Combs Spouts Off

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Posts Tagged ‘canada’

Political poster of the year

Posted by Richard on March 6, 2014

Nick Gillespie:

Tim Moen is a Canadian who is apparently the first federal Libertarian Party candidate to run for Parliament from the Fort McMurray-Athabasca area in Alberta.

I’m nominating this as the best political campaign poster of the year.

Tim Moen

 

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Canada, Keystone XL, and national insanity

Posted by Richard on January 23, 2012

When President Obama nixed the Keystone XL pipeline project, Robert Samuelson called it “an act of national insanity.” Besides the several reasons Samuelson cites for why this decision was idiotic, there’s the fact that it isn’t even going to stop the project.

The company behind it, TransCanada Corp., said in effect, “Just because we’ve got Canada in our name doesn’t mean the pipeline has to begin in Canada, eh?” So they’re looking at a slightly shorter version, running from Montana to the Gulf. It would carry oil from the Bakken field. And since it wouldn’t cross borders, it wouldn’t require federal approval:

The Bakken shale-rock formation is estimated to hold as much as 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil in North Dakota and Montana, according to a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report. Oil production in North Dakota surged 42 percent to 510,000 barrels a day in November, exceeding the output of Ecuador.

Production in the Bakken field may reach 750,000 barrels a day this year, Edward Morse, managing director of commodities research for Citigroup Inc., said at a conference in Calgary today.

The original Keystone XL plan was based on carrying up to 830,000 barrels a day, so the Bakken output alone may be plenty to make the project economically feasible. TransCanada can always ask for approval to extend it into Alberta later, perhaps after there is a less insane administration in Washington.

For a look at what some of our neighbors to the north think of Washington’s idiocy, check out this excellent video commentary by Ezra Levant:


[YouTube link]

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O Canada

Posted by Richard on June 16, 2011

Here's something you don't hear often: they're rioting in Canada. Apparently, some Vancouver Canucks fans aren't taking it well that their team folded like a house of cards:

Unhappy Vancouver Canucks fans are rioting in downtown Vancouver, and people are looting merchandise from major department stores.

People the mayor has described as "hooligans" smashed windows, lit innumerable cars on fire and started fist fights throughout the downtown core after the Vancouver Canucks lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final 4-0 against the Boston Bruins.

Canadians rioting and looting — is this a sign of the apocalypse? My world-view is shaken.

Are they at least rioting politely? Are the looters apologizing as they cart off the flat-screens? 

 

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Dire Straits censored in Canada

Posted by Richard on January 18, 2011

Dire Straits was one of the greatest rock bands of the 80s and 90s, and 1985's Grammy-winner "Money for Nothing" was their biggest hit. Mark Knopfler wrote it in an appliance store, capturing in its lyrics some of the phrases he heard an employee there utter while watching MTV. I prefer "Sultans of Swing," "Lady Writer," and "Skateaway," but there's no question that "Money for Nothing" is a great song.

Now, the Canadian government is censoring it for violating Canada's "human rights standards." Because someone complained. Because of this verse:

The little faggot with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy, that's his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot he's a millionaire

At least one Canadian radio station has defied the ban, playing the song repeatedly for an hour. 

IMHO, anyone who's offended by "Money for Nothing" hasn't really listened to it or understood it. And is either an idiot or one of those "offense thieves" who takes offense where none was given. Here it is. Turn it up and enjoy. 


[YouTube link]

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Culture of conspiracy

Posted by Richard on June 29, 2010

In the Ottowa Citizen, editor Leonard Stern examined the "tradition of conspiracy-thinking in the Muslim world" (emphasis added):

The Toronto 18 trials wrapped up this week, as the final two accused were found guilty of plotting to commit violence in the name of militant Islam.

Originally, many people assumed the allegations were exaggerated. These were just a bunch of angry young men fantasizing out loud, more stupid than dangerous. In the end, however, it turned out to be the real deal, a textbook example of self-radicalization and homegrown terrorism.

Now that 11 of the original 18 suspects have been convicted, you'd think there would be a sense of relief. Not really. As the Toronto Star reported, focus groups organized by McGill University indicate some 90 per cent of Muslim youth believe the Toronto terrorism case was a government conspiracy, concocted to make Muslims look bad.

It's hard to overstate how depressing this is, even though we've seen it before. The most disheartening event surrounding the 9/11 attack, other than the attack itself, was the mass denial among Muslim communities right here in the West.

Read the whole thing.

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Coming to America — for health care

Posted by Richard on February 3, 2010

From Mark Perry:

CANADA'S NATIONAL POSTNewfoundland Premier Danny Williams will undergo heart surgery later this week in the United States. He is expected to be away from four to six weeks.
A decision to leave Canada for the surgery, especially if it is available here, raises questions about the Premier's confidence in Newfoundland's health care system.

MP: This raises the question: Where will U.S. politicians go for heart surgery if we ever adapt Canadian-style health care?

