The highest-paid federal employees are doing best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009, the most recent figure available.

When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.

The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring throughout the federal government, in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech. The primary cause: substantial pay raises and new salary rules.

What are the odds the same result isn’t occurring in Canada?

C’est une GROSSE erreur que Jean Lesage a commise de laisser entrer les syndicats dans l’État. C’est ainsi que les privilégiés naturels du système on hérité d’une arme pour faire chanter les élus et suer le peuple!

In a nutshell, he is insisting that public servants should not be permitted to form unions. He makes the observation that they abuse their privileges, they take sick-days when they are not sick, they blackmail the politicians and the screw the public. His conclusion is that if they want to be part of a union, then they should do so in the private sector.

I could not agree with M. Proulx any more. It is a delight to hear such a clear-headed evaluation and judgement of the parasitic public servant class.

“For some Canadian businesses, the recovery may prove as challenging as the downturn,” he said.

Is recession a dirty word?

Complete the sentence:

“While the bank does not entirely understand why productivity growth has been as slow as it has been, we do understand the consequences,” Mr. Carney said, repeating a warning last month that economic growth could be limited to no more than 2% for much of this decade. This will be due to slower productivity growth and an ageing population.

… and ultimately due to the printing of money.

Printing money creates a false economic indicator. As a result, it aggravates business cycles. That is what we are witnessing right now. Thank you, all you money printers and credit expansionists!

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Loto-Quebec has received cabinet approval to get into the online gambling business.

The provincial gambling monopoly, in conjunction the BC and Atlantic Lottery Corporations, will set up a site this fall aimed at stemming the lucrative yet unregulated internet gambling market.

And here comes the really laughable part:

Loto-Quebec president and CEO Alain Cousineau says his agency has been trying to fight online gambling sites without success.

Instead the agency’s gambling site will offer a safer alternative, with methods of discouraging problem gamblers.

Now, I live in a rural riding, and I’ve seen the challenges people have in finding day care for their children. Now I’m sure it’s ridings exactly like mine that Mr. Ignatieff et al have their eyes on when they talk about this glorious idea of a Nationalized Daycare program. Here’s the problem though, as seen through the eyes of someone in a rural riding.

We are not Toronto. Not a big surprise and certainly no stretch of the imagination. We have a population of approximately 109,000 people according to Elections Canada. If you’ve followed that link and looked into this riding, the map shows that we’re a fairly long strip of rural land. About half the population lives in Chatham itself and the remainder is spread out into smaller communities.

Now where the population is widely spaced, it’s likely that the only National Daycare Centres that would be put in place here are in the communities of Chatham and Leamington, possibly Tilbury and possibly Ridgetown. That leaves everyone else within the riding having to drive their children 20-30 minutes away from home and then having to travel back in order to go to work. This will very likely cause a lot of grief on any parent who would have to drive an hour (round trip) to another city/town at the beginning and the end of their day just to put their child into this Nationalized Daycare program.

As I’m sure everyone knows, there will be an complaint about Undue Hardship. The typical Liberal response to that will be to offer a subsidy for local day care because of the “unreasonable” distance a parent needs to travel. Likely, the local day care will be charging more given the potential loss of children to the ND program and the fact that it’s government subsidized. This will of course drive up the costs of the program. And I think we also know that the bleeding heart Liberals will succumb to nearly every complaint and woe presented to them.

Then there’s the loss of jobs in the private sector. For a party screaming about the loss of jobs in Canada, to put in a program that will essential wipe out an entire private industry is appalling! The government will of course require certain specialized certification in order to justify the elimination of the private industry which will require current providers to either upgrade their knowledge, which means going back to school which means loss of income and an increase in student debt ($$$), which may further be subsidized by the government ($$$), or else the former daycare provider will just have to suck it up and find a new job (more likely) or go on Employment Insurance ($$$), provided they’re eligible…

All of these costs will end up spiraling out of control (see National Gun Registry) due to poor planning and unrealistic expectations in productivity. The usual answer of the Liberals is to simply throw money at it and hope that solves the problem while crowing about investing in childcare (see Health Care).

How will they pay for all of this? Easy. They’ll simply raise taxes, or pull a Dalton on us and create a Childcare Premium.

The Liberals have been talking about this for nearly 2 decades and still can’t provide anything close to some kind of detail as to how this program might function within budget. This tells me that they have no plan, and that they’re just going to ‘figure it out as we go’.

If this ever happens, I’ll weep for the nation.

Well over 1000 people had posted comments on the AdelaideNow website up to midnight last night – most vehemently against the Rann Government’s legislation which will force internet bloggers and anyone publishing a comment on next month’s state election to supply their real name and postcode.

A poll reveals more than 90 percent of readers are against the laws, which carry a maximum fine of $5,000 for media organisations who do not hand over such information to the Electoral Commissioner.

In an extraordinary response to the story, readers have compared the law to those used in Nazi Germany, China, George Orwell’s 1984 and North Korea, including Mark Burns Springer from the United States.

I personally feel anonymous comments should be placed into context – if the commentator doesn’t include their real name, then their overall argument is diminished compared to those who do include their name. Basically, it’s about trust between those who are having the discussion. Those authors that use their real names tend to moderate their comments and are therefor less likely to tarnish their “good name.”

However, that doesn’t mean I don’t value those who contribute anonymously, and I think it’s a fundamental right to be able to speak your mind without having the government jackboot those who want to remain anonymous.

I have an idea. The 911 terrorist trial should be held in the Space Shuttle while orbiting the planet. That would be the most fair waste of tax-payers’ money!

