Austin Bay Blog Asks “Will Canada be Destroyed?”

Austin Bay Blog notes a report at the CBC which pases on some quotes from Canadian ambassador to Denmark Alfonso Gagliano, who says in part:

“The separation of Quebec from Canada is not stoppable,’ Alfonso Gagliano told Radio-Canada. “He’s going to destroy the party and break up the country,” Gagliano said during a television interview with the CBC’s French-language network.

Interesting angle on this, though. It’s not that Martin committed any crimes, directly.. it’s that the investigation is hapening, that has Gagliano so ticked.

Gagliano apparently agrees with my call of the 21st though, that the Bloc will press for an exit from the Federation.

Tim from Portland west, reminds me of another cancer survivor…Tony Snow is back on the radio… this being his second day. Says he’s feeling fine.

That pleases me no end… I’ve always rather liked that chap.

I’m seeing (thusfar unconfirmed) rumblings that Voinovich will now vote for Bolton and that the ads against him have been pulled.

Speculation: This is beginning to sound like he wanted some stroking.

More as I find.

KJL has sad news to pass along:

I’m keeping Laura Ingraham in my prayers and I know a lot of you will want to too. She found out Friday that she has breast cancer and will be operated on today. She’s a great, bright, funny woman–who has made a real home for herself on radio and we wish her the best.

I don’t get the show up here often…(WABC is about the best I can do, and their legendary Paramus NJ transmitter site has never been steady up here this time of year) so I didn’t know.

There’s a pink ribbon on my truck as of today.

INteresting comments from Michial Novak this morning on The Corner:

“If God is dead,” a brother Karamazov said, “everything is permitted.” Well, obviously there are atheists who have a strongly reasoned, and as they see it “objective” moral code based upon reason. They are not relativists. But there is now again, as there was in the 1930s, a spreading invisible gas of relativism, even among such atheists, not to mention among former believers in God. For growing numbers, it seems, ours is becoming again “a world in which everything has lost its meaning.” The academic fashion of Post-Modernism puts an ideology to this, and its roots seem to me much too like those that led up to the fashion for Fascism and Communism among “the Clerks.”

Jon over at Q & O has (correctly) decided there is a war for the hearts and minds of America.. Then he tries to identify who is fighting for what, puts his uniquely keen mind to the task and leaps to the wrong conclusion… that an influx of Theocracy is a major problem and is being beaten back by pluralists.

He says, in part:

So, yeah, I think we’re winning the war against theocracy. We still argue around the margins, but in the main our culture is becoming more tolerant and pluralistic.

The reality is, social issues have LONG been fought in religious framework… since the civil war and before. Slavery, civil rights for minorities and so on have all been so. Many victories were won under that banner. Indeed, I would submit to you that were it not for the rise of the religious in our country, such issues would not have ever come to the fore… we’d have not fought a war on slaveholders, and we’d not be nearly as pluralistic a country today.
Those issues continue to be fought by the religious left today.. most of the bigger voices in that movement are themselves, preachers. (And as an aside,I doubt Jon would want to roll back those gains gotten us by the religious societies and groups that fought for and won them simply because they WERE religious.. no cries of ‘theocrat’ here, I suppose)

But Oh, dear…..let someone from other than the left… whose connection with religion has always at best been selective, let them play that card, and suddenly the left is all worried about the erruption of a theocracy, and the obviously anti-religious among us declare the problem has been with us for only the last 40 years… (Since Goldwater caused the slpit on the right) and that the Theocracy is already *losing* the war.

Jon raises some good points in the linked post, but misses the point, I think, in what’s driving our current situation…. Namely, the left has, since the 60’s, used religion as a great divider… It’s OK to be religious, so long as you support the left and their secular causes. Witness Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc.

There’s other things in play here, such as Jon’s own (apparently) Randian atheist worldview, and I wonder if he would ever be able to judge these matters with any accuracy from that perspective.

There is, however a closing line, which makes me wonder about things;

Unfortunately, procedural arguments are often confused with consequentalist interests, and originalists and States Rights supporters are called homophobic, racist, etc

I’m troubled by the presence of those kind of laws, as pressed by Social Conservatives; I’m more troubled by the evisceration of process, as pressed by liberals and conservatives alike.

This is a conclusion I can live with, I suppose.  As I’ve told him in the past; there’s a major difference between the government making an action or a ‘lifestyle’ legal, and SUPPORTING it, normalizing it, by means of law.  Such matters should be decided at the cultural level, not at the governmental level.

Update:

Tomas Kohl has some added comments to these points… and here’s the punchline:

Liberals have overplayed their hand when they tried to push religion from the public space. And the GOP has now the power to restore balance. If it means funding faith-based charities and promoting chastity in public schools, they figured it’s still a good deal, even if the ideals of limited government have to be put to rest. What Sullivan and others are seeing isn’t a rise of theocracy but the pendulum swinging back to the center. And as Barone observed, Americans are too individualistic and freedom-loving to allow it to swing too far.

