April : 2008

2007 - 2008 NHL Playoffs

It's hard to believe that it's that time already, but it is. In continuing tradition and carrying on with our third year of internal wagering, we will once again have our NHL playoff summation here. Your regularly scheduled programming will continue below the hockey stuff.

*We're hoping to see The Ducks and Montreal knocked out in the first round.


2007-08 NHL Hockey PlayOffs

** We've decided to move The Vegas Playoff Tracking to here: [NHL Hockey Round Up]

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Sir Buck Weighs The Shinny

from the desk of Sir Buck Wheaton
As an objective and knowledgeable fan of our Country's Game - those of you for whom LACROSSE sprang to mind please move on to the Arts&Leisure section where you'll find a wealth of Spring Tofu Recipes which will "delight" you- I'd like to throw my "cock into the fight" as it were and ask somebody out there with a whit of wit about them, "is there NO sensible pride left in Hab-land?"

Is this the "Finales Coupe Stanley" where Montreal has been known to "eat a few team's lunches" along the way like a bully in the cafeteria, or are we watching some pimply-faced delinquent stealing lunch money in the coat room?

Would the "Rocket" himself ( R.I.P. ya bastard!), keep a straight face, while the Politically Correct Pinheads in "the booth" awarded him a "cheat goal" as Alexei Kovalev - now THERE'S a good old CANADIAN boy - did so smirkingly ?

Is THIS tarnished path to the grail - where penalties are called in OVERTIME- one which the ever-stoic #4 himself ( galoot!) would call "une combat juste"?

When the fix is in then why all the big fuss?....

Let's go "green", turn off the television, and cycle out to Landmark and watch a Hutterite "shinny" game in a ditch of frozen hog piss?

FUCK the habs!

- Sir Buck Wheaton (Flyers in six) :)

*As much as we appreciate the sentiments and observations of our esteemed Vegas colleague and ombudsman ( and I'll also remind of that putrid penalty call in game 2(?) against the Bruins in OT which Mtl. then won), we're not that confident in a "Flyers in six" victory. No mistake, we're rooting for The Broadstreet Bullies and we were surprised by their showing in the opener of that series, but feel ominous vibrations that les habitants will probably prevail.

Since we're on the groove, we'll also say that we were surprised by the Sharks against Dallas. OK, they lost in the close one, in OT - out shooting the Stars I believe - but we thought it might have been a visit to ugly.

We've grown to like Evgeni Nabokov a lot and have really enjoyed his play this year and it's his playing that caused us to toss the Flames under the bus and root Sharks early on in the previous match ups.

Yo. Motor City vs. The Burgh in the final?

Not if The Grand Poohbah gets their way as they continue to dominate in the Vegas Internal Wagering. The GP has always had a soft spot for the Rangers.

** Oh Oh....Sir Buck could be on to something. Philly dispatched the Canadiens 4-2 tonight. Time will tell.

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Police seize hockey riot news video

[cbc] Montreal police have seized Radio-Canada television footage of a hockey riot Monday night as investigators continue to track down looters and vandals who caused more than half a million dollars damage.

On Wednesday morning, police arrived at the public broadcaster's headquarters in Montreal with a search warrant and seized several tapes of riot footage aired during newscasts on the French-language television network.

Police also asked Radio-Canada to hand over raw footage of the riot that never made it to broadcast, a request the public broadcaster is contesting through its lawyers, but will comply with by submitting tapes in sealed envelopes. [...]

Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay said he is proud of the way police handled the rioting crowds, but is terribly disappointed and shocked by people's behaviour, which he says feeds the city's reputation for hockey hooliganism.

"The image of Montreal was tarnished in Quebec and Canada, and throughout the world," he told reporters at the Montreal airport Tuesday night after returning from a trip to Haiti. "Everyone saw those images."

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It cannot be without astonishment that one watches and listens to those that sputter on endlessly about having a plan - yet they just aren't willing to tell you what that might be. Thus is and has been for a long time the Democrats. Yea baby, yea. Change. Hope. Vacuum bag drivel. Turnip trucks and born yesterday accolades rejoice.

As useless as the McCain tax suspension does ultimately seem, the left wing nonsense chamber is insulting. The political pandering of both sides is ill, to be sure.

Maybe drilling for some of your own oil, in land you actually own and building some refinery ability might help? Maybe!?

In other not-so-news news, it is quite incredible to watch so many Dems abandon the Hillary and Bill show and all but demand in the open that she drop out of the race. Hilarious! Even the NYT, who endorsed her not long ago, now sputters on about how negative she is. What feckless and fickle twats so many of this persuasion truly are.

I thought, accordingly, based on the vomitous years of fawning by this brand, that the Clintons produced light without heat? From out of their asses no doubt? Now, they're shucked and chucked for the Obama suit of nonsense. We've all seen and heard by now the extent of his only credential for CnC. "Judgement." Yup. Helluva judgement there with Wright, Rezko, Ayers etc. So you said "no to Iraq" in a scenario that mattered not a whit and were apprised of zero of the materials pertinent. That makes you about the same as the pizza guy and the squeegee kid on the judgment front. Actually, it makes yours quite a lot worse.

A lot of you (Teddy Gasbag & Jimmy Crackcorn Kerry)folks better hope she doesn't magically somehow win the nom. and then the general because you'll be sucking some serious red face ass wind if so. Unlikely, sure, but the idea is a grand smiler.

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House GOP challenges Pelosi for gas price plan

[thehill] : House Republican leaders on Tuesday challenged Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to release a plan to lower gas prices that they say Democrats touted when they were in the minority.