La leader nationale des Inuits, Mary Simon, a souligné vendredi la contradiction dans un texte mis en ligne sur un blogue. “Nous nous demandons pourquoi, si ces solutions sont abordables et “à la portée de n’importe quel pays du G8″, la situation en terre inuite demeure la même encore aujourd’hui”, a-t-elle fait savoir.

Sorry, Mary, but if you do not know what your own people need, how the hell do you expect politicians in Ottawa to know??

Let me get this straight. The Inuit live in the coldest part of the country, places that have winter and subzero temperatures eleven months of the year and we are supposed to be surprized that their children have high mortality rates and greater incidences of respiratory illnesses. Duh.

Selon une étude rendue publique la veille du discours de M. Harper à Davos, la mortalité infantile chez les Inuits est quatre fois supérieure à la moyenne nationale. Les enfants inuits présentent aussi des taux de maladies respiratoires parmi les plus élevés de la planète.

Next lesson: people who live at the equator have dark skin!

As far as I am concerned, the Inuit are damn lucky. [That is not to say they have always been lucky. I know they have been abused and treated like animals in the past. ] Today, they can move to Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver if they wanted. Expecting to live in the Arctic while enjoying the comforts of modern civilization is just not reasonable and my money should not pay for it.

My guess is that Mary Simon is like every other good Canadian — she is afraid of being honest. She is afraid to bluntly say they want more money.

Imagine that you are undergoing a fairly routine surgery – say, removal of uterine fibroids or hysterectomy. During or right after the procedure, while you are still under anesthesia, a group of medical students parades into the operating room and they perform gynecological exams (unrelated to the surgery) without your knowledge.

Do you consider this okay, or an outrageous violation of your rights?

Regardless of your feelings, you should be aware that this is standard procedure in many Canadian teaching hospitals.

Medical students routinely practice doing internal pelvic examinations while surgery patients are unconscious, and without getting specific consent, at least in Canada.

Guidelines in the United States and Britain say specific consent is required but, by contrast, Canadian guidelines state that pelvic examination by trainees is “implicit.”

…
She [Dr. Sara Wainberg] polled her fellow students and found 72 per cent had also done exams on unconscious patients, without consent, confirming that it is routine.

Read the whole thing.  There’s a lot to unpack regarding this practice.  The mentality behind this is insulting, illiberal and dehumanizing.  There is no justification for penetrating women (or men) without their consent.  It does not matter what letters follow your name; it does not matter that the word, “Dr.”, precedes your name; it does not matter that she is unconscious; it does not matter what other things she has consented to; you are not allowed to violate her.  The same rules that apply to the alley way apply to the operating room.

Further thoughts can be found here.

Sarkozy called for new accounting rules and tighter limits on executive pay, adding that the risks are too great if “we do not change the regulation of our banking system and the rules for accounting and prudential oversight.”

Great! The solution to our economic woes is more accounting trickery! Wonderful!
All we have to do is reshuffle figures from one column to the other. Furthermore, this comes with the admission that governments and regulators — the very people who are telling us they have the solution now — have been endorsing the wrong accounting tricks which are at fault for the collapse of the money markets.

Blaming the free market is a canard — a most dishonest and stupid canard because there never was a free market in money.

I really wonder what the hell is going on in the mind of Stephen Harper. For the first time in history, Canadians have a Prime Minister whose background in economics arguably — specifically promoting free-markets — stands out from all others. Confused conservatives who yearn for their own peculiar brand of small government actually have an intelligent reason to suspect that their man may deliver. Sadly, any consistency in economic theory is falling apart before our very eyes. Most people have been fed so much KeynesianoMonetarist nonsense that they can not see it. The central command in the market for money is collapsing just like central command in any other market tends to collapse.

For a Prime Minister who has worked hard in the past to promote free markets, it must be bizarre to have to utter the following pap:

To be succinct, the real test of the G-20 going forward, is that it develops and sustains among its members a sense of shared responsibility towards the global economy.

For while the market’s awesome power to generate and widely distribute wealth is self-evident, we also know markets need governance. For the new global economy, the G-20 is what we have.

Spoken like a true command economy central planner! Way to go, Harper! Karl Marx would be proud!

The Canadian military has ordered a formal investigation into how a critical report on the beating of an Afghan prisoner remained buried at National Defence headquarters.

In June 2006 soldiers captured a suspected Taliban fighter and handed him over to local police, who then beat him to the point where the Canadians had to intervene.

A report on the incident, which undermines Conservative government claims that no prisoners handed over to Afghans faced abuse, was apparently uncovered only in December.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walt Natynczyk ordered an investigation, which is headed by Rear-Admiral Paul Maddison, commander of Joint Task Force Atlantic.

Natynczyk’s deputy, Vice-Admiral Denis Rouleau, says the probe will look at the incident itself, why soldiers took the actions they did and how it was reported.

The report of the investigation is due March 1 and is to be made public shortly after.

Diplomat Richard Colvin testified before a special House of Commons committee in November that he repeatedly warned federal officials in 2006 and 2007 that prisoners faced the possibility of torture in Afghan jails.

This is good news, a little late, but good news nonetheless.  Will this help end the contention that no one was tortured, or that the torture was nothing more than just being beaten by a shoe.

I have more thoughts on the matter here, but I’d like to ask why it’s so controversial to suggest that we shouldn’t be complicit in torture when, apparently, our troops on the ground think we shouldn’t be involved in torture?

The homes and schools close to Dolphins Stadium are receiving “sex offender advisory” postcards this week warning residents to watch out for The Who’s Pete Townshend, who’ll be performing at halftime of Super Bowl XLIV.

…

Townshend, 63, was arrested in England in a 2003 roundup of alleged pedophiles accused of cruising online sites for photos of child sex. Townshend said he was just doing research for a book at the time. He wasn’t convicted of anything but was placed on that country’s list of sexual offenders for five years.

