Category Archives: Politics

R.I.P. Margaret Thatcher

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I left the UK in the dark days of Harold Wilson’s tenure as Prime Minister: the era when the country was run – more accurately ruined – by trade unions. During my early years in Canada, it was with considerable relish that I followed Thatcher’s battle with the thuggish UK unions.

As Mark Steyn notes:

That’s to say, she understood that the biggest threat to any viable future for Britain was a unionized public sector that had awarded itself a lifestyle it wasn’t willing to earn. So she picked a fight with it, and made sure she won. In the pre-Thatcher era, union leaders were household names, mainly because they were responsible for everything your household lacked. Britain’s system of government was summed up in the unlovely phrase “beer and sandwiches at Number Ten” — which meant union grandees showing up at Downing Street to discuss what it would take to persuade them not to go on strike, and being plied with the aforementioned refreshments by a prime minister reduced to the proprietor of a seedy pub, with the Cabinet as his barmaids.

Living through the Harold Wilson years provided me more than sufficient empirical evidence that Socialism doesn’t work. It is a lazy form of Communism, lacking Communism’s demonic fervour but immersed in the same blinkered utopianism: Communism for dilettantes. Ironically, in Canada, socialism is now the official religion of the Anglican Church; it is enthusiastically embraced by witless Anglican clergy willing to try anything to avoid the embarrassment of reciting Creeds in which they no longer believe.

As expected, the left, ever caring, tolerant and inclusive, is indulging in an orgy of rejoicing:

MP George Galloway led the way with a crass tweet…. ‘Tramp the dirt down.’…… ‘May she burn in the hellfires.’….

Colchester Labour councillor Tina Bourne posted a photo of a bottle of Bollinger on Twitter with the accompanying message: ‘Chin chin everyone.’…..

A Facebook campaign has been launched to take Judy Garland song ‘Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead’ to number one following Margaret Thatcher’s death.

Bad News about Fidel Castro

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He is alive and very well according to this:

Former Venezuelan Vice President Elias Jaua said Sunday that he met with aging revolutionary icon Fidel Castro for five hours and showed The Associated Press photos of the encounter, quashing persistent rumors that the former Cuban leader was on his deathbed or had suffered a massive stroke.

[….]

Son Alex Castro told a reporter for a weekly Cuban newspaper that his father “is well, going about his daily life.”

Son of fuddle duddle

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Justin Trudeau, peering down from the lofty heights of inherited privilege, cries “begone” to the envy and mistrust that has infested Canadian politics for the last – well, since his father invoked the war measures act in October 1970, suspended civil liberties and set tanks on the lawn of the parliament buildings.

Still, as Trudeau the younger notes, “our greatest strength is above ground” and his father is below it, so he is ready “to build a better life, a better Canada.”

A poll suggests that, with Trudeau at the helm, the liberals would win the next election. Jaundiced as I am about the tastes of Canada’s voting public, I still can’t fathom why someone whose grasp of a reasoned argument in defence of the Kyoto Protocol extends only so far as calling the Environment Minister a “piece of shit”, would end up as prime minister.

But, then, people voted for Trudeau senior and junior is merely following in Pop’s footsteps.

From here:

Justin Trudeau is off and running to lead the federal Liberals, determined to breathe new life into a party he says has lost touch with middle-class Canadians — and confront those critics who say he’s just a pretty face with a famous last name.

Hundreds of supporters in his riding of Papineau cheered as the 40-year-old Montreal MP confirmed his leadership ambitions, easily among the worst-kept political secrets in Canada.

“I am running because I believe this country wants and needs new leadership, a vision for Canada’s future grounded not in the politics of envy or mistrust,” Trudeau told a crowd peppered with Liberal party luminaries.

“One that understands, despite all the blessings beneath our feet, that our greatest strength is above ground, in our people. All Canadians, pulling together, determined to build a better life, a better Canada.”

Love and tolerance from the left

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T-shirts looking forward to celebrating Margaret Thatcher’s death are “proving very popular with trade unionists” at the annual Trades Union Congress.

Nothing like longing for your enemy’s death to usher in an era of utopian egalitarian harmony.

From here:

T-shirts celebrating the eventual death of Margaret Thatcher – on sale at the TUC conference – have been condemned.

Tory MPs called the garments “beyond the pale” and “sickening”. TUC general secretary Brendan Barber called them “tasteless and inappropriate”.

The T-shirts were proving “very popular” with trade unionists, stall holder Colin Hampton said.

Baroness Thatcher, 86, has been in declining health in recent years and has withdrawn from public life.

 

Muslims swell the ranks of the Democratic National Convention

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As the article below notes, God was not mentioned at the DNC this year; at the next convention I expect Allah will be invoked instead.

It seems that Muslims may have stayed away from the Republican National Convention because of its anti-Sharia position. The Muslim perception of the Democratic Party must, presumably, be that it is not anti-Sharia; perhaps it is even pro-Sharia.

Welcome to Hope and Change 2012: polygamy; prohibition; criminalisation of homosexuality; dhimmitude; the death penalty for apostates and rape victims – and no bacon sarnies.