“Two years ago this week, you stated that House Democrats had a ‘commonsense plan’ to ‘lower gas prices,’ ” the letter said. “In light of the skyrocketing gasoline prices affecting working families and every sector of our struggling economy, we are writing today to respectfully request that you reveal this ‘commonsense plan’ so we can begin work on responsible solutions to help ease this strain.” [...]

In a press release dated April 24, 2006, Pelosi said, “Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging, rolling back the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies, and increasing production of alternative fuels.” The letter cited policies put in place during the GOP control of Congress that the Speaker claimed had raised prices on American consumers to benefit oil companies.

The House GOP leaders’ letter points out that the price of gasoline has spiked $1.18 since Democrats took over in January and stands at $3.51.



- thanks for the image T!

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Avery Antics Result in New Rule

[nhl] New York Ranger forward Sean Avery’s controversial face-guarding of New Jersey goalie Martin Brodeur in Sunday’s Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinal Series was dealt with by the League in a swift and decisive manner Monday.

Avery made headlines across the hockey world Sunday night when, during a 5-on-3 power play, he stood with his back to the play and waved his arms in front of Brodeur to distract the goalie. At another point, he also held his stick in front of Brodeur’s mask and waved the stick back and forth in another attempt at distraction.

Later in the power play, Avery scored a goal with a one-time shot – after he had abandoned his bizarre tactics. New Jersey went on to win the game in OT, 4-3, and now trails the series 2-1 with Game 4 Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden.

"I've been watching games for 33 years and I have never seen anything like that in my life," Brodeur told the New York Daily News. "If it's within the rules, it's within the rules. The official came over and said it probably wasn't something that should be done."

Monday, the League made sure it would not happen again as Senior Executive Vice President and Director of Hockey Operations Colin Campbell issued a statement about the League’s position.

It is considered an interpretation of Rule 75, concerning goaltender interference.

"An unsportsmanlike conduct minor penalty (Rule 75) will be interpreted and applied, effective immediately, to a situation when an offensive player positions himself facing the opposition goaltender and engages in actions such as waving his arms or stick in front of the goaltender's face, for the purpose of improperly interfering with and/or distracting the goaltender as opposed to positioning himself to try to make a play."

Round 1 / Game 3 - Stanley Cup Playoffs

New Jersey Devils @ New York Rangers
April 13th, 2008.



That is ridiculous and thankfully such jackassery has been nipped in the bud.

[espn] : [...] "To see that for the first time in a playoff game, that seemed to go a little beyond how we would expect the game to be played," Rutherford said. "The defenseman has a responsibility of moving players out from in front of the net, which becomes a little bit harder now with the obstruction and interference rules.

"Clearly it's not up to Marty to defend against that. He is supposed to stop the puck. It's really going to be up to Marty's teammates to offset what he is doing," he said.

The trick for players matched against Avery is to ignore him, but that is easier said than done. Avery has the knack of riling up people to the point they find themselves mouthing off or worse, getting so angered that he draws a penalty from someone who will do almost anything to shut him up.

"He's an idiot," Penguins forward Gary Roberts said.

"Here we are trying to sell the game, and stuff like that is going on," Devils forward John Madden said. "I just find it childish and I don't agree with any of it.

"There's not much you can do without taking a penalty or doing something stupid. You've got to ignore him and play on and not let him be a factor in the game," Madden said.

__________________

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Hillary Wins Penn. : Obama Sounding Bitter?

[pitts-trib-review] Bottom line: Barack Obama did not do what he needed to do, run Ed Rendell's 2002 gubernatorial campaign against Bob Casey. He failed to capture the collar counties around Philadelphia, he failed to hold the vote in Philadelphia, and he failed to win Allegheny County, the swath of geography that holds Pittsburgh at its center.

Did 'bitter' hurt him? It probably did not change that many votes, but it sure slowed his process. His near-Nixonian performance in the debate (practically the only thing missing was the sweaty brow) only added to his Pennsylvania stall.

Nobody who wins a major state drops out of the race, and Hillary Clinton is more than a nobody. [...]

With a 10 point or more win, Rendell said, "Superdelegates have to re-evaluate. Everyone of them has to. And if she keeps winning in the face of being out-spent like this, well, that is stunning, just stunning."

Best Comments From The Internets

April 22nd - Paulo re: Obama post Pennsylvania:

"The way things are going he’d better cling to religion..."

[commentary]

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Why I Left Greenpeace

[wsj] In 1971 an environmental and antiwar ethic was taking root in Canada, and I chose to participate. As I completed a Ph.D. in ecology, I combined my science background with the strong media skills of my colleagues. In keeping with our pacifist views, we started Greenpeace.

But I later learned that the environmental movement is not always guided by science. As we celebrate Earth Day today, this is a good lesson to keep in mind. [...]

Sadly, Greenpeace has evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas. [...]

We all have a responsibility to be environmental stewards. But that stewardship requires that science, not political agendas, drive our public policy.

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Stein : Expels Dawkins

[townhall] : [...] "How did life begin?" One would think that this is a question that could be easily answered. Dawkins, however, frankly admits that he has no idea. One might expect Dawkins to invoke evolution as the all-purpose explanation. Evolution, however, only explains transitions from one life form to another. Evolution has no explanation for how life got started in the first place. Darwin was very clear about this.