For more on the controversy, look below or click

Several South Florida child-abuse activist organizations last month asked the National Football League to bar the British guitarist from the halftime stage, which he’ll also share with the classic-rock group’s original frontman, Roger Daltrey. The anti-pedophile crusaders also asked immigration authorities to stop Townshend from entering the USA, citing “moral turpitude.” And they lobbied tire maker Bridgestone from sponsoring the show.

So far, only the NFL responded, saying it would not ban Townshend — whose big tunes with The Who include guitar-heavy Who Are You? and Pinball Wizard — because he was never convicted of a crime.

I’ve raged against sex offender lists in the before.  This situation is a little different, a little more comical, but it’s still rather absurd.

Though I guess, just to be safe, I should make the following disclaimer: Please, children of south Florida, do not accept a ride on Mr. Townshend’s Magic Bus!

(H/T: @Radley Balko)

Now, I don’t try to hide my inner-nerd (which I love dearly btw), but I’m a huge Star Trek fan, and it never fails to amaze me how that single television series in all of it’s incarnations has inspired our technological development. When you think about some of the tools we take for granted today that was (at least partially) inspired by Star Trek, it sort of interesting to speculate where we can go in the future. Things like Cell Phones for example: Star Trek communicator (from the original series). The Internet: Federation Database accessible from any location hooked up to it (I could be stretching here, but you never know). And several other inspirations.

Now, we have the iPad, successor to the iPhone. In essence, it’s an answer to Star Trek: The Next Generation’s PADD or Personal Access Display Device. At the time, a very exciting idea allowing multiple functions to be combined into a mobile, hand held display that wasn’t so large as to be unwieldy but not too small to be difficult to see.

Seems we have it!

Today, while Fisheries and Oceans Minister Gail Shea was delivering a speech to open the Aquatic Life Research Facility in Burlington, a PETA zealot who was sitting in the front row stood up and hit the Minister in the face with a “tofu cream pie”.

Call me squirrely, but I call that assault.

Of course, the crazy zealot was dragged away presumably shrieking about the slaughter of seals, as if that hasn’t already been beaten into the ground 12 times over.

Protesting over your cause-du-jour is one thing, but taking it to the level of assault is another. This “unidentified” woman should be charged and jailed for assaulting a public official.

And for the record, I don’t approve of the pieing of Jean Chretien either. Yeah I know, I hate the guy, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to see him assaulted.

______________________________________________________

Update: Revenge of the Curds courtesy of the National Post

Btw, for what it’s worth: I would totally trade single payer for school vouchers. Each party’s big “21st century civil rights” cause, right?

This doesn’t really apply to Canada (with us already having “single payer” – an incredibly poor description of who actually pays), but I’m totally on board with what he’s saying.  As much as I’d like to remain all ideologically pure and never compromise my principles, that’s not the way politics works.

So, I’m with PEG.  I’d be willing to accept to some of the excesses of our current welfare state if we’d bring in some sort of robust school choice initiative.

Now, dear readers, what sort of trade offs would you be wiling to make?

You can follow PEG on twitter here.  You can follow me here.

We urge the government to expand those efforts by widening which family members can apply and speeding up the unification of adopted orphans with their new families in Canada.

I think they are on the right track.

As far as I am concerned, we should let anybody come in to Canada. Jason Kenney is wrong:

“Massive resettlement is not a solution to natural disaster. The solution is reconstruction, and we’re focused and dedicated to that,” Mr. Kenney said.

Kenney said other stuff too. He said that the government of Haiti would not appreciate it if all Haitians were permitted entry into Canada. Who cares what the Haitian government appreciates?? I certainly do not. As far as I am concerned, massive resettlement is a solution to this natural disaster.

Lorrie Goldstein posted his preferences and bias this morning:

There needs to be a limit on Canadian compassion towards Haiti.
—SNIP—
We cannot solve every global catastrophe by throwing open our doors to the victims.

I do not see why not. The vast majority of Canadian land is empty. If all of the global warming nonsense turns out to be true, well, more of the barren Canadian land will become habitable at affordable rates and Canadians will solve every global catastrophe by throwing open the doors. We will not be able to afford not to do so.

Also, the choice to fund reconstruction assumes that the purpose behind all of this foreign aid is to actually help the lowly desparate foreigners and not the governments nor the government cronies. That is a huge assumption and I am not sure what the motives of people like Jason Kenney truly are. He may have other goals to serve with his policy-making tasks. Who knows?

The problem with throwing money at reconstruction is that the question of whether reconstruction is even possible — that is, to suit the inhabitants — is never honestly addressed. Further, any discussion of the cost compared to resettlement is stifled too. Some people in Haiti may actually want to leave. Thus, the money sent to reconstruct the earthquake-prone land may be better spent. It is not like Canada is such a horrible place to live.

As far as I am concerned, if a reconstruction of Haiti is physically possible, then Haitians should do it themselves. They can move to Canada, save up some coin and go back to their homeland to reconstrct whatever they want. That is how honest compassionate reconstruction should be done.

Mr. Ignatieff, therefore, has to appeal beyond the travails of today to offer a better tomorrow and, in so doing, reconnect with those convictions that once defined the Liberal Party. Giving effect to those convictions – a strong central government, an activist state and an internationalist foreign policy – will take money that the federal government doesn’t have, and won’t have without raising taxes.

It’s good advice, but it’ll never happen under the current minority government situation; with the Liberal Party a whisper and a vote away from being the next government.

The Liberal Party of Canada needs to spend one term, possibly two, sitting in the opposition benches of a majority Conservative government before any real perspective on governing is achieved. The Liberal party had grown stale and corrupt under the heavy hand of Prime Minister Chretien (as any government would after 12 years) and the constant saber-rattling from the official opposition has done nothing to quell the stench of that staleness. I think the parade of new Liberal party leaders further proves the party needs to do some deep reflection before it can be handed the keys to Canadian government.

