CIVITATENSIS

Barak Obama has declared H1N1 a National Emergency.  The overreaction down south will have repercussions in Canada as nervous Nellies and prophets of doom in the opposition push for the Harper government to make similar pronouncements.

President Obama’s approval keeps heading south.

Obama’s most recent average ranks 144th [out of a possible 255], or in the 44th percentile, clearly below average not just for presidents’ third quarters but for all presidents.

When Jimmy Carter won the election and became the 39th US president in 1976, he did so on a platform to change the world with a revolution of human rights. He was such a nice man, people voted for him. It did not take long before America’s enemies set out to test his resolve, in Iran, Afghanistan, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

For the last 30 years, five administrations have been dealing with the fall out in those countries. It is still the case today. We know of Afghanistan and Iran because we hear it about them in the news often enough. In Central America the two guerrilla movements who increased their power under the tutelage of Jimmy Carter in those countries at the time, eventually turned to political parties and are both now in power.  It’s been, did I mention, 30 years?

Now, America’s enemies are on the march again, no doubt trying to test the resolve of the man who would be prophet and transform the world with hope. North Korea does not seem to like hope or has decided that Obama does not offer them enough of it. In Iran, things are not so well with nukes either. In the meantime, the new government of El Salvador will probably join ALBA, the so-called Bolivarian movement piloted by Hugo Chavez.

Together with their Russian and Iranian allies, ALBA too will test the resolve of President Hope sometime soon. When a president stands on a campaign record saying that he is more likely to hug the thugs than carpet bomb them, the likelihood is that a few will want to earn a hug or two.

How’s hope working for him in North Korea so far?

The NDP is clearly one of the most, if not the most, anti-American party in Canada. If it were up to them, Canada should move to a different neighborhood and become one of the “stans” so that it could be closer to the Taliban. Dippers are never short of bile against our American neighbors.

But…, when a third rate so-called American movie-maker, who has a record of interfering in Canadian elections, comes to tag along with a campaigning Canadian politician, it is the NDP that welcomes him, incumbent Tony Martin. Michael Moore is hero among idiots, which is why I am surprised that Carolyn Parrish was not escorting him during his latest visit. Moore went on to make a series of insulting and disparaging remarks in public about a candidate opposing Dipper Tony Martin.

Moore, of course, is no idiot. He has made quite an enterprising career out of spinning lies and misinformation that he passes for documentaries. But the number of people who worship him, his courage and his ability to tell the truth, who gladly pay to consumme the garbage he produces is rather large, both in Canada and elsewhere.

Americans, of course, are always welcome in this country. But when foreign people come to interfere with our electoral and political process, regardless of where they are from, they are in violation of Canadian law. Will Elections Canada do anything about it? Not likely.

Heather Mallick is far too quick with the gratuitous insult. Those who find Palin appealing are white trash, and those who do not are nice Dems or enlightened Canadians.

Supposedly, Mallick has received tons of hate mail for the column. I bit self-important, perhaps. I don’t see what the fuss is about. Alas, to me her ‘white trash’ appelation and all the rest say something real about Mallick more than they do about Palin.

It’s not as if Americans are going to get their electoral cues from someone writing for Mothercorp, whose name they’ve never heard.

I ran into this piece by David Warren. The whole of it is really good, but this one paragraph caught my attention:

To them [regular folks], the stark facts of Mrs Palin’s reaction to a Down’s syndrome pregnancy, and to her daughter’s unseasonable one, shines as day to night against Mr Obama’s, “If my daughter makes a mistake, I don’t want her punished with a baby.”

What a way to look at children… And this is from a man who has two daughters.

The candidate that will not concede.

Hillary Clinton will express support for Barack Obama’s White House bid and Democratic Party unity in the race against Republican John McCain at an event on Saturday, her campaign said in a statement.

The statement issued Wednesday did not say if Clinton would formally end her campaign or suspend activities. However, several reports indicated she would give her full endorsement.

Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, but Clinton so far has refused to concede.

See also here: reduced to lobbying and hoping for the second fiddle.

The last time Democrats were in a great hurry to get rid of the man in the White House, they elected Jimmy Carter. Carter has managed to remain the popular incarnation of concern for human rights and representative democracy among the learned classes. A statement made last week in Israel, however, shows that poor Jimmy doesn’t understand tyranny and democracy.

When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that’s the dictator, because he speaks for all the people.

Democratic representation is a big, fat headache. For the sake of expediency, Jimmy’s preference is tyranny. It makes “diplomacy” so much easier.

Good for David Emerson for pointing the obvious to our myopic Democrat neighbors!

If Obama and Clinton want to reopen NAFTA, Canada (as well as Mexico) would eagerly welcome opening talks about energy exports to the US, without a doubt. That may not be the most desirable thing for Americans. Buying oil from next door is safer. Having to buy more and more from overseas increases security concerns. The Democrats want to instill uncertainty about energy supply for the US economy in the middle of a recessionary slide?

Ultimately, surrendering the stability of the American energy supply to the likes of Hugo Chavez is not a step forward the country. We can always sell more to India and China. How dumb are these Democrats anyway?

William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn.

On February 10th., at the Montana border, American authorities caught a US Marine deserter hiding out in Alberta.  Leon Soup was trying to cross into the US at the Montana border at the time.  The report says nothing about where or how long Soup had been living in Alberta. No word about which Marine outfit he ran away from either.

I am pleased to see one less draft dodger in Canada.

That didn’t take very long.

Republican Fred Thompson dropped out as a presidential candidate on Tuesday, ending a short-lived campaign that got off to a late start and never gathered much steam.

There are apparently no bounds to the ways in which Canadian media feed this country’s self importance.

A new poll suggests Canadians so massively favour the U.S. Democratic party that they’d back any of its leading candidates in a presidential race against a Republican.

A similar poll in the United States would simply not work because they just don’t care. If Americans started to express wide opinions about our elections, chances are Canadians would feel threatened.  We’re so pathetic.

“While we may not like the rules, if we don’t respect the rules, then we are going to have chaos”

No one has yet accused me of fully understanding the system of primaries in the United States. Maybe that’s why I find this report somewhat funny:

Democratic leaders voted Saturday to strip Michigan of all its delegates to the national convention next year as punishment for scheduling an early presidential primary in violation of party rules.

Michigan broke the rules. I got that. But taking away the vote of an entire state [all 156 votes] in deciding who the next Democrat presidential candidate will be strikes me as a little scandalous.

The ruling is akin to condemning Michigan to political death at the Convention. That’s surprising: aren’t Dems typically against capital punishment?

Henry John Hyde, the man who led the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives in its impeachment of President Bill Clinton, has passed away. Hyde was a tireless opponent of abortion and a formidable orator. One of my favourite lines of his was articulated in a speech to the House during the Clinton impeachment debates. In reference to the president braking breaking the law, he said: “Is he one of us, or is a Sovereign?”

Chicago Tribune - Washington Post - NYT

The Assault on Reason: How the Politics of Fear, Secrecy, and Blind Faith Subvert Wise Decision Making, Degrade Our Democracy, and Put Our Country and Our World in Peril

I have not read this book yet, but going by the title alone and the endless subtitle I would have imagined that the book is about Al Gore, not by Al Gore.

Fred Thompson may be mulling things over. I wonder if it’s not already too late to jump in, but who knows. I hope he does.

The unintended consequences of ethanol policy in the US are becoming more visible.

Corn ethanol seemed unstoppable, but a remarkable thing happened on the road from Des Moines. Just as the smart people warned, the government’s decision to play energy market God and forcibly divert huge amounts of corn stocks into ethanol has played havoc with key sectors of the economy. Corn prices have nearly doubled, which means livestock owners can’t afford to feed their animals, and food and drink manufacturers are struggling to buy corn and corn syrup. Environmentalists are sour over new stresses on farmland; international aid groups are moaning that the U.S. is cutting back its charitable food giving, and many of these folks are taking out their anger on Congress.