In order for evolution to take place, there had to be a living cell. The difficulty for atheists is that even this original cell is a work of labyrinthine complexity. Franklin Harold writes in The Way of the Cell that even the simplest cells are more ingeniously complicated than man's most elaborate inventions: the factory system or the computer. Moreover, Harold writes that the various components of the cell do not function like random widgets; rather, they work purposefully together, as if cooperating in a planned organized venture. Dawkins himself has described the cell as the kind of supercomputer, noting that it functions through an information system that resembles the software code.

Is it possible that living cells somehow assembled themselves from nonliving things by chance? The probabilities here are so infinitesimal that they approach zero. Moreover, the earth has been around for some 4.5 billion years and the first traces of life have already been found at some 3.5 billion years ago. This is just what we have discovered: it's quite possible that life existed on earth even earlier. What this means is that, within the scope of evolutionary time, life appeared on earth very quickly after the earth itself was formed. Is it reasonable to posit that a chance combination of atoms and molecules, under those conditions, somehow generated a living thing? Could the random collision of molecules somehow produce a computer?

It is ridiculously implausible to think so. And the absurdity was recognized more than a decade ago by Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix. Yet Crick is a committed atheist. Unwilling to consider the possibility of divine or supernatural creation, Crick suggested that maybe aliens brought life to earth from another planet. And this is precisely the suggestion that Richard Dawkins makes in his response to Ben Stein. Perhaps, he notes, life was delivered to our planet by highly-evolved aliens. [...]

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Obamamania

[nyt] I haven’t read much Karl Marx since the early 1980s, when I taught political philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Still, it didn’t take me long this weekend to find my copy of “The Marx-Engels Reader,” edited by Robert C. Tucker — a book that was assigned in thousands of college courses in the 1970s and 80s, and that now must lie, unopened and un-remarked upon, on an awful lot of rec-room bookshelves.

My occasion for spending a little time once again with the old Communist was Barack Obama’s now-famous comment at an April 6 San Francisco fund-raiser. Obama was explaining his trouble winning over small-town, working-class voters: “It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

This sent me to Marx’s famous statement about religion in the introduction to his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”:

“Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.”

Or, more succinctly, and in the original German in which Marx somehow always sounds better: “Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes.”

Now, this is a point of view with a long intellectual pedigree prior to Marx, and many vocal adherents continuing into the 21st century. I don’t believe the claim is true, but it’s certainly worth considering, in college classrooms and beyond.

But it’s one thing for a German thinker to assert that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature.” It’s another thing for an American presidential candidate to claim that we “cling to ... religion” out of economic frustration.

And it’s a particularly odd claim for Barack Obama to make. After all, in his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, he emphasized with pride that blue-state Americans, too, “worship an awesome God.” [...]

What does this mean for Obama’s presidential prospects? He’s disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He’s usually good at disguising this. But in San Francisco the mask slipped. And it’s not so easy to get elected by a citizenry you patronize.

And what are the grounds for his supercilious disdain? If he were a war hero, if he had a career of remarkable civic achievement or public service — then he could perhaps be excused an unattractive but in a sense understandable hauteur. But what has Barack Obama accomplished that entitles him to look down on his fellow Americans?

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What Clinton wishes she could say

[politico] : Why, ask many Democrats and media commentators, won’t Hillary Rodham Clinton see the long odds against her, put her own ambitions aside, and gracefully embrace Barack Obama as the inevitable Democratic nominee?

Here is why: She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama’s likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naive Democrats just don’t see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps, in their view, won’t tell the story.

But Hillary Clinton won’t tell it, either.

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Two Americas on Taxes

[examiner] Tuesday is the deadline for filing federal income taxes. Half of American taxpayers will pay 97 percent of the individual income taxes the government will collect for 2008, according to IRS data. The other half will pay little or nothing, yet receive billions in benefits in the form of cash, subsidies, “free” services and other benefits, and loans. There are indeed “Two Americas,” but the two aren’t the rich and poor, but taxpayers and tax consumers. It’s going to get even tougher for the taxpayers in the near future, thanks to legislation being readied by Democrats who control Congress.

First, there are some differences between the Senate and House versions of the 2009 federal budget, but however the details are ironed out, the Democrats will kill President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. If his promised veto is overridden by Congress, it will mean a minimum tax hike for every American taxpayer of about $3,000 annually.

The increase could be even more, though, because buried in the Democrats’ budget resolution are 17 “reserve” funds of additional taxing authority. Even without the reserve tax hikes, allowing the Bush cuts to expire will mean that 20.3 percent, or one of every five dollars, of gross domestic product will soon be consumed by government.

But that’s not all of the tax hikes the Democrats are planning. The Congressional Budget Office conceded last week that the anti-global warming “cap-and-trade” system proposed by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va., will require $1.3 trillion in new tax revenues over 10 years. So add another $1,400 or so on top of the $3,000 in higher taxes.

It could be even more, however, because Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee head, says Lieberman-Warner is merely “a good starting point.” No wonder Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is the ranking minority member of Boxer’s panel, says she “doesn’t get it.”

Inhofe faces a tough fight in opposing Lieberman-Warner, however, because such Senate GOP stalwarts as Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain of Arizona also favor such legislation.

Higher federal taxes are typically followed by more spending, which in turn requires additional levies. With this vicious tax-and-spend-and-tax cycle also comes more burdensome, bureaucratic regulation on the productive business and entrepreneurial energies that power the taxpaying segment of the economy. Will the Democrats ever learn that geese only lay golden eggs in fairy tales?