It should also be said that if Conservative supporters across the country (both big “C” and little “c”) feel like they didn’t get a chance to effect change – without the hindrance of a minority government situation – they are unlikely to consider any other party in the near future.

Polarization of the vote and constant minority governments may become the norm in Canadian politics, and that should strike fear in any Canadian concerned about the future of Canadian democracy.

The Liberal Party needs to lose and lose badly.

Once again, we’re not seeing a whole lot of press about what was such a big deal in the past. Maybe someone will pick up the ball on this one, but I’m not holding my breath.

Still, not such a good day for Elections Canada who has stated it will review the ruling before deciding whether or not to appeal.

1. Dick Cheney
2. Rush Limbaugh
3. Matt Drudge
4. Sarah Palin
5. Robert Gates
6. Glenn Beck
7. Roger Ailes
8. David Petraeus
9. Paul Ryan
10. Tim Pawlenty

That list looks correct, at least in its broad strokes.

Were I to rank the list, however, I would reorder it in some respects. And I would also replace Paul Ryan and Tim Pawlenty with Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. That would in turn precipitate further changes in the rank ordering. But those are relatively minor changes.

Do you agree with this top ten?

I’ve found Ezra Levant to have been a little reactionary regarding the Afghan detainee scandal.  The allusions made by Liberal MPs and pundits implying Canadians have committed war crimes are a little distasteful, but it does not seem helpful to get into a debate about whether or not someone made such a claim explicitly or implicitly.  Nonetheless, he does nab Mr. Ignatieff saying something rather disappointing:

Ignatieff said Liberals will work with other opposition parties to continue exploring the Afghan detainee issue while Parliament is shuttered. And he lambasted Harper for proroguing rather than complying with a Commons resolution demanding that the government turn over documents related to torture accusations levelled by diplomat Richard Colvin.

“Democracy breaks down if a prime minister defies the elected representatives of the people on a matter of that importance,” he said.

Ignatieff said the documents would shed light on such crucial matters as whether Canada has respected international law and human rights, “the conduct of our troops in the field” and the conduct of the government which appears to have ignored warnings about torture.

“This is really serious stuff,” he said, adding that Liberals “will not let up about this.”

(via The Canadian Press)

One of my hopes for this prorogation was for Mr. Ignatieff to begin showing some leadership.  Whatever one’s political inclinations, I hope most of us believe that a strong and principled opposition is healthy for our democracy.  I haven’t seen that from Mr. Ignatieff in the past, and, by conflating the conduct of Canadian troops on the ground in Afghanistan with the conduct of our political leadership, he does a disservice to those of us who wish to see an open and impartial investigation.

On this topic, Canadian Cynic asks:

There’s nothing magical or sacrosanct about being a member of Canada’s military. They have rules. They’re supposed to know those rules. And they’re supposed to follow those rules. And if they don’t follow them, they should expect to be punished for it. And if they knowingly and deliberately committed war crimes, what’s wrong with suggesting they be held accountable?

He is, obviously, correct.  Accountability does not disappear with the donning of a uniform.  My issue with Mr. Ignatieff’s insinuation is that we don’t have a whole lot of information to back it up.  In fact, we have stories of soldiers trying to do the right thing.  I can be as much a fan of hyperbole as the next person, but it is unhelpful in the pursuit of truth to begin with the concern that our troops are behaving inappropriately.  Further, such a stance only helps to marginalize the views of those of us who believe we need a fair investigation in order to find out what happened rather than a witch hunt.

I understand Mr. Ignatieff’s desire to score some political points.  Lord knows, the Conservative’s have scored enough at his expense.  However, what we, as a nation, need most from Mr. Ignatieff is an opposition leader who shows, you know, leadership.  Mr. Ignatieff has a wonderful opportunity to define his leadership on his own terms.

He’s not off to a good start.

It seems we need to talk.  Our relationship just isn’t what it used to be, and now that you’ve decided that we need a break for a few weeks, I think it’s time that we re-evaluate just where we think we’re headed.

I remember when we first met.  From what everybody said, you just seemed perfect, ooh, he’s soooo wonky.  Sure, you didn’t have the usual charisma that we’ve all come to expect, but that’s really overrated.  I was looking for someone of substance, and you were supposed to be it.  From that initial courtship, everything seemed good.  I knew that it would be an up hill climb, and that all the chattering classes would be predicting our failure, but I had faith in us.  Even if no one else saw in you what I saw, it didn’t matter.  You seemed like a keeper.

The initial flair of a relationship never lasts.  No one is the perfect vessel we believe them to be upon first meeting – one in whom we can pour all of our dreams and expectations.  Dreams linger and fade, and life interrupts honeymoons.  Through such stresses, all we need is to find someone who will still, in essence, be the person we always thought they were; be the person we always needed, even when blinded by desire.

We certainly had our share of ups, but we also had a few downs.  The downs seemed to mount, and grow, and envelop that initial flame.  I may have had some harsh words, but I was mature and confident enough to know that no relationship can be perfect.  There is no Suzanne Somers for my Patrick Duffy, but I didn’t care.  Waking up from a dream or nightmare, I still believed you were the right choice for me.

But I don’t know why you had to go after my friends.  I don’t know why you were so worried about what they might say.  I already knew you weren’t perfect, and I wasn’t expecting perfection; I was expecting the intestinal fortitude, the confidence, I was led to believe you had.  Unfortunately, your jealousy seems to have gotten the better of you.  Insecurity does wear well, Stephen, even on you.  I don’t know if I will be able to remain true to you, if you do not remain true to all the principles I thought we shared.

