Quote of the day

'I guess Kerry wasn't content blowing 2004, now he wants to blow 2006, too''...

What did he do, you ask? Check it out. Apparently he was trying to tell a joke, and was referring to Bush. But it doesn't matter. This is almost as good as "I voted for the $87 Billion before I voted against it".

He may be the worse high profile political candidate of all time. This is going to get a lot of air time...

Update: here are the drudge headlines today:

• Iowa candidate asks Kerry to cancel visit...*
• Kerry Pulls Out Of Minnesota Appearance...
• **No Casey/Kerry In Philly...
• TN Harold Ford asks Kerry to apologize...
• MORE DEMS PILE ON...
• VIDEO: IMUS TO KERRY: 'Please stop it. Stop talking. Go home, get on the bike'...

And here's the picture he is running (I'd love to know where he got it)

Conservatives nixing income trusts

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Tuesday the government will begin taxing income trust distributions and will cut corporate taxes to level the playing field between trusts and corporations.

Income trusts, which avoid most corporate taxes and pay the bulk of cash flow directly to investors, have surged in popularity in recent years as investors have embraced their rich yields. However, economists have noted the structure robs the government of hundreds of millions of dollar's worth of tax revenues.

I know of at least one conservative who is really going to be upset about this, and has already predicted a bloodbath on Wednesday. I suspect more than a few people are going to be peeved.

Flaherty also predicted that the Telus and BCE conversions to income trusts would not go ahead given the changes he announced.

But I think that in the long room this is probably the right move, even if there is short term pain. A level playing field should always be the government's goal.

Flaherty: capital gains tax cuts

The Conservative government is looking at ways to make good on a pledge to provide a break on capital gains taxes in the 2007 federal budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says.

NK to rejoin talks

In a surprise diplomatic breakthrough, North Korea has agreed to get back to the table and resume six-nation talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons program, China's foreign ministry said.

 

Lula re-elected in Brazil

with over 60% of the vote, and inspite of leading a party mired in corruption...he did play the classic leftist card, accusing his opponent of planning to kick people of welfare and privatize public corporations.  Gee, where have I heard that before?

Michael J. Fox: I haven't read it

He admits he hasn't read the Missouri's cloning/stem cell amendment - watch the video.  So a Canadian is campaigning in a Senate election and he admits he doesn't know what he's talking about.  Nice.

Sask update

I'm a day late on this one too (sister in law is getting married tomorrow), but here's the update from the People's Republic of Saskatchewan:

• Throne speech was yesterday, and among the usual stuff was an announcement on a new stat holiday tol be introduced in February, called Family Day
• The second thing that stuck out was the intention to introduce spend all the money collected in gas taxes on roads - this notion has been around for a while, makes a ton of sense, but governments have resisted...
• This morning, the Finance minister announced in the House (separate from the throne speech), that the PST would be lowered to 5% effective tonight.

That's one heck of a way to win a couple of news cycles!

If you are thinking that these kind of announcments signal an election will be sooner rather than later, I agree.  I think we can count on next spring.  By then a budget will have been passed, we'll have had the holiday, and the lower PST will have been in place for a while.  Maybe we'll even see some serious road work.

 

Politically this is a great move - it blunts a number of the key issues the opposition Sask Party wants to use: taxes and roads.  In my humble opinion, these measures should go a long way toward rehabilitating the fortunes of the governing NDP...

Torching a reporter

Mitt Romny gives a reporter a good natured smackdown - watch the video...  Via Hugh Hewitt.

Kline on Rae

ouch

24

Coming soon...check out the trailer

Electionpolooza

Check out this devastating ad for the Democrats in Missouri by Michael J. Fox, who believes that federal and state funding for embyonic stem cell research is the key to find a cure.  Remember, private funding of this type of research is not illegal. 

 

So there is a less devastating but still very convincing response ad to run in the same markets.  Watch them both on YouTube.  Via Drudge.

 

Last, but not least, check out this David Zucker ad on Democrats and taxes.  (Via PajamasMedia and Hugh Hewitt)  Absolutely outstanding.  This is the same guy that did the Madeline Albright ad I posted earlier.

 

What would we do without YouTube?  Would I get more done?

NK didn't apologize for nuke test

The ongoing saga...they aren't planning another test, but reserve the right to do so.  And they didn't apologize for the previous test, as was reported.  But who knows what really went on, right?

