Month: March 2007

EcoTrust Is A Made In Canada Approach To The Environment

Mulder

In the past week, Stephen Harper has gone on a cross country tour making several announcements pertaining to the EcoTrust spending that is a “Made In Canada” approach to reducing green house gases, while at the same time working towards providing cleaner energy.

Coal fired plants to be taken offline in Ontario via Hydroelectricity piped in from Manitoba. Cleaner mass transit to the outskirts of Toronto. Hydrogen power programs in B.C.

The Liberals are claiming these programs were their ideas and that they were ready to fund them or they had indeed earmarked money to fund them. The Liberals are even stating they were going to give more to these environmental programs.

What’s funny is Stephen Harper did not have to “earmark” money for these, or even do any serious number crunching or increase taxes to accommodate these “Made In Canada” programs.

All he had to do was turn off the Kyoto payments to China and divert the funds. Something the Liberals were not ready to do. Of course, the Liberals were going to put an extra $3 to $5 Billion into the environment. They just don’t tell you that this was going to Maurice Strong’s China via a dog of a program named Kyoto. (on that note, I have to plug a friend’s blog, A Dog Named Kyoto. The name is quite fitting.)

How simple was this solution for the Conservatives? How awesome was this solution for Canadians? We get our cake (programs) and we get to eat it too (no higher taxes to do it).

First slice goes to Rona Ambrose for holding the fort.

OS Bookshelf – Right Side Up: The Fall Of Paul Martin And The Rise Of Stephen Harper's New Conservativism by Paul Wells

Mulder

Paul Wells’ first book was an especially good read for someone like me who was a political junkie at my worst during the past two elections.

This book, Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservativism was a good read for filling in all the little details of the 18 months between the 2004 and 2006 elections. It outlines much of the activity within the Liberal Party and within Paul Martin’s election war room.

The writing style Paul Wells’ displays is very appealing in that it flows easily for political and non political alike. His years writing for newspapers and magazines clearly shows through.

I would highly recommend this read for someone who may not have been up on what was going on in the last election or someone new to politics who would like to know how we got where we are today after the reign of Chretien.

7 out of 10 screws.
Mini ScrewMini ScrewMini ScrewMini ScrewMini ScrewMini ScrewMini Screw

OfficiallyScrewed NCAA BasketBall Bracket Madness

Mulder

OK. I admit it. I am an NCAA basketball junkee.

If there are any others out there, I would like to invite you to join in on the OfficiallyScrewed NCAA Basketball Bracket Madness. This is completely free to enter and it is run by CBS Sportsline so you don’t even have to give up your real identity.

To enter you simply have to visit the link below (bookmark it), sign up, and make your selections for the tournament BEFORE the first game this Thursday at high noon.

http://osncaapool.mayhem.sportsline.com/e

The password to sign up is: screwed

If I can securely figure out who the winner is, I would be glad to give up an OfficiallyScrewed.com baseball hat and mug to the winner.

I am hoping as many of you sign up as possible before the deadline.

As an FYI, I have adjusted the point scoring as follows.

Each Round One Game Correct=1 point
Each Round Two Game Correct=2 points
Each Round Three Game Correct=3 points
Each Round Four Game Correct=4 points
Each Semi-Final Game Correct=5 points
Predict Correct Champion=10 points

Note you MUST predict every game all the way to, and including, the finals BEFORE Thursday Noon. You do NOT reset after each round. i.e. If your eventual overal winning choice loses in the first round, you will lose the potential points for every round you predicted them to win, including the finals. This is the way typical bracket pools are operated so don’t ask me why it is this way.

From the Department of Moronic Ideas

Mulder

I can just imagine how this one probably happened.

First they chipped in and bought the stash.

Then they tested it.

Then they got hungry and ended up at a restaurant for some munchies

After ordering, they probably got impatient so figured they should use the time waiting for their food to split up their buy … right at the table … in the middle of dinner rush hour.