So here we are, the dark days of January.  Ottawa has been cold; Ottawa has been grey; Ottawa has been quiet.  I know you will return, but I know it won’t be as soon as you’d promised.  You say you need some time.  You need to get composed, take care of some housekeeping issues, and then come back fresh after the Olympics, ready take on everything anew.

I hope you get some rest, Stephen.  I hope you have the chance to reflect on the past few years we’ve spent together.  They’ve meant a lot.

I’m not a child.  I know that people grow.  I know that people’s priorities change.  I’m sad to think that yours have changed so much… or maybe it’s just that I never quite knew you to begin with… no, I don’t think that can be it.  I was prepared for some disappointment, but not this much.  You broke my heart, Stephen, you most cynical of pols.

We’ll talk when you return.

Farewell,

Jonathan

Some might justifiably regard that as a shame. After all, there is a lot of talent in the Conservative Party, and many backbenchers can quite plausibly make a strong case for having earned the right to prove themselves in Cabinet.

In your view, which Conservative backbenchers should be considered for the Cabinet? And for which portfolio?

Let me start our discussion with a suggestion: Michael Chong, the principled and accomplished Member of Parliament for Wellington-Halton Hills, could make an excellent Minister of State for Democratic Reform. The current occupant of that post, Steven Fletcher, could then be promoted to a full Minister of the Crown.

Thoughts?

McCallum: “I think the bigger weight is bread-and-butter issues, jobs and getting your children to school and all of those things. But I also think Canadians do care about democracy and about the high-handed, undemocratic attitude and actions of this government, and I think proroguing adds to the total character picture of Mr. Harper, and the fact that they may have been committing war crimes, handing over detainees knowing that they were very likely to be tortured, that is a war crime. And the fact that they’re covering it up, I think many Canadians do care about those things as well as caring about economic issues.”

This fiasco has just hit a new low and McCallum just drove a truck right smack into the middle of it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t McCallum the minister responsible for the prisoner transfer agreements when this whole war started?

Uganda.

Witch doctors in Uganda have admitted their part in human sacrifice amid concerns that the practice is spreading in the African country.

One man said he had clients who had captured children and taken their blood and body parts to his shrine, while another confessed to killing at least 70 people including his own son. [...]

“They go and capture other people’s children. They bring the heart and the blood directly here to take to the spirits,” he said. [...]

“We also have about 120 children and adults reported missing whose fate we have not traced,” he added. “From the experience of those whom we recovered, we cannot rule out that they may be victims of human sacrifice.”

Now what on earth could possibly elicit greater international outrage than blood-letting and heart extraction from children and adults?

Yes, of course. Silly me.

Speaking of W., I have to agree with a friend who stated that, love him or hate him, the former President defined this decade more so than any US leader has since Eisenhower. It’s hard to believe how different things would be today had Al Gore won the 2000 election and been responsible for the US reaction to 9-11, the CO2 scare and everything else that transpired in the years between then and now. While Barack Obama currently occupies the office, he runs the risk of being a bookend between Bush Jr. and the emerging trends that will define the 45th President up.

Now for the big so what, a collection of brief, but pointed predictions on how history will be defined by this period.

First and foremost, I think its clearly emerging, albeit while most of us blissfully ignore it, that the United States is a spent cause as a superpower. Like Great Britain, it will continue to have moderate, regional influence, but historians could find a fair argument in the self-destructive and, more lately, apathetic tendencies of America over the past 50 years finally coming home to roost at the start of the 21st century. 9-11 was merely a painful symptom, but there was already warning signs when President Bush found few allies internationally who were willing to enter into legitimate cooperation with him in the first eight months of his presidency; this included former Cold War allies, and more recent friends who became used to Bill Clinton’s style of glad-handing and saw the US as just another guy in the room. In the near future, the realization will come through a reflex recession that will clearly establish Asia and Europe as the new power blocs, although the the former is prone to local instability that could shift the balance of power further.

Culturally, there isn’t much to say as there isn’t much to work with. In an era where most folks invest so much in gratification, there isn’t very far to go down, but only because we’re extremely deep to begin with. Be it iPods, or Twitter, or other tools and inventions that will define this decade, it very telling to see just how shallow our society has become. If our world ever became rough and difficult again, the people will certainly look upon an event like our 2004 election in Canada much in the same way that we look upon the story of the Roman horse who would be senator — in both cases, with both societies, the suggestion that the luxuries and liberties enjoyed by both groups of people were far from deserved would be fair comment. As if we had nothing better to define our society by. Even still, Paul Martin was no Caligula.

Finally, there are the small seeds that got planted this decade that will only come into full blossom in the years to come, though they provide a warning to the wise who chose to heed their warnings. For the academic community, living the good life off the public dime currently, the upcoming baby boom crash (when all those boomers will want extensive health care and living costs paid for through social programs) will only serve as the final straw to drastically undo the entire scholarship system as we know it. As climategate showed us just recently, there is enough membership among the public that is willing to criticize the academy if given the excuse and hiding inconvenient truths as the recipients of many a public grant for climate change research did will only serve to speed up the drying up of the fiscal well. For what it’s worth, the militant evolutionists should also take heed, especially if they too have been tampering with the evidence and employing bullying tactics as it has been suggested over the last 24 months. Continually insulting the intelligence of the voting public might make you feel smug, but it’s not good for the long-term survival of your research projects.

Education will also yield drastic results on a more direct level in the coming decades as the western world starts be overwhelmed by Indian, Japanese, Chinese and eastern European graduates who have learned more, in less time and now do more for less cash. The white collar world is in for a bit of a shock if it thinks that university degrees somehow make one immune from what has been rolling through the industrial marketplace recently. To it’s credit, North America has tons of land and natural resources that will keep some of us employed, but not everybody. If we want to compete in the economy of tomorrow, abandoning rigid standards in favour of promoting students’ self-esteem (as Ontario has been doing recently) will only lead us to serious decline, the likes of which our fair country hasn’t seen yet.