Read the piece in the WSJ here.

The Canadian federal government also has become a champion of ethanol use in response to opposition pressures to green up. Our media will not readily pick up on the local and international consequences since doing so would run against the environmental orthodoxy they have helped to create. But it won’t be long.

Also of interest see here and here.

At least one person in the Hillary camp figures that Clinton should pull out of the Iowa causes to avoid defeat.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s deputy campaign manager wrote a memo this week urging the Democratic front-runner to bypass next year’s Iowa caucuses to focus time and money on New Hampshire, South Carolina and several large states hosting primaries next Feb. 5.

The memo from Mike Henry emerged days after a Des Moines Sunday Register poll of likely caucus-goers showed Clinton trailing rivals John Edwards and Barack Obama in Iowa, which is to hold the first voting contests Jan. 14, 2008.

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is looking for some help in choosing her campaign tune. You can vote for any of the nine existing choices or you can make your own creative suggestions. Go here and knock yourselves out.

I have already suggested to include Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man.”

h/t: AB

The historical record is littered with politicians masking as prophets and prophets taking on political roles. Al Gore is a politician dressed as a religious prophet.

The Florentine political philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli, understood well how princes can use religion to advance their political power. In reference to how Ferdinand of Aragon advanced his own power in the late fifteenth century, Machiavelli wrote:

Further, always using religion as a plea, so as to undertake greater schemes, he devoted himself with pious cruelty to driving out and clearing his kingdom of the Moors; nor could there be a more admirable example, nor one more rare. Under this same cloak he assailed Africa, he came down on Italy, he has finally attacked France; and thus his achievements and designs have always been great, and have kept the minds of his people in suspense and admiration and occupied with the issue of them. And his actions have arisen in such a way, one out of the other, that men have never been given time to work steadily against him.

That Gore preaches but does not practice his own message is evidenced in the way that he lives. As Machiavelli counsels, it is more important for princes to appear to be pious than to be pious. Gore knows his Machiavelli and has increasingly understood how to turn the power of the new environmental religion to his personal political advantage.  He has become the de facto head of the Holy New Congregation of Climate Change

The Reuters picture of Al Gore that adorned the story about Gore calling the Harper government’s Green Plan a fraud is a clear example (see below). Gore has recently adopted a new pose in a deliberate attempt to appear pious.

And here is the iconic Dalai Lama, the most famous of Tibetan monks, displaying the same holiness that Gore seeks to portray by clasping his hands together.

A common attitude of prophets is to join their spiritual struggle willingly but reluctantly. Biblical prophets often are reluctant to carry the message to their people that the divinity has revealed to them. Al Gore’s reluctance was expressed last week in very similar manner:

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said yesterday [April 25] that he initially thought that making his climate-change lectures into the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth was a serious mistake.

“I had to be talked into it and I’m glad that I was talked into it,” Gore told reporters in New York.

I am willing to bet that when Gore runs for public office again, he will say the exact same thing in relation to civic duty.

Al Gore is encouraging the breaching of the separation between church and state at the hands of the new religion. The breach is taking place without much objections from those who have traditionally been the greatest advocates for preserving the same separation.

In a world threatened by a new desire to have government become the handmaid of religion, Al Gore represents a new danger to the American republic and to the rest of liberal democracies.

The West, even the very same people who follow Gore today, would not normally tolerate religions leaders telling government how to run public affairs and what their priorities should be. As media and an increasing number of faithful devoutly follow the Gordian religion and demand that international and domestic policy conforms to their beliefs, Gore is making such practice more and more acceptable.

An appropriate essay for earth day: George Will on the mindlessness of the Gorian religion.

