They say “what goes around comes around”, and then there’s the old standby “those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”. I expect Warren Kinsella may be reflecting on those notions today.
First came this:
An open email to Warren Kinsella from a gay Conservative
and then this:
Former Restaurant Critic Tries Hand At Politics
Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I do have a bit of a bone to pick with the Smear-monger.
Up until now the radical left has framed the “war on terror” as an excuse to perpetuate American aggression, and they have argued the attacks of 9/11 and other terrorist acts around the world were a response to brash historical American Imperialism. There are many documented cases of western leftists actually stating that the Americans deserved what they got, or at least “had it coming” on 9/11.
Now Al-Qaeda has threatened China over it’s treatment of the Uighurs in the past week:
A group called al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQM) is threatening attacks on the 50,000 Chinese workers in Algeria, according to a report prepared by international risk consultants Sterling Assynt and revealed in the South China Morning Post Tuesday.
The Chinese government is taking its first threat from Osama bin Laden’s deadly network seriously. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters: “We will keep a close eye on developments and make joint efforts with relevant countries to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of overseas Chinese institutions and people.”
Clearly, these new threats of terrorism from al-Qaeda are unrelated to past acts of American Imperial aggression, so I am very curious to see how the radical left will respond to this new conflict.
We’ve seen in the past that demonstrations of outrage by the left have usually been reserved for conflicts that involve America or Israel, while they turn a blind eye to more universal issues such as freedom of speech, human rights, and gender equality. (Is it just me, or has the left been completely mum on the recent developments in Iran?)
Perhaps this time the left will side with the right – but since there’s no opportunity for America-bashing, I’m not holding my breath.
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It’s interesting that, while I’m highlighting the hypocrisy and the double standard displayed by the left, Tarek Fatah, in the National Post takes aim at the double standard of the Muslim world.
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Related: From an article in The Hamilton Spectator, November 27, 2008, Tahir Aslam Gora writes:
Ironically, writers such as Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Taslima Nasreen and Irshad Manji are the targets of these so-called leftists as well. These are the writers who have claimed their liberation from Islamic suffocation by putting their lives at risk. But they never get recognized by the hard-core left, which doesn’t behave any differently than fanatic Islamic clerics.
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In a related article, Clifford May writes:
Ask those on the left what values they champion, and they will say equality, tolerance, women’s rights, gay rights, workers rights and human rights. Militant Islamists oppose all that, not infrequently through the application of lethal force. So how does one explain the burgeoning left-Islamist alliance?
I guess the new government-run GM ascribes to the business philosophy “they zig, we zag”:
Even with the labor savings, analysts question the logic of building a compact car in the U.S. Margins are so tight that even Toyota and Honda have opted to build their smallest models in countries with lower labor costs. “Virtually nobody makes cars that size in the U.S.,” said CSM Worldwide automotive analyst Michael Robinet. “There is a reason why GM at the outset was going to bring this car in from China.”
Estimates peg GM’s losses on U.S.-built small cars at roughly $1,000 to $2,000 per vehicle sold in recent years. Lawmakers and congressional staffers involved in the compact-car competition said GM acknowledged the company expected to struggle to break even on the venture. GM views small cars as central to its bid to become what Mr. Clarke called “the greenest car company in the world.”
Does anyone expect taxpayers will ever see their investment returned?
This is an acute case of the syndrome brilliantly described by French writer Pascal Bruckner in Le Sanglot de l’Homme blanc – about the self-hating, teary-eyed White Man who carries on his shoulders all the sins of his ancestors and who ends up patronizing and dehumanizing the people of the Third World (in this case the aboriginals) by refusing them the status of responsible adults.
Mr. Ignatieff’s reinterpretation of the Pauchay story wouldn’t be worth a second thought if he weren’t leader of the Liberal Party and possibly Canada’s next prime minister..
HT to Kate.
As average life expectancy continues to rise, and as expensive technical and medical advances continue, we in the developed world will see medical costs continue to increase. These increases are not due to the evil effects of raging capitalism – rather they are the quite natural effects of serving an aging population that wants access to life-saving treatments – life-saving treatments that are made possible by the natural response to a market demand wishing to live a longer and healthier life.
This is the real world. Healthcare is expensive.
As we have observed in Canada, where government controls access to health services, there is often tremendous political pressure to maintain balanced budgets without increasing taxes. Healthcare costs represent the largest budget item, by far, for provincial governments (approaching 50% here in Ontario). Faced with having to deal with this dilemma, in 2004 the McGuinty government in Ontario did nothing to improve healthcare, rather they chose to cut back on health care services and increase taxes. This was the largest tax increase in Ontario history, and came shortly after the Ontario Liberals campaigned on a pledge to not raise taxes (but that’s another story).
If Barack Obama has his way, it looks like America will be heading down this same path of declining health care services and increased taxes:
President Barack Obama on Saturday proposed an additional $313 billion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other programs to pay for healthcare reforms expected to cost about $1 trillion over the next decade.
“I know some question whether we can afford to act this year. But the unmistakable truth is that it would be irresponsible to not act,” Obama said in an advance text of his weekly radio address.