Smooth move ex-lax.

Talk about a CLM.

The best thing about this story was the final quote by West Vancouver police Sgt. Paul Skelton:

“Research,” he noted dryly, “has shown that marijuana use impairs your judgment.”

Garth Turner The Pot Calls Kettle Black

Mulder

Chucker Canuck has found the post Garth Turner removed from his blog and has reposted it as it was originally put online. In this post, Garth calls Stephen Harper a political whore.

The transformation is now complete. Harper is a political whore. And he joins a long list who have gone before him, using his office and the treasury of tax dollars it brings to reward his own people, and then try to buy off the rest of the country.

(remember those bolded words)

But that’s not the only part that gets my goat. Garth also says the following:

But Kellie Leitch, chair of pediatric surgery at the University Hospital in London, where she deservedly earns four times more than the average family, does not need more money.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but does Garth Turner not have millions tucked away from all his business dealings? Did he not make more than 4x what the average family did when he was in the private sector?

So let’s break this down. It’s not ok for Kellie Leitch, but it’s fine for Garth.

So let’s look at this from another perspective. Why did Garth join the Liberal Party? He tries to say that he found people with similar political views to his, but we all know Garth has been a conservative, right leaning politico all his life and that has not changed.

The only real reason Garth joined the Liberals was so he could fund raise and give out nice cushy 75% tax receipts in the next election, whenever that is. Due to his previous independent status, this was not a luxury he had. This way he, himself, can start “using his office and the treasury of tax dollars it brings to reward his own people.” i.e. his financial supporters.

So instead of using his own funds as he thinks Kellie Leitch should, Garth sold out his political views and joined the Liberals so he could give out tax receipts which, in turn, meant that he could get more money for campaigning.

So who’s the political whore?

Giving Students An Equal Perspective On Global Warming

Mulder

Calling all sane people!!

For all of you who are up for an equal perspective education, I have made it easy for you to email all the current education ministers in the nation and ask them to show the British Channel 4 movie, The Great Global Warming Swindle to all students that were shown Al Gore’s Convenient Lie.

This would give the students two perspectives of the global warming debate and let them see what both sides have to say. Considering the global warming debate is so controversial, this would the right thing to do.

You can easily send this email with your own email program by clicking the link below.

I also encourage any other bloggers out there to include similar code on their website.

Email Education Ministers.

If you are interested, the following list outlines who is emailed via the link above.

British Columbia: Shirley Bond (Prince George-Mount Robson)
Alberta: Ron Liepert (Calgary West)
Saskatchewan: Pat Atkinson (Saskatoon Nutana)
Manitoba: Peter Bjornson (Gimli)
Ontario: Kathleen O. Wynne (Don Valley West)
Quebec: Jean-Marc Fournier (Chateauguay) (he was the last education minister before the election call
New Brunswick: Kelly Lamrock (Fredrickton-Fort Nashwaak)
Newfoundland and Labrador: Joan Burke (St. George’s-Stephenville East)
Prince Edward Island: Mildred A. Dover (Tracadie-Fort Augustus)
Nova Scotia: Karen Casey (Colchester North)
Yukon: Patrick Rouble (Southern Lakes)
Nunavut: Ed Picco (Iqualuit East)
Northwest Territories: Charles Dent (Frame Lake)

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Mulder

I think many of you know my feelings about climate change. If not, my view is that climate changing is called “weather”. It occurs daily, it occurs weekly, it occurs seasonally, it occurs annually, and if you take it out far enough it occurs on the scale of thousands or tens of thousands of years.

There will never be the Tsunami because ice melts. There will never be a Tsunami because of the expansion of ocean water. There will never be a desert forming in a day or a week.

If you took the time to watch Al Gore’s Mockumentary, An Inconvenient Truth, then you really owe it to yourself to watch The Great Global Warming Swindle.

You will be shocked at some of the things Al Gore and his movie fail to discuss.