United 93

We watched United 93 on the weekend, and although it's not as good as World Trade Center, it's still worth watching.  It relives that day from the FAA standpoint - the chaos, the surprise, the sadness.  It's good, but not great.

video posts!

Check this border security video, and make sure you watch until the end (it's only about 4 minutes). There is an elephant and a mariachi band. More here if you are interested.

And then there's this new ad from the Rs as we head in to the home stretch in the midterm elections. More here

We've been warned

"This regime (Israel) will be gone, definitely," Ahmadinejad, who has previously called for Israel to be "wiped from the map" and described the Holocaust as a myth, told the protestors..."Efforts to stabilise this fraudulent regime have completely failed, thank God ... This regime has lost the rationale of its existence," the president said.

Ahmadinejad described his warning as an "ultimatum" for Western powers. "You should not complain that we did not give a warning. We are saying this explicitly now."...

 

Chanting "Death to Israel" and predicting the "Triumph of Palestine", tens of thousands of people had earlier converged on Tehran University, where Ahmadinejad gave his speech, to mark Iran's Quds (Jerusalem) Day.

Candian political update

A new poll has the Cs and Ls tied, but Haper favoured over Rae or Ignatief. Cs are ahead in Ontario, but struggling on Quebec (surprise!) On another note, the Cs have turfed out Garth Turner, an MP who had trouble following the rules...it was a unanimous vote, but apparently wasn't triggered by any one thing. Everyone had just had enough of him I guess. Update: Stephen Taylor takes the Garth Turner challenge and finds out why he was given the heave-ho. And GT now thinks he might join the Greens. From his ego's perspective, that makes a lot of sense. He could ask questions, be the first Green member of Parliament, etc. But for now, he's not ruling it out...

World Trade Center

So we finally got a chance to go see Oliver Ston'es World Trade Center at the theatre on Sunday night.  It is, without a doubt, in my top ten movies. 

 

It is not about terrorism or politics, but about humanity and what we are capable of.  It is an emotional movie that reminds us that we can be depraved, like the hijackers, and noble. like the God fearing marine.  Life is serious business, and this movie is serious business.  I highly recommend it.

The horror of North Korea

And horror is the only word for it.  My wife often asks me: why do we allow this to go on?  And all I can muster is that there are no good options.  Surely that's not enough...

 

Perhaps this option, leaning on the North Korean refugee situation in China, holds some hope, when a military conflict and doing nothing are unacceptable. 

 

It's times like these that the sovereignty of God is my only refuge...

Tax cuts! Tax cuts!

The tax cuts are coming! 

"We would like to reduce all taxes, and I am going to talk more about that in the fall economic update and our overall economic strategy. Then we'll make the choices for our next federal budget," [Flaherty] told reporters afterward.

Outstanding.

 

election "blackout" court challenge

Paul Bryan, a software developer from British Columbia, is fighting the law that bars publishing any election results before all polling stations across Canada's six time zones are closed. He was charged in 2000 after posting results from 32 Atlantic ridings on the Internet before polls had closed on the West Coast.

The federal government argues otherwise. All Canadian voters should go to the polls with the same set of facts.

Bryan's court challenge is financially backed by the National Citizens Coalition, and his case received support by interveners from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and a group representing most national media outlets, including The Canadian Press. -- more

Ignatief is done

I have no hard evidence to support my hunch, but I'm convinced that the Liberal leadership front runner is done.  He did tremendous damage to himself with the Qana war crime comment, and then it got worse the more he tried to explain it.  Now he is going to Israel, guaranteeing that the comment, and more importantly his political flip flop on the issue, will be covered even more extensively over the next couple of weeks.

 

He may not lose much more support among his delegate over it, but the gaffe (both his statement and how he's handling reaction to it) is likely to galvanize the "anyone but Iggy" movement.  There is going to be one anyway, because Ignatief is further right than most Liberals anyway, but this comment shows that he is just not very polished or experienced as a politician. 

 

Who benefits?  Whoever finishes number 2 after the first ballot.  If that's Bob Rae, then look for Liberals who want a more left wing guy anyway (Kennedy and Drydon supporters) to jump right away.  I have now idea where Dion supports go, but I can't see him winning or his support going wholesale to Ignatief, so look for it to be a showdown between Iggy and Rae, and Rae to win. 