He has more, of course… RTWT.

Update the Second:
Reader Mike from the Great White North points out that these points play rather well against the comments I’d already made yesterday, and wonders if the left’s anti-theocracy nonsense of today, wasn’t a mistake on their part.

I think it IS a mistake, particularly since they seem to be divorcing themselves from their own religiously driven history. They saw that the Republicans had a numerical advantage among the religious, who have a massive majority in this country.  At this point, in spite of their previous successes among the Religious on social issues, the Democrats tried to deny their religious history, so as to be able to draw a line between religious values and social policy. 

In short, in spite of their own history, in which they connected social issues and religion with great success, they now tried to deride the connection between religion and social values because it no longer helped them electorially, following their embracing of ROE and other such social issues.

That apparent cutting off of their own hands… that intentional disconnect, is why even previously staunch Democrats were suspicious of John Kerry and voted against him. Thing is, I see no movement back to the center from the Democrats, and thus the Democrats will continue their dominance on this for at least the next election cycle or two.

The Astute Blogger lives up to his name, this morning.

“I betchya that IRAQ – rife with neojihadist and neobaathist terror and nagged by lingering ethnic divisions (between Sunni Arabs, Sunni Kurdish, Shia and the Turkmen), and trying democracy for the first time ! – gets a new constitution before EUROPE does!”

This kind or progress in Iraq should be producing universal cheering. But the American left is silent… possibly because they’re confused at having gotten things so demonstrably wrong…Possibly because freedom was not at all what they they wanted spread.

John Leo argues that “Justice Sunday” will only add to polarization. Frankly, given the majority we now have, I fail to see how that is a problem. Such polarization would only reinforce how far out of the mainstream the ACLU and the left (A redundancy) are.

The premise is that Senate Democrats, by threatening to filibuster several of President Bush’s judicial choices, have attacked religious believers. “Stop the filibuster against people of faith” is the slogan. The nominees “are being blocked because they are people of faith and moral conviction,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a sponsor of Justice Sunday.

Pardon me, but this is clearly untrue. The Democrats would be delighted to approve fervently religious nominees, so long as they endorse Roe v. Wade and the party’s general strategy of using the courts as an end run around the legislative process.

OK, perhaps true, as stated, but it’s made out a lie when, remarkably, Leo doesn’t give any examples of such. Clearly there are no such examples to be HAD.

Leo cannot be serious in saying ” Framing political issues in purely religious terms is always a big mistake. “

That depends, John, on the electorate. We have an electorate in this country that has become increasingly suspicious at the left and it’s seeming obsession with seperating the people of the US from Christianity. Roe is at or near the center of this feeling, but it cannot be denied that there is more than this at work.

The left likes to tell us that the Republicans have trumped up a culture war. But a look at the kind of things the Democrats have and have not backed over the last 60 years, and particularly the last 40, tells the real story… The Electorate, the majority of which are of the Judeo-Christian ethic and value structure, are increasingly reactive to what they correctly see as a war being waged on THEM. That war is being waged now in the voting booths across this country… and is slowly being won by the social right. The left, seeing their ability to get hteir own elected to legislative offices, , becomes apoplectic when they see their only other avenue to getting their wants enshrined into policy…. the Judicial system, being removed from their control.

Which explains why the reaction from the left to DeLay’s speaking at the Justice Sunday gathering. They recognize it as an attack on the only avenue they have re,aining to them. Leo wails:

The advance rhetoric has been extreme. Perkins’ message on the Family Research Council Web site says: “For years activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the ACLU, have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms.”

Leo seems to feel that adding polarization to this will cause the Right problems. However, I doubt it;Leo still has not gotten used to the idea that the social right has more of a majority than they have in previous years… We now have enough of majority that we can cast ths stuff in blunt, true terms.

In short, the truth.
Which I think, is what the left fears the most.

There’s this, also; We’re the majority, now. At what point do we stop cringing in our foxholes, and acting like we’ve actually WON?

I’ve always found Chris Dodd’s seemingly going to bat for the Turtle Bay Crime Family, (TM) otherwise laughingly known as the “United Nations” amusing. But I’d like to make note of something that Novak mentions, almost in passing, in his column last week; the attacks on him are all in the realm of the personal… the left are all being cagy, here, being quite careful not to cast him as a critic of the UN. The UN you see, doesn’t poll well among most Americans. So Dodd, Boxer Kerry and so on are all trying to attack Bolton on personal grounds… As one wonk put it this morning, they’re complaining about his table manners.