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Don't Leave Iraqis Vulnerable

[startribune] [...] Whatever the situation was in 2003. Whether or not going into Iraq was the right thing to do in the first place. It doesn't matter. That is a debate for history. It's 2008 now, and we have to make decisions based on the reality we have, not the reality we would prefer.

I was on the ground in Iraq for 16 months, and in that time I talked to hundreds of Iraqis. Some didn't like us; some wanted us to leave, but most did not. What they wanted was for America to live up to its word. They wanted us to rid the country of terrorists and militias so that they could live in peace.

They were willing to help us, but they are not a stupid people. They know that if they commit to the American side and the Americans abandon them as we did in 1991, it means death for them and their families. They know this, and it is real. It is not an abstract idea for them.

Most Iraqis don't support Al-Qaida and the militias, but when our commitment to stay in Iraq and finish the job is in doubt -- as it was when Sen. Harry Reid went on TV and said, "this war is lost" -- Iraqis are going to hedge their bets. They may not support the militias, but when they are betting their lives, most of them are not going to commit to America unless they are assured that America is committed to them.

That's why Vets For Freedom supports any politician who supports the mission in Iraq. We -- all Americans, not just Republicans, not just President Bush -- owe it to the Iraqi people to see this through.

This generation of American soldiers saw what happened in Southeast Asia, and we do not want a repeat of the Killing Fields, this time as Sunnis are massacred by Iranian-backed militias. We do not want an Iraqi version of the Vietnamese boat people. Never again do we want to see our allies forced from their homeland because America abandoned them. America has a choice. We do not have to let history repeat itself. This is why I went to Washington last week, and why I am a member of Vets For Freedom.

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"The Dick" Cavett Show



What a pathetic bit of drivel.

Memo to Petraeus & Crocker: More Laughs, Please

[nyt] : Once again it is time to bid aloha to that sober team of mirthless entertainers, Petraeus & Crocker.

It’s hard to imagine where you could find another pair of such sleep-inducing performers.

I can’t look at Petraeus — his uniform ornamented like a Christmas tree with honors, medals and ribbons — without thinking of the great Mort Sahl at the peak of his brilliance. He talked about meeting General Westmoreland in the Vietnam days. Mort, in a virtuoso display of his uncanny detailed knowledge — and memory — of such things, recited the lengthy list (”Distinguished Service Medal, Croix de Guerre with Chevron, Bronze Star, Pacific Campaign” and on and on), naming each of the half-acre of decorations, medals, ornaments, campaign ribbons and other fripperies festooning the general’s sternum in gaudy display. Finishing the detailed list, Mort observed, “Very impressive!” Adding, “If you’re twelve.”

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Thomas Sowell : Quote

[townhall] : " Senator John McCain could never convince me to vote for him. Only Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama can cause me to vote for McCain."

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Disgrace in Detroit

[wsj] : The NAACP has been known as a venerable civil rights organization--so venerable that the "CP" stands for "Colored People," and everyone understands that is a relic of a time when that phrase provoked no offense. Founded on Feb. 12, 1909, the centenary of Lincoln's birth, the organization fought Jim Crow laws and segregation. It was NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall who successfully argued the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court, a court Marshall himself would join 13 years later as the first black justice.

If you respect the NAACP's heritage, you will be disgusted to learn that the organization's Detroit chapter plans to honor a man who says that AIDS is a U.S. government plot to kill black people and that the Sept. 11 attacks were "America's chickens . . . coming home to roost," and who declares: "God damn America." As the Detroit Free Press reports:

Controversial minister Jeremiah Wright will speak at the Detroit branch of the NAACP 53rd Annual Fight for Freedom Fund dinner. . . .

The Fight for Freedom dinner, which annually attracts about 10,000 people, will be held April 27 at Cobo Hall. The gathering is a key fund-raiser for the Detroit Branch NAACP, and is billed as the largest sit-down dinner in the country.

This appears to be a case of circling the wagons: Wright, a black man, is under attack, so the NAACP, an organization that seeks the advancement of black people, is defending him. In doing so, the NAACP is committing an analytical and moral error. Wright is under attack not for the color of his skin, but for the content of his ideas. To defend him is to countenance those ideas. Through its actions, the NAACP is in effect arguing that anti-Americanism is acceptable, so long as its source is black. The association is sanctioning both invidious ideas and an invidious racial double standard.

Over the past few weeks, we have received several emails accusing us of racism for criticizing Wright's ideas and for noting their disturbing prevalence among the black community. This accusation is nonsense. It is no more antiblack to oppose ugly views that are common among blacks than the NAACP was antiwhite in opposing the racism and anti-Americanism that were once common among Southern whites.

For a century, Southern white politicians were effective in preserving segregation, but they were marginalized in national politics. Between the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, no Southerner was elected president (with the partial exception of Woodrow Wilson, a Southerner by birth who moved North). In order to enter the American political mainstream, Southern whites had to give up defending segregation--or rather they had to be forced by a series of legislative, judicial and executive actions to give it up.

Although white supremacy is morally distinguishable from black separatism, there is this similarity: Ideas like Jeremiah Wright's contribute to the political marginalization of blacks. Barack Obama would be a much more attractive presidential candidate were he not the spiritual protégé of a man who declares, "God damn America."

In his famous "race" speech last month, Obama declared of Wright, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." This was supposed to sound like a statement of personal loyalty, but given the way that community has rallied behind Wright, in retrospect it seems more a cynical assessment of what Obama had to do to keep his electoral base from disintegrating.

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We Have a Bingo!

