Improving The Political Process

For those of you who missed Saturday's Democratic debate in New Hampshire the candidates were standing behind cute little podiums like those found in game shows. This gives me ideas. Maybe, instead of doing debate after debate where the candidates deliver the exact same talking points, the candidates could meet in a special showing of Celebrity Jeopardy. Stay with me. There could be categories like, U.S. History, The constitution, Economics, Flag Pins....The possibilities are endless!

Media Bias

I don't claim to be morally instep with the folks at proud to be Canadian (a blog), but their recent posting show a legitimate criticism of the Canadian media. I do not agree (at all) with his assertion that the Canadian media is less bias. The American media is just as biased, but bias in other ways. The difference in media coverage accounts for a lot our political differences with Americans. Reporters outside of the United States demographically tend to be more anti-american. The American press hesitates to say anything too damning of either side, even if they deserve it.

As I’ve often said, Canada’s liberal media is now so culturally liberal-left—right down to their core—that they don’t even know how liberal they are anymore. In some cases they don’t even realize what they’re doing in betraying their liberal-left bias and favoritism —it’s just instinctive to them; in other cases they know full well, and blithely drive their leftist agenda as if we’re all stupid.

After the Iowa Caucuses, in which both the Republicans and Democrats chose their favorites, Canada’s liberal media almost uniformly chose to feature a flattering photo of Barack Hussein Obama (they never use his middle name) in what they’d have you believe is their fair and balanced coverage.

Here’s Obama in the Regina Star Phoenix; and online at Cnews.ca:

CNews.ca’s online poll even featured an exciting Obama theme:

Here he is at the state-run CBC.ca. Shocka. :

Here he is in the Vancouver Sun and the Windsor Star:

Here he is on the cover at the liberals’ Globe and Mail
in one of those warm family shots; and on La Press’s cover:

Le Soleil and the liberal-leftists’ Toronto Star
practically had to rename their papers L’Obama and Barrack Star

There were also those which managed to squeak a picture of Mike Huckabee on the cover, but only with one of Obama too—or better yet (for them), Obama, Hillary and Edwards—all Democrats of course.

The Montreal Gazette took at shot at fair and balanced in a teaser box;
while the Ottawa Citizen also managed a two-fer:

While the Globe and Mail featured only Obama on their print edition,
online they managed to squeeze Huckabee into the picture.

The London Free Press featured Obama, third-place finisher
Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards—all Democrats

Not to be outdone, the liberal-lefts’ state-owned CBC Newsworld has covered the Obama win to death so far this morning.

• 8:45 PT (or so): Early this morning, they featured a university professor. The Canadian media is utterly obsessed with university professors, and I’m almost sure it’s because they are reliably left-wing or even outright Marxists, and can thus be counted on to present the right spin according to the liberal media, for those of you who are uninformed or perhaps naive (which is how the media seems to view all their viewers) and therefore impressed by university professors. The interview went something like this: Bush is obviously enormously disliked or even detested, especially by Canadians as if that makes any difference, and therefore the name of the game is beating him. Apparently it’s unclear to them that he isn’t running. Nonetheless, the Republicans have created a “sluggish” economy (notwithstanding the most amazing, booming economy that they have enjoyed —since soon after 9/11 no less). And things aren’t going well in America, at all!

Here’s a tiny bit of another “hard-hitting” Nancy Wilson follow-up question (my highlighting, obviously):

Nancy Wilson: That’s interesting because certainly I suppose to some extent, Republicans are mindful if not downright haunted by George Bush —certainly Canadians keep hearing about how unpopular the Bush administration continues to be —that must be the kiss of death going into the election campaign, so how daunting is it for ANY Republican candidate to win the White House at this stage?

Professor: Well, uh, some candidates do believe in miracles!....

[Wilson laughs]

• 9:12 AM PT (approximately) —Then they featured a black man named Roland, who was asked about.... Obama! (Exclusively). He is the author of a book called “Speak Brother—a Black Man’s View of America”. He was clearly a strong Obama supporter. The state-run CBC’s producers could not have had a clue about this predilection for Obama.

• 9:35 PT (approx) -- A little later, they featured a black woman who is a spokesman for the National Council of Negro Women and was so clearly an Obama supporter that she practically spit with excitement as she spoke, so excited was she over Obama’s win. This time the “very interesting” angle was—how might Oprah’s support for Obama be helping Obama? So you can imagine how that interview went. Anchor Nancy ("very interesting!") Wilson asked questions clearly designed to lead her to say supportive things about Obama, and then largely sat there and let her guest drone on and on… followed by still more fluffball, leading questions… for endless minutes. At one point, the guest seemingly mocked Mike Huckabee for getting the support of Hollywooder Chuck Norris, while Obama has the apparently God-like (to her) Oprah support. Nancy Wilson concluded with: “very very interesting!”—adding that extra “very” as she often does.

• 10:02 (approx)—The CBC’s man in Washington, Henry Champ, gave a reasonable balanced view, but I still think it was tilted toward Obama and other Democrats. They featured speeches by Obama, Clinton, and Edwards—all Democrats. He later spoke about Republican winner Mike Huckabee and showed a clip, but once again, mostly spoke in terms of how he’s a Republican and how he ipso facto has a difficult job ahead of him.