Obama wants a healthcare reform bill on his desk by October, but faces opposition from Republicans who oppose creation of a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers.
Many of his fellow Democrats are wary of making deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, the U.S. healthcare programs for seniors and poor people, to pay for reforms.
With the cost of U.S. healthcare continuing to rise rapidly, Obama argued the country could not afford to wait another year for sweeping changes.
But he acknowledged the ambitious plan would increase government costs in the short run.
To address those concerns, Obama has pledged to come up with enough spending cuts and new revenue to pay for reforms.
It’s popular here in Canada to hold our public healthcare system up as better than the American system. The American system is often criticized for it’s lack of universality – after all “millions” of Americans have no healthcare insurance. But we seldom distinguish the difference between having “insurance coverage” and having “access to healthcare”. Here’s an interesting take on that subject:
Another statistic often quoted, in support of socialized medicine, is the fact that Canadian health care costs are lower than in the United States. Many would argue, in fact, the costs are proportional to the level of services offered, and that the significant difference in service wait times should also be considered. People in Canada simply do not have access to many medical services available in the U.S., and often when we do we must wait much longer for that access. Unfortunately, this story is all too common here.
Before you go down the road towards socialized medicine, America, ask yourself two very simple questions:
1. With real healthcare costs rising and demand for services increasing, do you really think the government is the best institution to deliver value for your money? In other words, can you think of any other government undertaking that has delivered services efficiently in the past?
2. When it comes to deciding what medical treatments you need access to, would you prefer that decision is made by your doctor or by your government?
This is most certainly not a trivial matter, and I wish you well as you debate these questions.
I find it interesting, but typical of politicians these days, that the opposition can do nothing right. The Federal Liberals have been complaining loudly that infrastructure stimulus spending has been targeted to Conservative ridings. Here we have an example of numerous projects being announced in a Liberal riding and all Wilfert can say is ” I was disappointed with the long delays especially given the short construction season.”
You can bet that, had the contracts been rushed through, and mistakes made, the Liberals would make hay with that too. Is anyone else getting really tired of this partisan bun-tossing?
Imagine, if you will, every decision made about your personal motor vehicle — from the gas you put in it to the recommendations the mechanic makes for fixing your worn-out brakes or broken transmission — was subject to final review by a state bureaucrat with no experience in the automotive industry. Now extrapolate that scenario to your health care. Are you concerned yet?
Even if the judges of the 11th Circuit disagree with the appellants’ argument, the fact that three states are currently in federal court seeking official validation of their “right” to overrule physicians and arbitrarily ration medical care is frightening enough.
When government is given free rein to overrule a medical professional’s judgment of care based on their analysis of cost, physicians and their patients no longer have a role in making decisions about those patients’ care.
This past weekend I attended the second annual Manning Centre Networking Conference, held in Ottawa. The range of topics discussed, along with the diversity of perspectives represented over the weekend made this event both informative and entertaining. A great deal of analysis has already been written about the various speeches that were given, so I won’t go into that here.
What I did want to explore here is what appeared to be the recurring theme over the weekend; what does it mean to be a conservative? Frankly, I was rather shocked that so many people found this question difficult to answer. Perhaps it was the fact the conference was attended by so many people with so many different thoughts on conservatism. In addition to very strong representation by the “mainstream” conservative movement (i.e. Progressive Conservatives and CPC members), the conference included a very large number of the more “fringe” movements, spanning the ideological spectrum from Libertarians to social conservatives. We even had the gay community represented.
But even with this diversity of perspective present in the modern Canadian conservative movement, it is clear there’s a great deal of common ground here; common ground that is not being articulated effectively. If the conservative movement is not able to identify and express it’s common principles to it’s own members, how on earth do we expect the people of Canada to understand and support us? This is not rocket science folks. (I wanted to say that because I met Steve, a rocket scientist, at the conference as well.)
In addition to identifying clearly and articulately what the conservative movement stands for, if we ever want to resonate with Canadians on a broader scale, we will also have to express these principles in terms and in language that ordinary Canadians can relate to. Conservative policy is good policy, but until the navel-gazing ends the chances we will connect with Canadians in a meaningful and lasting way is pretty slim.
At the heart of the ideal of fairness, in the peculiar ideological sense in which the term has come to be used, is the fundamental mistake that all workers — not just all workers, but all human beings, including those who simply choose not to work — should be equally rewarded, regardless of effort and ability.
Doesn’t this guy sound a lot like Mike Harris:
He called on states to impose tougher curriculum standards, and in an echo of language often used by President George W. Bush, he chided states that he said were “low-balling expectations for our kids.â€
Saying he would “cultivate a new culture of accountability in America’s schools,†Mr. Obama said states and school districts should weed out bad teachers.
A hat tip to Andrew Coyne, who writes:
Charter schools? Merit pay? Closing bad schools? Tougher standards? What kind of wacko, right-wing, Bushoid propaganda is this? In certain parts of this country, you can’t so much as say the words “charter schools†without being hounded into oblivion. Only it’s Obama saying it, so it’s okay.
Are you listening, Ontario Conservatives? You have just been given permission to have another go at education reform. Only this time get it right.