 

There - my prediction is in.  Harper vs. Rae in 2007.

common sense

As it stands now, the Crown must show at a hearing why the individual should be declared a dangerous offender. Under the proposed legislation, the person would automatically be considered a dangerous offender and would have to prove the designation should not apply. -- more

 

So this will be Canada's version of the 3 strikes law - and it's beautiful in it's simplicity.

Trouble in Iggyland

His campaign co-chair has resigned over comments he made about Israel committing war crimes in southern Lebanon. 

In an interview broadcast Sunday on Quebec talk show "Tout le monde en parle", the Liberal leadership frontrunner apologized for telling the Toronto Star in August that he was "not losing sleep" over an Israeli air strike that killed dozens of Lebanese civilians in the village of Qana on July 30.

"I showed a lack of compassion. It was a mistake and when you make a mistake like that, you have to admit it," he said in French.

"I was a professor of human rights, and I am also a professor of the laws of war, and what happened in Qana was a war crime, and I should have said that."

For more of what happened in Qana, see the wikipedia entry and references.
 

What to do about North Korea

This is a wonderful, if impossible, analysis of what has happened and what to do about it.  I highly recommend the whole thing, but I've boiled it down...

 

THE North Korean nuclear test — if that indeed is what it was — signals the catastrophic collapse of a dozen years of American policy. Over that period, two of the world's most dangerous regimes, Pakistan and North Korea, have developed nuclear weapons and the missiles to launch them. Iran, arguably the most dangerous of them all, will surely follow, unless some dramatic action is soon taken.  It is, alas, an iron law of modern diplomacy that the failure of any diplomatic process only proves the need for more of the process that has just failed... 

 

[T]he United States should adopt four swift policy responses:

1. Step up the development and deployment of existing missile defense systems.
2. End humanitarian aid to North Korea and pressure South Korea to do the same.
3. Invite Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to join NATO
4. Encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and create its own nuclear deterrent.

Countries like North Korea and Iran seek nuclear weapons because they imagine that those weapons will enhance their security and power. The way to contain them is to convince them otherwise. When nonproliferation can be prevented by negotiation, that is always preferred. But when negotiation fails, as it has failed in North Korea and is failing in Iran, rogue regimes must be made to suffer for their dangerous nuclear ambitions.

China calls for "punitive" santions against NK

This must be a first, even if the bomb was a dud or a partial failure...

 

"I think there has to be some punitive actions, but also I think these actions have to be appropriate,'' China's UN ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters Tuesday.  Beijing, traditionally Pyongyang's closest ally, said while military action was "unimaginable," it had not ruled out sanctions.

 

Serious sanctions are being considered, but it remains to be seen if the world collectively has a spine.  At the very least a message can be sent to Iran, in addition to any effect it will have on NK itself.

 

And if you think things are bad now, read this Robert Kalplan article "When North Korea Falls".  Ugh.

 

everything about alcohol sales

Ever wanted to know what the rules are about selling liquor around Canada and the world?  Wikipedia has the answer.  Fascinating....

Is Morton the man in AB?

Maybe.  This is a good case in his favour...

NK has tested a nuke

So now we will get to see if South Korea and Japan, and to some degree China, has a serious view of the threat the last Stalinist state on earth presents to the region - and the rest of us.  Or maybe they will figure NK will never use a nuke against anyone.  Or sell it to anyone.  Or blackmail anyone with it.  Or...

Arnold on fire

Arnold is set to crush his democratic opponent in the California race for governor, and rightly so.

 

At one point, smiling across the stage at his rival, the governor taunted: "I can tell by the joy you see in your eyes when you talk about taxes, you just love to increase taxes…. Look out there right now and just say, 'I love increasing your taxes.' "

More Harper

From the same interview, which is worth reading: 

"The issue isn't for or against, the issue is about spending money to get results. This government is spending more than $80 million on adult literacy in the next year." At that, Harper refers to a recent Winnipeg Sun column that pointed out the groups that had funding cuts don't actually help teach people to read, they just do advocacy work. Those are the kinds of programs Harper says his government cut: Ineffective ones.

Overall, Harper states candidly: "I'm really enjoying the job.

 

Classic Harper

Harper says flatly that he doesn't know the names of journalists making such requests, "and I'm not sure why it would matter anyway. I mean, why would I care?"  Well, some people would say it's so you can punish the journalists who ask?