If there is to be hope though, it is that the CFL in general has been doing well as far as revenue and attendance goes, with the 2009 season easily being the best in over 20 years. For the good folks of Saskatchewan, the Roughriders seem poised to add another Grey Cup championship to the team’s credit over the coming 10 years — maybe more. The stage is set, now we just need the snow to melt! Happy New Year everyone!

Parliament will not resume on January 25.  It will resume in March.  On March 3rd, we’ll have a speech from the throne.  On March 4, we’ll have the joy of a budget presentation.  There is a lot of conjecture as to why Parliament will be prorogued for two months, from the trite (MPs want to go to the Olympics) to the strategic (Mr. Harper wants to send some more Tories to the senate) to the abhorrent (the Conservative Party wants the whole Afghan detainee scandal to go away).  No matter the reason, it is cynical and distasteful.

If it is all about the Olympics – whether the desire to attend or the desire to avoid a tough session of Question Period during the Olympics – the Conservatives are children playing in an adult world.  Suspending a democratic legislature for the sake of international spectacle is not what a mature nation does, not when there are important issues to deal with.

If they are doing this to stack the senate, well, then they are who we thought they were: Politicians, of the same ilk as any other cynical politician, be it Jean Chretien, Belinda Stronach or Brian Mulroney.  In such a case, they deserve not only our scorn and ridicule, but also a little – just a little – of our pity.

But I’m not an idiot.  These issues may play into the political calculations (rarely would a government act without considering a variety of implications), but there is little doubt that they are trying to make the populace forget that this government is an accomplice to torture.  The Conservative Party has attempted to thwart investigations into the question of the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan for months.  More and more evidence is appearing implicating various members of our government of, at the very least, unacceptable ignorance of torture.  As this story has grown and evolved, the government has acted all the more guilty, all the more complicit.  Where we once might have accepted a mea culpa, we must now only accept a scalp.  Sadly, not since Brian Mulroney was burned in electoral effigy, via the repulsion of Kim Campbell, has the Canadian electorate taken serious their duty to repudiate a governing party so greatly steeped in political transgression.  It is my worry that when responsible government returns in March and, later, when our current government is forced to stand before voters, the voters will shrug.

Writing at what is, generally, a fairly conservative web site, I fully expect vitriolic responses from Conservatives.  Once, reading about Levi Strauss, I witnessed him described as a conservative, in that what he wanted to conserve is liberal democracy.  It is those conservatives to whom I write.

(As always, you should be reading Scott H. Payne for insight on these matters.)

The 8-year-old’s favorite color is aqua. Her favorite toy: American Girl Dolls. And right now she’s reading a Junie B. Jones book that made her giggle when she talked about the plot.

Pink and aqua barrettes held her shoulder-length layered hair out of her face, while she drew chalk pictures of clouds on the pavement.

When her mother announced that the child would be allowed to pierce her ears next week, the girl screeched and had a huge smile on her face.

“You’ve waited long enough to live as a girl,” the mother said.

The mother is on a mission to educate the community and encourage churches to open a dialog about diversity and acceptance of all people.

She recently waged an e-mail campaign to urge her church members to place an empty envelope in the collection basket on Mother’s Day weekend. She said she wanted to send a message to the church that church members can have a voice and that they shouldn’t just blindly follow the flock.

The boy’s mother sounds like a nut.

I am sure there is a lot more to this story but anybody with half of a brain, an ounce of honesty and any experience minding children knows that children thrive on being copy-cats. I am willing to bet that the preponderance of what we do not hear in this Romero story is that the child is doing what every normal child does: please his parents. I do not believe them when they say:

“As she started to talk, she’d say, ‘I’m a girl’. We used to correct her and say, ‘No you’re a boy’.

“By the time she was four she was insisting, ‘No, I really am a girl’.”

Her father Joseph, an engineer in the United States Air Force, said: “I had mourned the loss of my son. When I came to terms with it, I knew I had gained a daughter.”

Joey Romero is following his parents’ orders. Where are the anti-circumcision advocates when we need them?

Now, a couple of disclaimers:
1) My government approved certification as a sex-therapist is in my back pocket and my Ph.D. in gender re-assignment is in my jeans.
2) Both of my sons wore hand-me-down girl’s clothing and my oldest son once said he really liked the color pink.

Family First Leader Senator Steve Fielding has welcomed the decision by the Health Minister to back down on its controversial plan to drive homebirths underground.

Under the Government’s original proposal, homebirths were to become illegal unless a midwife could find a doctor willing to work in collaboration with them.

But now the government says it won’t force midwives to work in formal collaborative arrangements with doctors as a condition of insurance.

Congratulations, Australia. You’re not governed by ghouls.

I am dismayed, but not the least bit surprised at the recent announcement by Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of Canada:

“It is the responsibility of households now to ensure that in the future, when the recovery takes hold and extraordinary measures are unwound, they can still service their debts,” Carney said during a speech to the National Forum of business leaders in Toronto.

Last year, I warned everybody about the nonsense promoted by our federal Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty:

• Why is Flaherty promoting credit as an economic solution?
• No Canadian bank bailouts but “make credit available” instead?

I was right and only now our leaders are telling us bluntly that we will pay.

This monetary policy was a horrifying bait and switch. Last year, we were told that Canadians needed credit. That was a lie to cover the fact that the monetary expansion was benefiting a select few. Now, we are told that too much household credit will be a problem.

Then there are times when comparisons seem downright prescient.

