaign (again). As Thomas Sowell noted in a December 28 column, "Poverty and economic disparities are the raw materials from which the political left manufactures a sense of moral superiority, self-importance and political power." At NRO Larry Kudlow comments on Edwards' redistributionist policies:

"He is recycling an old page from the liberal Democratic playbook: He says that he wants to make fighting poverty the great moral issue of our time. And he says he’ll accomplish this by taxing the rich in order to help the poor. Oh, really?

Tax capital in order to create new jobs? Haven’t we learned that you can’t create new jobs (for the poor or anyone else) without healthy businesses and plentiful new business creation? Don’t we understand that businesses require capital in order to expand? Haven’t we grasped that punishing success through higher tax rates that make it pay less to work, save, and invest will only reduce investment, jobs, and prosperity?"

In his column last week, Sowell said: "People in the media, in academia, and among the intelligentsia in general who are obsessed with 'disparities' in income and wealth usually show not the slightest interest in how that income and wealth were produced in the first place." Or how redistributing wealth affects the future creation of wealth. At some point, it is possible, there will be no rich to rob from.

But is it even necessary? As Kudlow points out:

"Economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth has shown that total compensation and consumer spending for all five income quintiles have steadily increased over the past three decades. Economist Alan Reynolds has shown that the percentage of households with inflation-adjusted incomes lower than $35,000 has actually fallen from 52.8 percent to 40.9 percent since 1967. Wait — it gets even better: Households with real incomes higher than $50,000 rose from 24.9 percent to a remarkable 44.1 percent in this period.

In other words, the middle class is shrinking because America’s families are getting wealthier."

Sowell had a less numeric illustration: "[I]n the United States, most people did not have a telephone or a refrigerator as late as 1930. Today, most Americans living below the official poverty level have not only these things but also color television, air-conditioning, a microwave oven, and a motor vehicle."

Furthermore, most people who work full-time are not poor; the very concept of "working poor" is almost a relic. People who do work full-time and have low incomes, do so only temporarily as they work themselves up the job experience ladder. Most people with low incomes work part-time, are students, live at home with their parents, or are not the primary income earner in the household. And, anyway, as Sowell noted, many of the "poor" have a vast array of conveniences and comforts. But these facts matter little to the class warriors of the Democratic Party who ride envy to political gain.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:03 PM

 
Roughly one in eight Christians face persecution

Release International says in a press release that 250 million Christians will face persecution in 2007. RI says that, "Abuses suffered by Christians include kidnapping, forced conversion, imprisonment, church destruction, torture, rape and execution," and that "most persecution takes place in four distinct ‘zones’: those of Islam, Communism, Hinduism and Buddhism. But persecution is growing fastest of all in the Islamic world."

(HT: Christian Post via Dispel the Illusion)
posted by Paul Tuns at 2:55 PM

 
Yay!

If 2007 ends up being a great year, it will, at least in part, be due to the fact that Rick McGinnis is back blogging. His first post at Life with Father is a long one on upgrading his iPod which is really about music collecting (and other things such as a conservative enjoying a modern creature comfort), that is well worth reading.

(HT: Relapsed Catholic)
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:52 AM

 
LifeSiteNews.com holds New York Times to account

LifeSiteNews.com reported in November that the New York Times Magazine misrepresented certain key facts in its April 6 article about a woman serving jail time in El Salvador for having an abortion. In fact, the woman sentenced to 30 years imprisonment for her illegal abortion had committed infanticide, not abortion. The New York Times might not care about such distinctions, but its readers have a right to know, especially when the woman in question, Carmen Climaco, was the only named example of how there were a "few" woman serving 30-year sentences in the Central American country for procuring an abortion. This past weekend, the paper's public editor, Byron Calame, admitted that the article misrepresented the facts. Kudos to LSN, which today takes the opportunity for some well-deserved gloating.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:20 PM

 
Most over-rated stories of the year

Gerry Nicholls has posted his 10 most over-rated stories of 2006 and they are worth a read. Many of them have Nicholls' trademark humour (Stephane Dion's dog, Michael Ignatieff's brain) and for the most part are bang-on the mark, but I take issue with two point: "Justin Trudeau as heir apparent." At the very least, it is not only Justin Trudeau but the media that considers him worthy of attention. But from what I gather there are many Liberals aching to see him run (and win). There is a pervasive Trudeau myth, more within the Liberal Party than in Canada, and Justin benefits from it. The myth may be media-driven and untethered from reality, but it is nonetheless widely embraced by Liberals and the party's accomplice media.

Like I said, that is my only complaint, so otherwise Nicholls is batting 900 -- not bad. I could not agree more with his final item:

"Green Party as a New Force in Politics

According to the media hype, the Elizabeth May-led Green Party is on the verge of an historic electoral breakthrough. Just like the Greens were on the verge of an historic electoral breakthrough in 2000, 2004 and 2006."

The Green Party may do well enough to hurt the NDP or even Liberal Party, it may poll high enough and get the kind of media attention to affect the political debate (putting environmentalism on the agenda, forcing the other parties to highlight the issue), but it is not going to win seats.

In another post, Nicholls noted my list on the 8 most important events of 2006 and he comes to two conclusions: 1) I'm a pessimist and 2) I don't believe in the metric system because my list was not a top 10 list. Regarding conclusion #1: I am when pessimism is warranted. Regarding conclusion #2: it's complicated. I think the metric system is inherently a better system (other than for time) but I oppose any jurisdiction not using metric to change to it. I recognize that universal use of the metric system would make trade easier; I understand that I am condemning the United States to using a system that is less precise and more onerous. But I just don't think that perfection (90 feet) sounds the same in metric (27.432 meters).

The reason why I picked the top eight events of the year rather than ten is simply that top ten lists are little cliched. And I had trouble distinguishing between my number nine and number eleven, so just cut the list off at eight.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:19 AM

 
Quotidian

"O Immortal Lord, who inhabitest eternity, and hast brought thy servants
to the beginning of anther year: Pardon, we humbly beseech thee, our
transgressions in the past, bless to us this New Year, and graciously
abide with us all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen."
-- Book of Common Prayer
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:34 AM