[nro] : Mark Steyn on Obama: If you're running as a glamorous blank slate on which people project their own utopian fantasies, you've got to be very careful not to give the game away - especially when the game turns out to be the usual cliched elite disdain for the great unwashed. I mention in the current issue of NR how odd it is that Michelle Obama is in many ways more condescending on the stump than Teresa Heinz Kerry. Now her husband's at it, too. As Ed Driscoll says:

Leave it to Obama to make John Kerry's Brahmin hauteur seem earnestly goofy in retrospect.

Quite. I had a ton of fun covering Kerry's awkwardness with Americans but, in fairness, it was essentially a consumerist snobbery: he preferred the Newburgh Yacht Club for lunch over the local Wendy's, he'd rather be windsurfing off Nantucket than rednecking at Nascar, etc. Obama's snobbery seems more culturally profound, and unlike Kerry he can't plead the crippling disadvantage of a priviliged childhood. Rather, Barack's condescension reveals a man out of touch with the rhythms of American life to a degree that's hard to fathom. As Michelle says, they "chose" to "leave corporate America", and Barack became a "community organizer" and she wound up a 350-grand-a-year "diversity outreach coordinator". I've no idea what either of those careers involve, and most of us seem able to get along without them. But their remoteness from the American mainstream perhaps explains why the Obamas seem to have no clue how Americans live their lives.

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Obama Drips, Drips, Drips

[commentary] : Well, it has finally happened. Barack Obama has done what Democratic candidates for president invariably do — he has revealed the profound sense of unearned superiority that is the sad and persistent hallmark of contemporary liberalism. Obama’s statement today that small-town folk “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” may be the most distilled example of this train of thought I’ve ever seen.

Obama’s astonishing sentence offers a syllogistic string of superciliousness: Gun ownership is equated with religious fanaticism, which is said to accompany hatred of the other in the form of opposition to immigration and support for trade barriers. It drips with an attitude so important to the spiritual well-being of the American liberal — the paternalistic attitude that says, “Oh, well, people only do thing differently from me because they are ignorant and superstitious and backward” — that it has survived and thrived despite the suicidal impact it has had on the achievement of liberal political goals and aims.

This sort of liberal caricature was so prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s that it helped convince tens of millions of die-hard Democrats that their own party no longer had their best interests at heart — that it, in fact, viewed them as some kind of enemy, as a reactionary force for evil — and led them to pull the lever first for Richard Nixon in 1972 and then for Ronald Reagan in 1980.


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Hockey Night in Canada adds playoff games

[cbc] : CBC's Hockey Night in Canada has added more games to round out its first-round schedule for the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs.

Game 3 (Monday, 10 p.m. ET) and, if necessary, Game 6 (April 19, time to be announced) of the Minnesota Wild-Colorado Avalanche series have been added, with both games at the Pepsi Center in Colorado.

Starting April 16, Games 4 through 7 of the Detroit Red Wings-Nashville Predators first-round matchup have also been added to the HNIC schedule.

These Western Conference games will join CBC's exclusive coverage of all series games featuring:

* Pittsburgh Penguins and Ottawa Senators.
* Calgary Flames and San Jose Sharks.
* Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins.

Ron MacLean breaks down all the playoff matchups on Playoff Preview 2008 — a one-hour comprehensive playoff preview special (Tuesday, 7 p.m. local). MacLean will be joined by Kelly Hrudey and Scotty Bowman, the now-retired winningest coach in NHL history.

Fans can also enhance their playoff experience at CBCSports.ca.

Live and on-demand video streaming of all of CBC's playoff coverage will be accessible as well as the debut of Playoff Tracker — an enhanced interactive viewing environment where users can join in live chats during games, get instant updates from other games, and participate in live polling and gaming.

CBCSports.ca will also continue to be a source of comprehensive coverage throughout the playoffs, including weekly columns from HNIC personalities, breaking news, in-depth reports and broadcast schedules.

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Democrats 'See No Progress'

[wsj] : A useful measure of General David Petraeus's achievement is the turn in the political mood, even in the U.S. Congress. In September, Senators felt entitled to lecture, even berate, the Iraq commander. This time he was accorded more respect, no doubt because the surge is showing results even Democrats can no longer deny. Instead, they ignored them.

At yesterday's Senate double-header, General Petraeus was sober and candid in characterizing the security progress made since last spring, calling it "significant but uneven" and ultimately "fragile and reversible." He noted important advances:[...]

Regrettably, none of this seemed to penetrate the minds of most Senate liberals. Democrats largely used the platform for reiterating the arguments they have made for 16 months, notwithstanding the changes on the ground. Joe Lieberman described the approach of his former party as "hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq, and most of all, speak of no progress in Iraq."

Hillary Clinton seemed to take umbrage at Mr. Lieberman's assessment. She devoted her time to arguing that, to the contrary, it would be "irresponsible" to remain in Iraq and said, "I think its time to begin an orderly process of withdrawing our troops." Under a similar barrage from other questioners, General Petraeus declined to commit to further troop reductions once the five additional combat brigades sent to Iraq last year have completed their pullout in July. He recommended a 45-day "period of consolidation and evaluation."

If the hearings had a common theme, it was the contrast between the seriousness of General Petraeus and the sensitivity of Democrats to domestic political concerns. President Bush's worst mistakes in Iraq were due to standing by flawed strategies and old thinking. Democrats have now adopted that posture.