• 10:20 (approx)—Another interview featuring a fair and balanced expert. His name? Jeffrey Feldman. HE WRITES FOR “THE DAILY KOS”—one of the most rabidly left-wing blogs in America. The Daily Kos is very, very well known—celebrated among liberals—and to anyone who is even remotely paying attention —as a rabidly anti-Bush, anti-conservative, anti-everything-conservatives-stand-for blog. I mean rabidly so. If the CBC producers missed the obvious about the Daily Kos being left-wing, they also missed Feldman’s declaration of bias from just yesterday, there at the Daily Kos: “Whoever prevails in the caucuses (I have my ideas), one thing is certain: I am proud of our side [his bolding]. The Democratic Party...”. Was he introduced that way on CBC Newsworld for our benefit? No! Of course not. He was introduced like this, by the anchor, Andrew Nichols: “...one political prognosticator… a professor at New York University—he’s also an author and a political blogger.” That was it. No particular label.

The anchor, Andrew Nichols, holds a Master of Journalism degree from Carleton University in Ottawa.

This particular interview has since been repeated in the exceedingly boring rotation at CBC Newsworld. So far, no conservative bloggers have been interviewed as far as I know, but I’m quite sure we’ll be very well informed as to their “conservative”, “Christian-right”, “right-wing”, “religious-right”, or “nutbar” status or bias, if they do (but they won’t). So as usual, for a little bit of sanity and balance, and a bit of a waker-upper, I’m heading over to the superb Fox News Channel —the best channel in Canada.

--He makes a good point, but the words "superb" and "Fox News" should never be used in the same sentence. Here's a picture from the fox news website, in the middle of America's very important primary season:


I think I've said enough.

$100 Oil

The move from $98 to $99 dollars a barrel is just as important as the move from $99 to $100 dollars a barrel. The triple digit mark just gives editors a chance to fill their papers. I thought somebody should point that out.

Food Shortage Coming?

A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.-Financial Post

Get the full version here

--So what can we do about the food crises? A whole lot. Canada has for a long time imposed supply controls on food products. This has served the purpose of lining the pockets of farmers who were lucky enough to be around when the controls were started (others have to buy a permit). As well as driving up the cost of food for everybody in the country. Given the fact that low-income people spend more of their money on food, a large portion of the burden falls on them. This food shortage would act as great political cover for politicians to do the right thing and drop supply controls in Canada.

For more information on what Canada can (and can't) do to help the wellbeing of our citizens subscribe to this blog

Fraser Institute trying to sell the flat tax in Canada

I am like everyone else in that I don't know if creating a "flat tax" will do all the things that it's proponents say it will. There haven't been enough experiments with it to draw a conclusion. Ignoring this, there are two ways the flat tax is marketed that don't make sense to me. First, the fact that doing your tax returns will take five minutes. This is defiantly an improvement that is worth something, however, it is more than trumped by the fact that your income will change (up or down). Not having to do a tax return can only be worth as much as it costs to pay somebody to do it. Second, I don't understand why they call it a "flat tax," it's not. Most proposals have a large exception for low income. The flat tax is more of a two bracket income tax. I don't think that many people actually understand this. If you want to read the rest of the arguments for a flat tax here's the link.

Rationality?

Yesterday morning my girlfriend sent me this text, "GST down to 5 percent, A coffee from Starbucks is two cents cheaper"....it cost her 25 cents to send it.

Stop the Nationalistic Nonsense

An Op-ed in "The Toronto Star" begins with a quote by NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman. They then go onto quote a "classic insult" where the wall street journal called Canada "a third world country" (10 years ago). They then go onto rant about economic problems in the United States. I absolutely do no understand why Canadians tend to think that any American who said something, misguided, rude, nationalistic MUST be speaking for THE ENTIRE COUNTRY while any American that says something, smart, intelligent, complementary must then be an outsider, or (my favourite) "not really American." Paul Krugman has repeatedly written about the advantages of Canadian health care care versus Americas system. Does anybody want to bet me that in 10 years the star won't describe Krugman's words as, "a classic compliment form the New York Times." I would recommends that Arthur Donner and Doug Peters read this post from Krugman's blog about nationalistic columns in the Wall Street Journal. The criticisms would be just as appropriate for The Star's column. Why do I defend Paul Krugman and attack Donner and Peters? Because Krugman is smart activist who is trying to get things done. Donner and Peters resort to nationalistic name calling, this helps nobody and gets nothing done.

...A Low Bar

PM Harper again is lowering expectations for the Canadian economy. There are only two reasons he would do this, that I can think of . First, so that he can take extra credit for any good economic performance in the coming year. Second, so he that he can blame any economic problems on environmental regulations. Either way the strategy is completely different than most American politicians who act like economic cheerleaders whenever their party is in power. You would think that this would send a bad impression for people looking to invest in Canada. Take this article from a Chinese based website:

OTTAWA, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper reiterated his concern on Monday for Canada's economy in 2008, saying his priority in the New Year would be to shelter Canadians from uncertain global economy.

"We know there is considerable uncertainty in the world economy, in the American economy and we've seen very strong performance from our economy so far," he told reporters in Mississauga, Ontario.

"So obviously, our wish for the year is we're able to sustain that momentum and shelter as best we can Canadians from any fallout of global economic problems," he said.

Harper's comments marked another year-end warning from the Conservative government that the Canadian economy is headed for a year of turbulence, due to tighter financial markets and the fallout from a slowing U.S. economy.

With unemployment rate at a 30-year low, inflation under control and a booming housing market, Canada's economy has been robust for the past several years.

But the strong Canadian dollar and the sluggish U.S. economy may cause a slowdown in Canada's economy in the New Year, Harper said in a recent interview.

Get the full version here