"I punish them all anyway," he quips, then breaks into a long and sustained laugh at the expense of his own thorny relationship with the Parliamentary Press Gallery.  "Look, I don't assume any of them are friends and I assume they'll ask for information -- that's what access is for," he adds.

Our immigration system

Deport criminals -why?  This is a disturbing report from W5 on criminals who Immigration Canada will not deport.  Yes, the interviewer is a loser, but the story is worth watching (9:48).

 

Come on Monty, get on with cleaning up the mess you are now in charge of.

Londonistan indeed

Further evidence of Europe's Islamification: A British parliamentarian has asked women to unveil their faces while in his office, and the muslim community in Britain is outraged.

The Lancashire Council of Mosques described Straw's comments as "ill-judged and misconceived" and said many women found them "offensive and disturbing." ..."We're really astonished that someone so senior and responsible as Mr. Straw would make such a statement," chairman Massoud Shadjareh told reporters.

But perhaps there is a silver lining to all of this:

Meanwhile, calls to re-examine almost 40 years of Britain's multi-cultural 'experiment' are increasing, in particular from politicians and academics. A study carried out recently by the University of Leicester, England, stated that multi-culturalism had 'failed' and should be replaced by a policy aimed at integration.

"It was a concept and a social re-engineering policy with the best of intentions, but with little debate at grass-roots level," said Asaf Hussain, co-author of the study.

"Multi-culturalism has failed. Britain's population has to become integrated."

Gee, a well intentioned, big government policy that hasn't worked out.  Shocking.  On that note, I'm listening to Mona Charen's " Do Gooders" about Liberal policies and the unintended and harmful consequences.  I've had to skip sections because they are too depressing and/or upsetting. 

 

I'm also reading (really reading - not listening to) America Alone by Mark Steyn.  It's a discouraging look at demographic trends and the fecklessness of the modern west.  But I highly recommend it - it's classic Steyn!

Step one: fence

W has signed a long overdue bill that a) overhauls the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and b) provides money for a fence to be built along the Mexican border.

 

A fence was the first and most important step in securing the border and reducing the number of illegal immigrants down to a tolerable number.  Figuring out what to do about the millions that are already here can only happen when the tide has bee stemmed.

Your Liberal leadership update

Since I can't imagine that happening, I suspect Ignatieff will face Stephen Harper at the next election. Which means the NDP will have room to thrive; the new Liberal leader will stand offside his party's base on the central foreign-policy issue of the moment; and no attack against Stephen Harper for militarism or coziness with the Bush White House will hold water.

This is the bed the Liberals made for themselves on the weekend. Now they get to lie in it.

-- Paul Wells

horror

What can be said about the events in Pennsylvania yesterday?  What kind of evil leads a father to kill young girls? 

 

There is no logic here, no root causes, no social program that could have intervened. 

 

My heart breaks for the families.

Liberal leadership update

Ignatieff 30%

Rae: 20%

Kennedy 17%

Dion: 16.6

But it all depends on the second, third, etc ballots...most people figure there will be an "anyone but iggy" movement, so whoever wins that race will likely win the leadership.  My bet is Bob Rae...

And you think the US elections are bad

Of course part of my heart is still in Brazil, so it's disappointing but not surprising that elections are still a mess .  There is going to be a runoff between the top two candidates, because incumbant Lula da Silva didn't get the required 50%+1.  (I guess there are only two main parties now, which is a big improvement over the seemlingly hundreds of candidates that ran for president when we lived there.)

Silva's administration has a long history of corruption scandals, having been accused of bribing lawmakers, laundering money, illegal campaign financing and diverting public funds. The scandals have toppled some of Silva's closest aides and much of his party's top brass.

But Silva seemed assured of a first-round victory until two weeks ago when Worker Party operatives were caught allegedly trying to pay $770,000 in cash for information to incriminate Alckmin's Social Democracy Party.

Major newspapers ran front-page photos over the weekend showing stacks of banknotes seized in the Worker Party sting. Six Worker Party officials, including an old friend of Silva's who ran his personal security detail, are accused of a scheme to purchase documents, photos and DVDs they apparently thought would link Serra to kickbacks on the purchase of ambulances while he was health minister between 1998 and 2002.