One item that sticks out clearly is the fact that numerous scientists have chosen to leave the IPCC and asked to have their names removed from the report. But barring the threat of legal action, the IPCC feels people who provided input, whether supportive or contradictive, are part of the committee, and as such should be listed.

Another point that really makes you think twice are some comments made right at the end of this documentary. They are based on the fact that we are now pushing the most expensive (wind and solar) energies on the underdeveloped third world. It actually brought a tear to my eye thinking of people with no electricity because we are not letting them burn coal or oil. When you think of American Democrats, you think of people who are supposed to fight for the rights of the underprivileged. Yet it is abundantly clear that Climate Change snake oil salesmen like Gore are out to keep the Third World in the dark.

I urge everyone to watch this movie and share it with friends.

H/T to A Dog Named Kyoto and a warm heart felt thank you to the BBC Channel 4. Click the play button below to watch the 75 minute show. It is well worth the time.

Yellow Bellied McShifty Breaks Another Promise – Class Sizes Won't Reach 20

Mulder

Geoff Matthews points this out in today’s Sun newspaper. Not that class sizes need to reach 20, but what the heck was Dalton doing making this promise in the first place?

Now comes word that the provincial government hasn’t a chance of meeting its self-imposed target of cutting classroom sizes for primary grades to no more than 20 students by this September — a promise that was made during, you guessed it, the 2003 election campaign.

The question isn’t whether the goal can be met. It’s why did the premier make the promise in the first place?

Is there some magical reason why a class with 20 students can be managed, while a class with, say, 23, will spiral out of control?

Couldn’t a class of 30 kids work perfectly well in some instances, while in others anything more than a dozen would be a challenge?

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old geezer, let me point out that when I was in school, we had classes of well over 30 students, and we never seemed to lack for a bit of personal attention from the teacher when it was required.

You got it right on the money Geoff. When I was in public school, there were well over 30 kids in my class just about every year. The only time there were less was if a grade only had 25 or so kids or if there were 50 or 55 in the grade and two classes were split.

The issue isn’t class size. It’s how the teachers control that class. And this day and age, they just don’t have the skill or desire to do it. They blame things like ADD or ADHD for their inadequacies in controlling children. They push them along year after year just happy to get the troubled ones out of their class, watering down the value of a high school diploma.

The Big Amazing Mole Survivor Election Race – Fiction By Me

Mulder

When I read that bloggers like Liberal Jason Cherniak are talking about a mole running rampant in the Liberal party or I see that even Paul Wells thinks someone at Liberal HQ is smoking crack for divulging to the Mop and Pail all the good info on advertising plans that the Liberals have, I sit back and smile.

And everytime I think about the possibility of a mole, I think about all those defectors. Scott Brison, Belinda Stronach and now Garth Turner.

I wonder to myself… could any of them have had the following conversation with Stephen Harper at some point in time.

(MP enters Harper’s office)

MP: Yes boss? I heard you wanted to see me?

Harper: Yes,come in. Sit down. Have an M&M. I’ve been watching you over the years and I have come to the conclusion that you have always been a true conservative.

MP: I try boss.

Harper: How would you like to make the ultimate sacrifice? A sacrifice worthy of song…A sacrifice that may just give us the advantage that brings Canada back from the brink.. a sacrifice no bard will ever sing about, no Canadian will ever know, and one that will only work if you have a thick skin, a truly conservative heart and the patience of Job.

MP: I appreciate the compliments and I think that I have those qualities.

Harper: Good, because I want you to defect and be my mole inside the Liberal Caucus/Party.

MP: I’d be honoured boss. When do I start?

Harper: OK, this is the plan …

It’s at this point that I allways break into an evil cackling laughter that makes even my dog think I have gone crazy.

And I think to myself … nahhhh … those Liberals are just blabber mouths. This is why the MSM got so ticked at Harper. He can keep a secret and Liberals can’t.