Saturday, March 13, 2004
Taki on Conrad Black in The American Conservative
I was most surprised to see that Pat Buchanan and his toadies at The American Conservative magazine allowed this piece heaping praise on Conrad Black by the Greek writer Taki Theodoracopoulos to see the light of day. Actually, wait a minute -- Taki owns The American Conservative. That's why it saw the light of day!
Anyway, it explains succintly why Lord Black is one of the world's greatest media proprietors -- maybe the best ever.
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I was most surprised to see that Pat Buchanan and his toadies at The American Conservative magazine allowed this piece heaping praise on Conrad Black by the Greek writer Taki Theodoracopoulos to see the light of day. Actually, wait a minute -- Taki owns The American Conservative. That's why it saw the light of day!
Anyway, it explains succintly why Lord Black is one of the world's greatest media proprietors -- maybe the best ever.
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Libby Davies and Canada are not synonyms
The (still) best news site on the web, Drudge Report, is currently displaying a link "CANADA WORRIED BY NUKE MISSILE MISHAP." The link, leading to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article about a tiny hole that may have been inadvertently punctured in a missile, is grossly misleading. A more accurate title would have been "ANTI-NUKE, SOCIALIST MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT WORRIED BY NUKE MISSILE MISHAP." The MP in question is Libby Davies, a Vancouver New Democrat whose distinguished credentials include leading a "citizens weapons inspection team" to the U.S. last year to hunt for WMDs. She's the only person mentioned in the article who's "concerned." Be careful, Matt...
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The (still) best news site on the web, Drudge Report, is currently displaying a link "CANADA WORRIED BY NUKE MISSILE MISHAP." The link, leading to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article about a tiny hole that may have been inadvertently punctured in a missile, is grossly misleading. A more accurate title would have been "ANTI-NUKE, SOCIALIST MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT WORRIED BY NUKE MISSILE MISHAP." The MP in question is Libby Davies, a Vancouver New Democrat whose distinguished credentials include leading a "citizens weapons inspection team" to the U.S. last year to hunt for WMDs. She's the only person mentioned in the article who's "concerned." Be careful, Matt...
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Friday, March 12, 2004
Is Ann Coulter a bigot?
I'm afraid I can no longer answer that question "no." Until now I have always defended Ann Coulter against her detractors, many of them my own (often conservative) friends. I find her writing style crisp, original, and not to mention hilarious. I especially love her acerbic barbs at Ted Kennedy.
But I'm afraid in the last two weeks she's crossed the boundaries of good fun and good taste to the land of the indefensible/despicable. What really put me over the edge was this line from her column last week on The Passion:
Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of "kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed").
I mean, that is just unbelivable. It is beyond the pale. It crosses the line. She was always pushing the limits before, but she seems to have kicked it up yet another notch -- and her column this week, also on The Passion and tearing a strip off New York Times columnist William Safire, isn't much better. Maybe this is due to the fact that she isn't getting the same level of attention she did in the last two years, and she feels she needs to go overboard to generate buzz?
I guess most people have their tipping point with a rabid polemicist like Coulter, and I've just hit mine.
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I'm afraid I can no longer answer that question "no." Until now I have always defended Ann Coulter against her detractors, many of them my own (often conservative) friends. I find her writing style crisp, original, and not to mention hilarious. I especially love her acerbic barbs at Ted Kennedy.
But I'm afraid in the last two weeks she's crossed the boundaries of good fun and good taste to the land of the indefensible/despicable. What really put me over the edge was this line from her column last week on The Passion:
Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of "kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed").
I mean, that is just unbelivable. It is beyond the pale. It crosses the line. She was always pushing the limits before, but she seems to have kicked it up yet another notch -- and her column this week, also on The Passion and tearing a strip off New York Times columnist William Safire, isn't much better. Maybe this is due to the fact that she isn't getting the same level of attention she did in the last two years, and she feels she needs to go overboard to generate buzz?
I guess most people have their tipping point with a rabid polemicist like Coulter, and I've just hit mine.
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Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Amateur hour continues at Conservative Party HQ
First it was the pathetic Barbados radio ad, and now this. If you click on any of these words right now, it should take you to the homepage of the Conservative Party of Canada. Instead it takes you to a parking site. If the site was just hacked into and this is not their fault, I repent entirely. But if they forgot to renew this domain name or they failed to pay the website hosting fees, that is yet another sign that the lack of professionalism in this new party is the same as it was in Reform and the Canadian Alliance.
UPDATE: At 9:00 am Wednesday, the site is now dead.
UPDATE II: It is 1:10 pm Wednesday and the site is now back up and fully functioning.
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First it was the pathetic Barbados radio ad, and now this. If you click on any of these words right now, it should take you to the homepage of the Conservative Party of Canada. Instead it takes you to a parking site. If the site was just hacked into and this is not their fault, I repent entirely. But if they forgot to renew this domain name or they failed to pay the website hosting fees, that is yet another sign that the lack of professionalism in this new party is the same as it was in Reform and the Canadian Alliance.
UPDATE: At 9:00 am Wednesday, the site is now dead.
UPDATE II: It is 1:10 pm Wednesday and the site is now back up and fully functioning.
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Monday, March 08, 2004
A great day for freedom in Iraq
Iraqi democrat Ahmad Chalabi signs Iraq's new temporary constitution
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Iraqi democrat Ahmad Chalabi signs Iraq's new temporary constitution
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Sunday, March 07, 2004
Sheila lost
I was only there yesterday for a few hours, from about 11:30am - 2pm. I saw the candidates' speeches. Sheila made a way better speech; more passionate. Her supporters are so passionate about her, too. No loyalty problems in her campaign. The thing that struck me about the Sheila campaign was how ethnically-based it was. 9/10 or more of her supporters were minorities -- a lot of Seiks, South Asians, etc... whereas Valeri's base seemed predominantly white and Italian. (Sheila even said "thank you" in about 10 different languages during her speech.)
It goes without saying that it's great to bring as many people into the political process as possible. But I do think it's a little unfortunate that this is how nominations are increasingly being fought -- candidates go out and activate specific ethnic groups, and drag them out to these meetings. These people often don't even know what they're getting into. Some people there yesterday could barely speak English.
Observing yesterday made me wonder about the "closed" system we use here to nominate candidates, which is the reason campaigns do what Sheila did. Perhaps we should look at opening these things up like the US primary system, which would open the system up to everyone and likely reduce the instances of these ethnic recruitment campaigns.
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I was only there yesterday for a few hours, from about 11:30am - 2pm. I saw the candidates' speeches. Sheila made a way better speech; more passionate. Her supporters are so passionate about her, too. No loyalty problems in her campaign. The thing that struck me about the Sheila campaign was how ethnically-based it was. 9/10 or more of her supporters were minorities -- a lot of Seiks, South Asians, etc... whereas Valeri's base seemed predominantly white and Italian. (Sheila even said "thank you" in about 10 different languages during her speech.)
It goes without saying that it's great to bring as many people into the political process as possible. But I do think it's a little unfortunate that this is how nominations are increasingly being fought -- candidates go out and activate specific ethnic groups, and drag them out to these meetings. These people often don't even know what they're getting into. Some people there yesterday could barely speak English.
Observing yesterday made me wonder about the "closed" system we use here to nominate candidates, which is the reason campaigns do what Sheila did. Perhaps we should look at opening these things up like the US primary system, which would open the system up to everyone and likely reduce the instances of these ethnic recruitment campaigns.
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