From here:

The word “God” may have been absent at the Democratic National Convention, but there were record numbers of Muslim delegates present at the Charlotte, N.C., meeting.

According to a news release from the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the convention hosted more than 100 Muslim delegates from 20 states—up from 43 Muslim and Arab-American delegates at the 2008 convention and 25 four years before.

“The more than doubling of Muslim delegates at this year’s Democratic National Convention is a direct result of their hard work and grassroots organizing within the Democratic Party,” said CAIR’s government affairs coordinator, Robert McCaw. “It is also a sign of the American Muslim community’s growing civic engagement and acceptance in the Democratic Party.”

McCaw noted that only a handful of Muslim delegates attended this year’s Republican National Convention (RNC), during which the RNC adopted an anti-Sharia platform plank targeting the religious practices of Muslims. CAIR has asked the party to reject this policy.

Mitt Romney does something right at last

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He has offended the Palestinian Authority. Even better, they are calling him a racist – a sure sign of that most rare spectacle: a politician not dissembling.

From here:

Mitt Romney has offended again. And again, it may be a blunt and undiplomatic reflection of what he really thinks.

He was talking to donors at a breakfast at Jerusalem’s plush and historic King David hotel. Each of them had paid at least $25,000 (£16,000) to attend.

Mr Romney was talking about what he called “the dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He said that in Israel, the gross domestic product was $21,000 per capita compared to $10,000 in the Palestinian territories.

[….]

Certainly one senior aide to the Palestinian Authority’s president has condemned the remark, calling it a racist statement that did not recognise that the Palestinian economy could not reach its potential because of an Israeli occupation.

Some good news at last

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The U.S. was behind the assassination of one of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. The fact that Iran is making this claim makes it highly unlikely to be accurate, but if it is true, it’s good news because it means the U.S. still has the balls to do what needs to be done.

From here:

Iran said Saturday it has evidence that the United States was behind the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist this week in Tehran, state media reported.

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was killed in a brazen daylight assassination Wednesday when two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to his car in the Iranian capital.

The killing bore a strong resemblance to earlier killings of scientists working on the Iranian nuclear program, and has prompted calls in Iran for retaliation against those deemed responsible.

 

A faith test for the US presidential candidate

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Mayor Bloomberg wants a presidential candidate who “believes in science”. What does that mean exactly?

It can’t mean a candidate who believes that science exists and it doesn’t mean merely the exclusion of a candidate who is so obdurately opposed to science that he has become a member of the flat earth society.

What it does means is a candidate who has adopted a couple of faith positions: first that materialistic evolution is true and, second, that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. The former is scientifically unprovable and the latter is more a product of political correctness than science.

Imagine the outcry if Mayor Bloomberg had demanded a candidate who believes in Christianity.

From here:

Belief in science should be a no-brainer, especially for anyone running for President, Mayor Bloomberg groused Thursday.

The mayor used an international economic forum at Columbia University to pop off against any candidates who doubt the science behind hot-button political topics such as evolution and global warming.

“We have presidential candidates who don’t believe in science,” Bloomberg said, without singling out dubious Republican candidates directly.

“I mean, just think about it, can you imagine a company of any size in the world where the CEO said ‘oh I don’t believe in science’ and that person surviving to the end of that day? Are you kidding me? It’s mind-boggling!”

Bloomberg grew coy when asked which candidate he was talking about.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You can check the presidential candidates’ speeches… I don’t have time to go do it but all their speeches, everything they said.”

Only one GOP contender – former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman – has come out full force saying he believes in science.

“To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy,” he wrote on Twitter. He later attacked Rick Perry on “This Week” when he said, “The minute that the Republican Party becomes the anti-science party – we have a huge problem.”

 

St. Francis in Wall Street

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The religious left, in the form of Jim Wallis of Sojourners, is hastening to bestow its benediction on the Wall Street protestors who, it seems, are following in the footsteps of St. Francis.

From here:

Religious Left icon Jim Wallis has announced he will conduct a visitation to the occupiers presumably to bestow his blessing and, he doubtless hopes, to receive their homage.

[….]

A prominent Wallis acolyte is pacifist Evangelical Left activist Shane Claiborne, who likened the Wall Street Occupiers to St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is this week.

Brother Shane has a point. As I recall from “The Little Flowers of St. Francis”, one of his first acts on becoming a Christian was to remove all his clothes and present them to his wealthy father. Here is a worthy Wall Street follower doing the same:

And here is another acolyte defecating on a police car. I will have to reread “The Little Flowers of St. Francis”, since I can’t quite recall where that was mentioned.

 

Jack Layton’s funeral – all it lacked was Elton John

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The homosexual cleric Rev. Brent Hawkes delivered the sermon, Steven Page sang Leonard Cohen’s “Halleluia”, Steven Lewis couldn’t resist being political and First Nations National Chief, Shawn Atleo presented a feather in a mawkish neo-pagan send-off of the persona of Jack Layton.

Let’s hope that the person is enjoying eternity in the presence of the Triune God.