Over in Copenhagen, we have Robert Mugabe, perhaps the most brutal and corrupt despot in Africa, whose life’s work has been to destroy the once-prosperous country of Zimbabwe, lecturing the West on the “hypocrisy” of its position on climate change. [...]

We have the government of China, which won’t allow its citizens free access to the Internet, complaining that the climate summit is “not transparent.”

We have Hugo Chavez, who took time off from shutting down Venezuela’s radio stations to fly to Denmark, complaining about western “dictatorship.” (If anyone back in Venezuela disagrees, he’ll toss them in jail).

–National Post, an absolutely smokin’ post by Kelly McParland.

It bears repeating that this is the morally inverted world of environmentalism.

Update: Pass me the caviar and vodka, Sergei.

In the doctored photograph – which you can view here, though the image may be disturbing to some readers – Mr. Harper’s face is photoshopped over that of Lee Harvey Oswald in the famous photo that captured Mr. Ruby shooting Mr. Oswald, after the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

The fake shot was part of a contest launched by Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals, poking fun at Mr. Harper for dithering about whether attending the Copenhagen climate conference. The Liberals asked supporters to have some fun by putting the Prime Minister anywhere but in Copenhagen: “Your mission, should you accept it, is to pick an image that will haunt Stephen Harper forever,” the Liberal Party website says.

They offered prizes, including a t-shirt and coffee cup. Apparently, the Grits received about 75 submissions, including the assassination-attempt one.

This type of garbage belongs in the blogosphere, not on a national party website of a major G8 country.  I’m beginning to understand the overall state of political party communications and management in Ottawa and I’m not overly surprised at the lack of professionalism that exists in our political parties.  Considering that these types of antics seem to becoming the norm amongst our political elite, I’m willing to wager that pretty soon they will be accepted and embraced.

It’s no wonder we elect such losers to parliament, who would want to be part of team that would promote or condone such disrespectful and immature behaviour?

Conservatives, writes Scrutton, “recognize that social order is hard to achieve and easy to destroy, that it is held in place by discipline and sacrifice, and that the indulgence of criminality and vice is not an act of kindness but an injustice for which all of us will pay,” adding that:

Conservatives therefore maintain severe and — to many people — unattractive attitudes. They favor retributive punishment in the criminal law; they uphold traditional marriage and the sacrifices that it requires; they believe in discipline in schools and the value of hard work and military service. They believe in the family and think that the father is an essential part in it. They see welfare provisions as necessary, but also as a potential threat to genuine charity, and a way both of rewarding antisocial conduct and creating a culture of dependency. They value the hard-won legal and constitutional inheritance of their country and believe that immigrants must also value it if they are to be allowed to settle here. Conservatives do not think that war is caused by military strength, but on the contrary by military weakness, of a kind that tempts adventurers and tyrants. And a properly ordered society must be prepared to fight wars — even wars in foreign parts — if it is to enjoy a lasting peace in its homeland. In short conservatives are a hard and unfriendly bunch who, in the world in which we live, must steel themselves to be reviled and despised by all people who make compassion into the cornerstone of the moral life.

In contrast, liberals, according to Scrutton, “are of course very different.” How so? In Scrutton’s own words:

They see criminals as victims of social hierarchy and unequal power, people who should be cured by kindness and not threatened with punishment. They wish all privileges to be shared by everyone, the privileges of marriage included. And if marriage can be reformed so as to remove the cost of it, so much the better. Children should be allowed to play and express their love of life; the last thing they need is discipline. Learning comes — didn’t Dewey prove as much? — from self-expression; and as for sex education, which gives the heebie-jeebies to social conservatives, no better way has ever been found of liberating children from the grip of the family and teaching them to enjoy their bodily rights. Immigrants are just migrants, victims of economic necessity, and if they are forced to come here illegally that only increases their claim on our compassion. Welfare provisions are not rewards to those who receive them, but costs to those who give — something that we owe to those less fortunate than ourselves. As for the legal and constitutional inheritance of the country, this is certainly to be respected — but it must “adapt” to new situations, so as to extend its protection to the new victim class. Wars are caused by military strength, by “boys with their toys,” who cannot resist the desire to flex their muscles, once they have acquired them. The way to peace is to get rid of the weapons, to reduce the army, and to educate children in the ways of soft power. In the world in which we live liberals are self-evidently lovable — emphasizing in all their words and gestures that, unlike the social conservatives, they are in every issue on the side of those who need protecting, and against the hierarchies that oppress them.

Two questions occur to me. The first is quite simply whether these are accurate representations of conservative and liberal ideology, or whether they are more correctly viewed as caricatures.

Yet there is a second, and more interesting, question. If we assume that Scrutton is correct in his description of conservatives and liberals–and I hesitate to make that assumption because I believe his descriptions leave much to be desired–what does it mean to call oneself a moderate?

When someone calls herself a moderate, is she standing on firm, principled and defensible ground? What values does she claim as hers?

When someone says he is a moderate, does that evoke a refrain as familiar as the one that comes to mind when someone calls herself a conservative, or another calls himself a liberal?

These are difficult questions that require us to peer inward at our own convictions and also to cast our gaze outward at how political ideology is framed and subsequently perceived in public discourse.

- This occurred in New York, a state that rather famously responded to a dearth of abortion performing doctors by forcing medical residents to perform abortions as a condition of obtaining their full accreditation. The article mentions that federal policy now prohibits hospitals that take federal funding from forcing employees to perform abortions. I wonder if this was the Bush administration’s response to New York’s policy. Then I wonder how public financing of health care would affect availability of abortions under this rule. Since the number of doctors choosing to perform abortions appears to actually be dropping, I have to wonder if the present situation won’t lead to more “crisis” abortions taking place. Then I wonder how long it will take for the Obama administration to change this federal policy in any case, and ponder the mystery of why they haven’t done so already. Perhaps a reader can fill me in.