In a campaign without peacetime precedent, the media-entertainment-environmental complex is warning about global warming. Never, other than during the two world wars, has there been such a concerted effort by opinion-forming institutions to indoctrinate Americans, 83 percent of whom now call global warming a ” serious problem.” Indoctrination is supposed to be a predicate for action commensurate with professions of seriousness.

For example, Democrats could demand that the president send the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate so they can embrace it. In 1997, the Senate voted95 to 0 in opposition to any agreement that would, like the protocol, require significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in America and some other developed nations but that would involve no “specific scheduled commitments” for 129 “developing” countries, including the second-, fourth-, 10th-, 11th-, 13th- and 15th-largest economies (China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico and Indonesia). Forty-two of the senators serving in 1997 are gone. Let’s find out if the new senators disagree with the 1997 vote.

Do they also disagree with Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist”? He says: Compliance with Kyoto would reduce global warming by an amount too small to measure. But the cost of compliance just to the United States would be higher than the cost of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation, which would prevent 2 million deaths (from diseases such as infant diarrhea) a year and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill each year.

The piece continues here.

How one could be in blanket favour of partial birth abortions is beyond my comprehension. The US Supreme Court has banned the procedure, and I am pleased about that.

The GM report claims that these is a victory for conservative antiabortion groups. As views go, that would be the narrow view. There is more riding here than mere partisan political competition. But if we are going to express the outcome of the decision in terms of winners and losers, I am inclined to say that it’s a victory for decency and humanity.

About a week ago, George Will wrote this insightful comment about anger and politics: “Anger is All the Rage.” As more and more angry emotivism makes its way into public expression, it becomes more habitually popular and the substance of politics decays.

No wonder Americans are infatuated with anger: It is democratic. Anyone can express it, and it is one of the seven deadly sins, which means it is a universal susceptibility. So in this age that is proud of having achieved “the repeal of reticence,” anger exhibitionism is pandemic.

There are the tantrums — sometimes both theatrical and perfunctory — of talking heads on television or commentators writing in vitriol (Paul Krugman’s incessant contempt, Ann Coulter’s equally constant loathing). There is road rage (and parking lot rage when the Whole Foods Market parking lot is congested with expressive individualists driving Volvos and Priuses). The blogosphere often is, as one blogger joyfully says, “an electronic primal scream.” And everywhere there is the histrionic fury of ordinary people venting in everyday conversations.

[...]

Once upon a time, Americans admired models of self-control, people such as George Washington and Jackie Robinson, who mastered their anger rather than relishing being mastered by it. America’s fictional heroes could be angry, but theirs was a reluctant anger — Alan Ladd as the gunfighter in “Shane,” Gary Cooper as the marshal in “High Noon.” Today, however, proclaimed anger — the more vituperative the better — is regarded as a sign of good character and emotional vitality.

Perhaps this should not be surprising, now that Americans are inclined to elect presidents who advertise their emotions — “I feel your pain.” As the late Mary McGrory wrote, Bill Clinton “is a child of his age; he believes more in the thrust-out lower lip than the stiff upper one.”

The politics of disdain — e.g., Howard Dean’s judgment that Republicans are “brain dead” and “a lot of them never made an honest living in their lives” — derails politics by defining opponents as beyond the reach of reason. The anger directed at Bush today, like that directed at Clinton during his presidency, luxuriates in its own vehemence.

In Will’s observation, it’s not a partisan issue, which makes matters worse.

How about Canadians, eh? At the level of public leadership, safe for a select few, Canadians don’t seem to be quite there. In and out of the House, some Libs are pretty good at summoning indignation in Canada, which is shade of anger. But all one has to do is watch the news to see that at the grassroots level we may not be all that different.  Read the whole here (registration but not subscription may be required).

Rex Murphy recounts the prodigious “comeback kid’s” presidential adventures, and how Bill Clinton has changed the way the political game is played, if not aspects of the nature of the political, in North America.