So what’s Dodd’s malfunction on Bolton? Dodd wants normalized relations with Castro. Bolton doesn’t. Funny; Dodd never casts the argument in that light, but Novak makes a fair enough case for that being the real issue.

Update: As I say the Democrats are trying to hide their support for the wildly unpopular UN, and having a time of it given the “oil for food” scandal just keeps growing. But once in a while, they show their true colors. Random Nuclear Strikes has a response to an anti-UN letter that was sent by a voter to Harry Reid’s office. Check the back and forth, here. Also check out the Junkyard Blog’s comments on the matter.

WASHINGTON(Reuters) – U.S. Senate Republicans have the votes to ban any more Democratic procedural roadblocks against President Bush’s judicial nominees, a top Republican said on Sunday.

Interesting.
Reid put out a statement before the message died trying to put a damper on the claim, but Biden came out just after and started making compromise noises. Crying ‘uncle’, in short. I suspect we’ll see major movement on this before the end of the day on Tuesday.

Andrew Stuttaford makes note of the BBC doing what state run Broadcasters do best… Leaning left in it’s reportage.

“The BBC was last night plunged into a damaging general election row after it admitted equipping three hecklers with microphones and sending them into a campaign meeting addressed by Michael Howard, the Conservative leader. The Tories have made an official protest after the hecklers, who were given the microphones by producers, were caught at a party event in the North West last week. Guy Black, the party’s head of communications, wrote in a letter to Helen Boaden, the BBC’s director of news, that the hecklers began shouting slogans that were “distracting and clearly hostile to the Conservative Party”. These included “Michael Howard is a liar”, “You can’t trust the Tories” and “You can only trust Tony Blair”. Mr Black’s strongly-worded letter accused the BBC of staging the event “to generate a false news story and dramatise coverage. . . intended to embarrass or ridicule the leader of the Conservative Party”. The letter said that BBC staff were guilty of “serious misconduct”. At least one of the hecklers was seen again at a Tory event in the North East, Mr Black added. Last night, the BBC claimed that the exercise was part of a “completely legitimate programme about the history and art of political heckling” and said that other parties’ meetings were being “observed”. However, The Telegraph has established that none of Tony Blair’s meetings was infiltrated or disrupted in similar fashion.”

So, the BBC is planting hecklers in conservative campaign spots, in support of the political left…. eh?

Gee… sounds almost… American.

Politics.UK has more.

Outside The Beltway notes that Rummy showed up at the Opry last night. Apparently, he got a good reception from the gathering.

This one oughta be a clue for the Democrats;

Country music is demographically, the biggest thing in the US by many margins. Rumseld shows up at the mother churh of Country Music and gets a good reception. Remember, now… this is the crowd that whosed the Dixie Chicks where the exit sign was.

Until the Democrats reckon with this, the congressional majority is safe.

Look at it this way, Billy…  If these idiots ever went electricity free as they say they’d like to, we’d never see them again; they’d never be on TV or Film again.

Now of course; I know that they’re not likely to actually follow though on such a threat….. They wouldn’t be able to afford their Coke…..

Canada Free Press is now reporting;

“The Canadian company that Saddam Hussein invested a million dollars in belonged to the Prime Minister of Canada, canadafreepress.com has discovered.

Cordex Petroleum Inc., launched with Saddam’s million by Prime Minister Paul Martin’s mentor Maurice Strong’s son Fred Strong, is listed among Martin’s assets to the Federal Ethics committee on November 4, 2003.”

So now we may have a better idea why Martin reacted as he did to requests from President Bush about helping out in Iraq, eh?

CFP goes farther yet;

Martin’s public address to Canadians coincided with the very day that his long-time mentor Maurice Strong was tied to the $65-billion UN oil-for-food scandal.

Was Martin using the Adscam scandal as a distraction in a Maurice Strong Cordex oil-for-food scandal that would inevitably lead back to him?

Yeeeeouch! 

Update:

The NY SUN has data here as well, buried in this story Here’s another case of the Sun hitting beyond it’s weight class.

WHBF in the quad cities is looking for some help for this little girl…

“Meet Caitlin Couppee. She is a 12-year old girl who loves to draw and to play with her dog Mighty.

“She only chewed my McDonald’s toys,” says Caitlin, “which really didn’t matter to me because they were ugly.”

Caitlin has inspired Channel 4 Eyewitness News reporter Katie Taube to begin training to run a full marathon for a group called Team In Training.  At a recent informational meeting, she found out what she’s really in for.  She gets to raise $3200 and in return gets a sore….well, everything.  But she also gets the satisfaction of having completed a marathon.

There’s more in this story of course. Caitlin is in remission at the moment, and the event in question involves many more kids than just her.  But it’s a worthwhile cause. Check it out.