- Should doctors be allowed to choose their own specialties? Yes, they should, but medical students aren’t doctors. The fact of the matter is that a license to practice medicine is issued by the government, and political considerations and policy trends will necessarily come into play. On the other hand, in the US and especially in Canada Supreme Court rulings have taken the abortion debate out of the hands of politicians making it a de facto policy decision internal to our countries’ professional medical associations. If politicians don’t get a say and doctors are becoming less in favour of abortion, I wonder if future restrictions on abortion won’t come from within the AMA and CMA. And then I wonder what the political response would be, if that was to happen.

- A nurse is in no position to determine if a procedure is necessary or not, even if the superficial analysis she does based on vital signs is correct. Nurses aren’t consulted for their opinion and therefore they aren’t privy to all of the medical considerations of the case. While I sympathise with this woman’s impulse to use every argument to win her case, I think the argument she’s making here is generally a bad one.

- It’s interesting to me that a certain segment of the population feels it’s perfectly okay for someone to claim conscientious objector status after having joined their nation’s military, knowing full well that the point of a military is to fight wars when required, and a demographically similar segment is the most likely to be up-in-arms when it’s suggested that doctors, nurses and pharmacists should have the right to conscientiously abstain from participating in post-coital contraception, believing as they do that the point of medicine is to protect and heal human life and not prevent it. Am I right in thinking there’s a certain amount of cognitive dissonance at play there? It’s the same as people who are outraged at the idea of capital punishment but simultaneously in favour of allowing partial birth abortions even when the baby is viable. (Obligatory cheap shot: Tooky Williams is lucky he wasn’t an infant, or he wouldn’t have had any supporters at all.)

Let’s assume (for the sake of argument) that a burgeoning global population is actually a problem. First of all, that’s got nothing to do with Western democracies. Our birth rates are already below replacement and continue to fall decade by decade. (For a more convincing explanation for why this is so than I can muster, please watch Lord Monckton’s presentation in Minneapolis. It’s long but it’s worth every minute of your time.) As it stands, we need higher levels of immigration just to maintain the assorted taxation pyramid schemes that pay for our current standard of living. Artificially reducing our already low birthrates only exacerbates this issue.

More importantly then, what Diane is proposing is encouraging Third World countries to adopt and enforce rigid population control policies. Countries like, let’s say, Sudan. We’ve seen how Sudan handles inconvenient populations. Throw forced abortions and sterilizations into the mix and what she’s proposing (intentionally or not) are dozens of little holocausts worldwide as dominant demographics seek to meet globally mandated targets by shifting the pressure to shrink onto their minority populations.

This is lunacy that would be unbecoming of some leftist hack in the back pages of the Star. Imagine my surprise seeing this spreading across the US blogs this morning only to discover that it’s the brainchild of a respected economics reporter at one of Canada’s more reasonable financial papers.

Here’s the thing, they are, partially, correct.

A quick caveat, I am, generally, not a fan of the way pay equity is wielded.  A concept that was born to address discriminatory behaviour against vulnerable segments of the population has become a weapon used to engineer wealth redistribution surreptitiously.  It’s dishonest, and it’s an abuse of the legislative process.

A second caveat, I am on record as being against the expansion of ‘human rights’.  I hold a narrow definition, and I do not think pay equity (even the good kind) falls into it.  Further, I am offended by the Human Rights industry in Canada.

So, let’s assume, arguendo, that we’re talking about an acceptable form of pay equity, and by ‘human right’ we mean some good legislation that the government enforces through an appropriate process.  (I know this is open for debate, but these topics are being debated thoroughly on Richard’s post; I want to talk about something more narrow.)  With these assumptions, Michael Ignatieff is right.

From the article in The Toronto Star:

To that end, he [Michael Ignatieff] introduced Wednesday a private member’s bill aimed at reversing a controversial measure in the 2009 federal budget.

The budget essentially reclassified pay equity as a labour issue to be negotiated in collective agreements, stripping the Canadian Human Rights Commission of its authority to adjudicate pay equity complaints.

Anyone see the same problem with the Conservative’s re-classification that I do?  The Conservative’s measure has put pay equity in the hands of unions.  If we assume that pay equity (however defined) is worthwhile, it has no place as a bargaining chip in a contract negotiation; a union should not have the right ditch it on behalf of its membership and those who will eventually join the union.

You could almost argue that Stephen Harper’s government is acting as a shill for Big Labour.

(By the way, I’m not suggesting that any unions would do away with pay equity in order to secure a better dental plan; I’m just saying we shouldn’t even give them the option.)

Now, I can envision a convincing counter-argument that pay equity isn’t a good thing as it is currently enacted, and that its enforcement shouldn’t be delegated to Human Rights Commissions.  These may be solid points, but they do not justify the action taken by the Conservative government.  Just as it is wrong to use pay equity to enact wealth re-distribution, it is wrong to use procedural measures as a salvo against the nature of pay equity and the use of Human Rights Commissions.  It seems especially egregious to do it through the budget.  If the government wishes to take on pay equity or Human Rights Commissions, they should do so head on.  Crafting duplicitous legislation is unbecoming of a democratic government.

I still don’t trust Michael Ignatieff with the task of crafting appropriate pay equity legislation, but I don’t really trust Stephen Harper with it either.

First, the Liberal Party proposed to return rural mail delivery to its 2005 levels, when there were 55,000 more rural mailboxes in service than there are today.

Second, the Liberal Party pledged to treat pay equity as a human right.

Both ideas are quintessentially Canadian, and reflect our core values of equal access and equal opportunity–two values that have made Canada the light of the world.