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McCain / Kerry Ticket? No Way Jose Says JMac

Everyone knows that John Kerry offered John McCain the running mate, VP slot back in the old days of 2004 presidential politics. Is there reason for conservatives, many more than a little uneasy with Johnny Mac to begin with, fearing he might offer a reciprocal grace? McCain says no need to fear.

[nyt] : Since Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, had approached Mr. McCain about being his running mate for the White House in 2004, would Mr. McCain now return the favor?

Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, who has long been viewed by many conservatives as a Democratic sympathizer, quickly said no — and just as quickly said he had never considered sharing the ticket in 2004 with Mr. Kerry, a friend of his.

“He is, as he describes himself, a liberal Democrat,’’ Mr. McCain said, adding that he meant no offense by the term. “I am a conservative Republican. So when I was approached, when we had that conversation back in 2004, that’s why I never even considered such a thing.’’

Flashback! : Kerry eyes McCain for defence job

[bbc] Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has said that if he came to power Republican Senator John McCain would be his top choice for defence secretary.

"I have any number of people that I would make secretary of defence, beginning with our good friend John McCain as an example," Mr Kerry said.

But when asked to respond to Mr Kerry's suggestion, Mr McCain dismissed the idea saying "No thanks, no thanks".

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War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism
by Douglas J. Feith

Editorial Reviews

--James Schlesinger, Director of Central Intelligence, Nixon Administration; Secretary of Defense, Nixon and Ford Administrations; Secretary of Energy, Carter Administration
"For anyone seriously interested in the decisions prior to and during the Iraq war, War and Decision is a must-read book. It is the first from within the Department of Defense, and Feith provides careful documentation rather than just freewheeling opinions. He explodes many of the journalistic and political myths that have become widely accepted. He provides a spirited defense of the President's decisions, though the subsequent discussion makes clear the failures in execution. His judgments are thoughtful--and, for a major player in the process, he is quite objective regarding what went wrong. War and Decision will be a treasure trove for the historians--when the current passions have finally cooled."

--Henry A. Kissinger, National Security Adviser, Nixon Administration; Secretary of State, Nixon and Ford Administrations
"The fullest and most thoughtful statement of the Pentagon thinking prior to and in the first stages of the Iraq war. Even those, as I, who take issue with some of its conclusions will gain a better perspective from reading this book."

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5 Myths About NAFTA
By Philippe Legrain

[wapo] : The Democratic rivals have bought into most of the myths that have been peddled about the agreement and have placed their opposition to NAFTA at the center of their campaigns. Here's some information that could help them update their stump speeches.

1. NAFTA has transformed the U.S. economy.
2. NAFTA has put countless Americans out of work.
3. "Fixing" NAFTA would be easy and cost-free.
4. Making NAFTA's labor and environmental regulations stricter would benefit U.S. workers.
5. Renegotiating NAFTA should be a priority for the new president.

[author's link]

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From the ever decried Fox news:

Recession?

[fox] A little perspective on the economy would be helpful. The average unemployment rate during President Clinton was 5.2 percent. The average under President George W. Bush is just slightly below 5.2. The current unemployment rate is4.8 percent, almost half a percentage point lower than these averages.

The average inflation rate under Clinton was 2.6 percent, under Bush it is 2.7 percent. Indeed, one has to go back to the Kennedy administration to find a lower average rate. True the inflation rate over the last year has gone up to 4 percent, but that is still lower than the average inflation rate under all the presidents from Nixon through Bush’s father.

Gas prices are indeed up 33 percent over the last year, but to get an average of 4 percent means that lots of other prices must have stayed the same or gone down. On other fronts, seasonally adjusted civilian employment is 650,000 people greater than it was a year ago. Personal income grew at a strong half of one percent in just February.

Despite all that, this last week, Barack Obama proclaimed “As most experts know, our economy is in a recession.” Hillary Clinton made similar staements last fall. Yet, as any economist knows, a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, and we haven’t even had one single quarter of negative growth reported. The economy slowed down significantly during the end of last year, but that was after a sizzling annual GDP growth rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter.

Housing has obviously been a big drag on the economy, but many other sectors of the economy, such as exports, have been doing well, some extremely well. For example, aerospace exports increased by over 13 percent last year. [...]

Yet, the hysteria created by this coverage can have another cost. It creates pressure for government to “do something,” even if that rush to do something actually ends up hurting the economy. For example, Obama's promises last week “to amend our bankruptcy laws so families aren't forced to stick to the terms of a home loan” will only further drive down the value of mortgage-backed securities, making any unstable financial institutions that hold them even more likely to fail. In the long term, who is going to want to loan money when the contract can be rewritten at a later date?

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Press needs to call Obama on distortion of McCain’s statement

[cjr] : Ever since John McCain said at a town hall meeting in January that he could see U.S. troops staying in Iraq for a hundred years, the Democrats have been trying to use the quote to paint the Arizona senator as a dangerous warmonger. And lately, Barack Obama in particular has stepped up his attacks on McCain’s “100 years” notion.

But in doing so, Obama is seriously misleading voters—if not outright lying to them—about exactly what McCain said. And some in the press are failing to call him on it.

Here’s McCain’s full quote, in context, from back in January:

Questioner: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years…

McCain: Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred. We’ve been in South Korea, we’ve been in Japan for sixty years. We’ve been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it’s fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

It’s clear from this that McCain isn’t saying he’d support continuing the war for one hundred years, only that it might be necessary to keep troops there that long. That’s a very different thing. As he says, we’ve had troops in South Korea for over fifty years, but few people think that means we’re still fighting the Korean War.