Thanks to Bob Wright.

Good question. There are other good questions, too. What about the average Canadian who can't afford to come to the U.S. for health care and simply has to wait his turn on the long waiting list? What about the average American if ObamaCare gets rammed through (they're still working feverishly to accomplish that) and we're all in the same boat as the Canadians? 

And why are the clowns in Congress and the White House intent on emulating the socialist health care systems of countries whose leaders flee those systems and pay dearly to get treated here instead?

UPDATE: Investor's Business Daily noted that the independently wealthy Williams couldn't get "world class" treatment in Canada, even if he paid for it himself, because the government controls even private care: 

That means long lines of rationing as well as lower-quality care. It's so bad that even the premier prefers to head to the States.

He's not alone. Other premiers, including Quebec's Robert Bourassa in 1990, have sought that care, as has Member of Parliament Belinda Stronach in 2007. According to the Fraser Institute, 41,000 Canadians, or 1% of the population, were referred by their own doctors for nonemergency medical care abroad in 2009, a rise of about 10% from a year earlier.

Thousands more don't even wait for a referral, leaving the country to seek treatment on their own. Clinics in U.S. cities like Buffalo, Seattle and Detroit do a booming business with Canadian medical tourists. Canadian newspapers are filled with U.S. doctors advertising their services.

For the wealthy Williams, U.S. health care paid for out of pocket is a viable option. Not so for Canada's poor. If the U.S. moves to a Canadian-style health care model, not even the rich will be able to run from the unpleasant side effects of a socialist system.

The same kinds of controls that mandate rationing and lower-quality care even for paying, private patients in Canada are built into the U.S. Senate and House health care take-over bills. The ones we simply have to stop.

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Speech Nazis retreat in Canada

Posted by Richard on June 28, 2008

Two down, one to go. Another "hate speech" charge against Mark Steyn has been dropped:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a hate speech complaint against Maclean's magazine.

Brought by Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, the complaint was the centrepiece of a three-pronged offense against what he sees as Islamophobia in the national newsweekly, with columnists Mark Steyn and Barbara Amiel the main offenders.

An identical complaint, brought with the help of three Muslim law students who became the public faces of the complaint, was rejected in Ontario on jurisdictional grounds. The third was heard this month by a British Columbia tribunal, which is now deliberating.

Announcing the decision (the CHRC does not publicize dismissals of complaints), Maclean's said in a statement that it "is in keeping with our long-standing position that the article in question, "The Future Belongs to Islam," an excerpt from Mark Steyn's best-selling book America Alone, was a worthy piece of commentary on important geopolitical issues, entirely within the bounds of normal journalistic practice."

"Though gratified by the decision, Maclean's continues to assert that no human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation's media. And we continue to have grave concerns about a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same complainants, subjecting it to costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the inconvenience. We enthusiastically support those parliamentarians who are calling for legislative review of the commissions with regard to speech issues."

The heinous acts that Steyn and Maclean's committed? They were accused of promoting Islamophobia by quoting radical Muslims. Human rights commissions, my ass.

At The Corner, Mark Hemingway opined:

There's also the very real problem that these commissions might sidestep penalizing Steyn and Maclean's out of self-preservation. They know that in going after high profile targets they've bitten off more than they can chew — any action against them would likely stir political action to do away with the commisions altogether. If they drop the complaint against Steyn, the political pressure will simply go away and they're free to continue zealously violating the rights of lesser known individuals and organizations.

Just yesterday, Ezra Levant posted about one of those "lesser known individuals" that they're already going after. In Vancouver, stand-up comic Guy Earle was heckled by two lesbians, and as comics are wont to do, he heckled back. Now the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has agreed with one of the lesbians that Earle's jokes weren't funny, so he's going on trial for his "hate speech."

If you're shaking your head about that, be sure to read Levant's follow-up post about his TV appearance with NOW Magazine editor Susan Cole. She insisted that only lesbians can legally joke about lesbians, only blacks can joke about blacks, and so on. This absurd notion caused Levant to come up with some interesting questions:

What kind of jokes could Barack Obama tell? His mom was White; is he Black enough to tell Black jokes? How about someone who is one quarter Black? One eighth? Are they only allowed to tell gentle Black jokes, but the really tough ones are reserved for very black-skinned Blacks?

Could a straight woman pretend to be a lesbian in order to tell jokes about lesbians? How would Susan Cole propose to check her bona fides? And how about bi-sexuals?

Could a transexual — a man who "became" a woman — tell jokes about women? Even if he was still six feet tall, and looked pretty masculine?

Can anyone tell a joke that begins "a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar", or would you need two people to tell that one?

Read the whole thing. In fact, if you want to catch up on the free speech rights battles in Canada, and keep up going forward, Levant's blog is your one-stop source. Highly recommended. Along with Free Mark Steyn!, whose cool banner I really should add to my sidebar.

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