Murphy ironically finds Hillary ill-suited for her husband’s political legacy:

Politics [after BIll Clinton] is no longer politics, certainly no longer just politics. Which, ironically, is going to pose a problem for the one person most likely to have absorbed Mr. Clinton’s method most closely: Hillary Clinton. Bill, the Tom Sawyer of U.S. politics, has pioneered a style of politics for which his wife is almost genetically unsuited.

She will venture to Oprah and The View. But her manner is stiff and cold. She doesn’t do "banter" well. She has few or no improvisational skills, and hates risk. She would never invent a crisis for herself.

Bill has set the bar so high and remains such a virtuoso that Hillary will always carry the taint of a less talented student. Will Americans elect as president one Clinton who is not the political artist the other is? The great hope of a Clinton dynasty may founder because of the outsized example of its founder. Hillary’s biggest challenge is now, as in a different sense it has always been, not from her opponents, but from the precedent and practice of her reckless, talented husband.

The complete column is here, behind a subscriber’s wall.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard slammed Barack Obama yesterday for his foolish plans to withdraw from Iraq.

"I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilize and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory," Mr. Howard said on Nine Network television.

"If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats."

[...]

"You either rat on the ally or you stay with the ally," he said. "If it’s all right for us to go, it’s all right for the Americans and the British to go, and if everybody goes, Iraq will descend into total civil war and there’ll be a lot of bloodshed."

Allan Freeman wonders if the Oprah cultural phenomenon would have the power to translate into a politically influential phenomenon backing Barack Obama to the White House.

He seems to think that it won’t.  Elizabeth Nickson tilts the other way:

Let’s be crystal clear here: Hillary is toast. Oprah Winfrey is the not-so-secular goddess, who, as she says almost every week, gets her instructions directly from the Lord himself. That alone is a fearful thing. But this is far more fearsome. If Obama runs, barring mishaps, Obama will win — and Oprah will be responsible.

I hope she’s right about Billary, but Nickson is going a tad too far:

[Oprah] could be more powerful than any woman since Elizabeth I.

People have more sense than that.

“For the past six years, I have had the opportunity and, I would say the privilege, to serve with the greatest military on the face of the Earth,” Rumsfeld, 74, said in a speech on Saturday to more than 1,200 soldiers and Marines stationed al-Assad, an air base in Anbar Province, the large area of western Iraq that is an insurgent stronghold.

“I leave understanding that the true strength of the United States military is not in Washington, it’s not in the Pentagon, it’s not in the weapons. It’s in the hearts of the men and women who serve. It’s your patriotism, it’s your professionalism and indeed your determination,” he was quoted by the US Department of Defense as saying.

“We feel great urgency to protect the American people from another 9/11 or a 9/11 times two or three. At the same time, we need to have the patience to see this task through to success. The consequences of failure are unaccepta-ble,” Rumsfeld said. “The enemy must be defeated.”

Jihadis in Iraq have interpreted the congressional Democratic victory in the US and the departure of Donald Rumsfeld as victory for themselves and as an abandonment of America’s support for Israel.

"The American people have put their feet on the right path by … realizing their president’s betrayal in supporting Israel," the terror leader said. "So they voted for something reasonable in the last elections."

It goes to show that these folks simply live in a different universe. Similarly, those who are hoping for peace after a premature withdrawal of American troops need to rethink their dream, which is as detached from the reality of the war against jihadis as is the jihadi reading of American electoral politics. Their intention, clearly, is not to rest until they destroy America.

"We will not rest from our Jihad until we are under the olive trees of Rumieh and we have blown up the filthiest house - which is called the White House," Mr. al-Muhajir said. It was not clear what Rumieh was referring to.

One party is as delusional as the other.

[Howard] Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, will deliver the keynote speech at the Liberal Party’s leadership convention this month, just as the Liberals are trying to emulate the Democrats’ efforts to rebuild their shaken party organization.

How easy we forget. Is Dean not the same man who self-destructed with his wild screams on national television? Emulate away, please.