Nevertheless, back in February, Obama said: “We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another hundred years.”

And, on a separate occasion: “(McCain) says that he is willing to send our troops into another hundred years of war in Iraq.”

Since then, some conservatives have drawn attention to the distortion, and Obama’s been a bit more careful with his language. Today, for instance, he said: “We can’t afford to stay in Iraq, like John McCain said, for another hundred years.” It’s technically true that McCain said that, but Obama’s clear goal in phrasing it that way was to imply, falsely, that McCain wants the war to continue for that long. In other words, he’s gone from lying about what McCain said to being deeply misleading about it. Progress, of a kind.

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[Ann] notes this passage from Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," which seems an accurate summation and adds "that this technique seems to be the basis of Obama's entire presidential campaign." From the Obama book:

"It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time."

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Magdi Allam's very public baptism on Easter Sunday made headlines

[pjmedia] Pope Benedict’s choice to publicly baptize the most prominent Muslim in Italy, Egyptian-born Magdi Allam, highlights a quiet worldwide exodus from Islam. In recent years, millions have moved on. With this high-profile action, Pope Benedict demonstratively blesses this massive conversion from the highest levels of the Church.

nterviewed by al-Jazeera in 2006, Ahmad al-Qataani, leader of the Companions Lighthouse for the Science of Islamic Law in Libya, explains the decline:

"Islam used to represent … Africa’s main religion and there were 30 African languages that used to be written in Arabic script. The number of Muslims in Africa has diminished to 316 million, half of whom are Arabs in North Africa. So in the section of Africa that we are talking about, the non-Arab section, the number of Muslims does not exceed 150 million people. When we realize that the entire population of Africa is one billion people, we see that the number of Muslims has diminished greatly from what it was in the beginning of the last century.

On the other hand, the number of Catholics has increased from one million in 1902 to 329 million 882 thousand (329,882,000). Let us round off that number to 330 million in the year 2000.

As to how that happened, well there are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people. In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity. These numbers are very large indeed."

[...] Allam, author of numerous books and deputy editor of Milan’s Corriere della Sera, joins a list of converts from Islam which includes many other public intellectuals and millions of average people from all over the world. This is more than the normal flow between two large religious communities. Islam can point to little in the way of recent conversions. Its claim to be the world’s fastest-growing religion stems mostly from the high birth rate in Islamic countries, whose infant mortality rates have been cut by the introduction of Western medicine. Christian growth is based on adult conversion. As leading Christian evangelist Wolfgang Simpson writes, “More Muslims have come to Christ in the last two decades than in all of history.”

Although al-Qataani points to Africa, there is another phenomenon based on repulsion from Islamist dictatorship, corruption, and terrorist violence. In Iran as many as 1 million people have surreptitiously converted to Evangelical Christianity in the last five years. Pastor Hormoz Shariat claims to have converted 50,000 of them through his U.S.-based Farsi-language satellite ministry. He contrasts the upswing to the efforts of evangelical missionaries in Iran between 1830 and 1979, whose 149 years of work built a Christian community of only 3,000. One Iranian religious scholar believes youth are abandoning Islam because it is identified with the corrupt Iranian government. Now the Iranian Majlis (parliament) is debating the death penalty for conversion.

After years of al-Qaeda war on Iraq, a similar phenomenon is growing. The New York Times March 4 reports: “After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.” A high school girl tells Times reporters: “I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us. Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.” A 19-year-old man says: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.” A Baghdad law professor explains that her students “have changed their views about religion. They started to hate religious men. They make jokes about them because they feel disgusted by them.” A 24-year-old female college student says, “I used to love Osama bin Laden. Now I hate Islam. Al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.”

In southern Russia the same pattern is emerging. According to Roman Silantyev, executive secretary of the Inter-religious Council in Russia, freed from atheist control, two million Muslims converted to Christianity. Repulsed by bloody terrorist attacks, those living in areas such as Beslan have converted to Christianity in the greatest numbers of all. As many as 100,000 have converted to Christianity in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

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Clown Show : Trees Block Solar Panels, and a Feud Ends in Court

[nyt] Call it an eco-parable: one Prius-driving couple takes pride in their eight redwoods, the first of them planted over a decade ago. Their electric-car-driving neighbors take pride in their rooftop solar panels, installed five years after the first trees were planted.

Trees — redwoods, live oaks or blossoming fruit trees — are usually considered sturdy citizens of the sun-swept peninsula south of San Francisco, not criminal elements. But under a 1978 state law protecting homeowners’ investment in rooftop solar panels, trees that impede solar panels’ access to the sun can be deemed a nuisance and their owners fined up to $1,000 a day. The Solar Shade Act was a curiosity until late last year, when a dispute over the eight redwoods(a k a Tree No. 1, Tree No. 2, Tree No. 3, etc.) ended up in Santa Clara County criminal court.

The couple who planted the trees, Carolynn Bissett and Richard Treanor, were convicted of violating the law, based on the complaint of their neighbor, Mark Vargas, and were ordered to make sure that no more than 10 percent of the solar panels are shaded.

A few weeks after The San Jose Mercury News wrote about the situation, the first act ended with the couple pruning 10 feet to 15 feet of Tree No. 6’s upper branches. The event drew more cameras than an episode of “Extreme Home Makeover.”

“Across the nation, everyone’s had a push-and-shove situation with a neighbor,” said Joe Simitian, a Democratic state senator from nearby Palo Alto. “Everyone who reads this story can imagine themselves on one side or the other of that backyard fence.”

To avoid future problems, Mr. Simitian has introduced a bill to ensure that trees planted before solar panels are installed have a right to grow in peace. If he succeeds, the state that legalized medical marijuana may soon do the same for shade.

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Hillary Clinton's Bosnian Misadventure

[slate] [...] There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the more serious, means that the liar in question has also attempted to bury or to obscure something that actually is true. Let us examine how Sen. Clinton has managed to commit both of these offenses to veracity and decency and how in doing so she has rivaled, if not indeed surpassed, the disbarred and perjured hack who is her husband and tutor.

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Canada’s Human Rights Kangaroo Court

[pjmedia] [...] On March 25 there were gasps in an Ottawa hearing room when testimony during Warman vs. Lemire revealed that just such Soviet-flavored tactics were being used during CHRC “hate speech” investigations.

Gasps are rarely heard during CHRC hearings — they’re normally not open to the public or the press. Macleans magazine sued to get columnist Mark Steyn access to Tuesday’s event, which had originally been declared in camera for somewhat shaky “security” reasons. (Steyn and the magazine face an unrelated CHRC kangaroo court case later this year, charged with “flagrant Islamophobia” for publishing an excerpt from Steyn’s bestselling book America Alone; the commission became Steyn’s de facto “beat” after he and the magazine were served in December 2007.)

“Free societies do not hold secret trials except for the most serious reasons of national security: mid-level servants of the Crown who get their jollies by posing as racists on unread websites do not fall into that category,” wrote Steyn before heading to Ottawa, adding, “I’ve been received in Buckingham Palace and the White House; I’ve passed the security checks at the Pentagon and the European Commission. … And yet I’m too big a security risk to be allowed anywhere near minor civil servants of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Why don’t they just cut to the chase and rename it the Human Rights Politburo?”

Set up in the 1970s to tackle housing and employment discrimination, the only “speech” crimes the HRCs originally investigated were those proverbial “No Irish Need Apply” signs.

Inevitably, the tribunals began exercising their quasi-judicial powers to enforce then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s new vision of Canada: multicultural, blindly tolerant, and trendily “progressive.”

In one notorious case, “a Christian printer [was] ordered to produce business cards and letterhead for an organization that promotes pro-pedophilia essays, [was] fined $5,000 for having refused to do so, and [was] left with $40,000 in legal bills for daring to defend himself.”

That printer and others like him — almost always conservatives and usually Christians — including one Catholic bishop charged with “homophobia,” Steyn and Macleans, and the defendant in Warman vs. Lemire, have all attracted the CHRC’s ire because they’ve said or done something “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.”

That’s from Section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Note that magic word: “likely.” No need to prove certain words or images inspired tangible hate crimes, like arson or assault. Rather, CHRC bureaucrats need merely deem it “likely” that persons unknown might commit such crimes between now and the end of the world. That’s “thought crime” meets “future crime.” And it is enshrined in Canadian law.

Oh, and the Human Rights Commission’s conviction rate for Section 13.1 cases? A Stalinist 100%.

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Apparently it's perfectly okay for the CHRC to hijack its neighbour's computer system

[macleans] : [...] ...Incidentally, if you examine the philosophical underpinnings of Canada's "human rights" "jurisprudence," you're struck by a consistent contempt not just for freedom of expression and the presumption of innocence but also for property rights: it's no surprise that a body that takes unto itself the power to regulate the content of privately owned magazines also assumes with nary a thought that it has the right to hijack its neighbours' computer systems when it needs to construct a false identity.

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Human rights body oversteps by playing undercover game

[calgaryherald] : Even those of us advocating human rights commission reform, and thus inclined to think the less of them, have been amazed this week by what goes on at the CHRC, as revealed by a tribunal prosecuting alleged hatemonger Marc Lemire.

There we were, making abstract arguments about free speech and quoting Voltaire.

There the federal snivel servants were, logging onto Internet hate sites under assumed names, trying to conceal what they were up to by using the wireless Internet account belonging to a young woman who seems to be completely uninvolved in any of it and, according to Lemire, trying to entrap people who visited his site.

Only the unusual circumstance of these people being publicly cross-examined brought any of this to light. [...]

A quick backgrounder.

Marc Lemire is a computer whiz, and also past-president of the late Heritage Front, a neo-Nazi organization. That is to say that while a quick glance at his freedomsite.org looks mostly concerned with free speech, he is not the ideal poster boy for it.

Enter Richard Warman, a former CHRC employee but now a serial complainer to it with a seemingly boundless vulnerability to offence. He complains about offensive comments on Lemire's web page.

Lemire is then charged under Section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which makes it illegal to disseminate material on the Internet "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt."

For Warman, it is a familiar evolution; he has done this a dozen times before with other people, and is so far 12 for 12.

Lemire, however, suspects the commission itself may be the source of some comments.

Sure enough, at the tribunal, two CHRC employees admit logging in under false names to post provocative comments.

So, how do you feel about the Canadian state using agents as provocateurs? That is, people who will pretend to think like you, egg you on until you say something you might not otherwise have said, then haul you before a human rights tribunal? Is that the role of government?

Maybe it was in the Soviet Union, maybe it is in China.

But in Canada? That's assuming you accept the Canadian state has any business having an opinion about what you think in the first place. [...]

If the police set up their radar camera in your driveway, you'd have a legitimate beef. It's like that, except these people aren't even policemen investigating a real crime, they're bureaucrats trying to convict somebody of a crime that's only "likely."

transmission at 11:08 AM | Permalink