Posts Tagged ‘history’

…but stories like this remind me why you couldn’t pay me to live there:

“The University of Ottawa is really easy to get into, isn’t it?” she said in an interview after the cancelled event. “I never get any trouble at the Ivy League schools. It’s always the bush league schools.”

Coulter said she has been speaking regularly at university campuses for a decade. While she has certainly been heckled, she said this is the first time an engagement has been cancelled because of protesters.

“This has never, ever, ever happened before — even at the stupidest American university,”

There are quite a few American universities that might be jealous, shame about that pesky first amendment isn’t it? Smitty comments:

Mark Steyn will no doubt have something blistering on this one, but Canada, you really have wet yourself. Your osteoporosis has reached a point where a woman with long hair and pointed remarks cannot offer them without you fearing for ’safety’. For crying out loud in the dark, I hope all honest Canucks, who can remember a time before the last hair was shaved off their public bottom in the name of some bogus ‘empathy’ god, just come South of the border right now.

Over at Atlas Pam is her normal quiet self:

These same savages welcome the most hate speech sponsors with open arms and open legs, but truth is verboten….
…They welcome Israel Apartheid Week and its accompanying violence. They welcome Robert Fisk. They welcome George Galloway, today’s Oswald Mosley….no protest except when he was barred from Canada by the Feds for supporting Hamas…..he is a hero of free speech……

They embrace inciter to genocide, George Galloway.

They employ a Muslim terrorist wanted in France for blowing up a synagogue.

Don’t be shy Pam, tell us how you really feel.

Canadians, if you aren’t embarrassed you ought to be. If you are embarrassed but aren’t going to do anything about it then you ought to consider Smitty’s suggestion above. Oh and he’s right about Steyn:

This is the pitiful state one of the oldest free societies on the planet has been reduced to, and this is why our free speech campaign matters – because those who preside over what should be arenas of honest debate and open inquiry instead wish to imprison public discourse within ever narrower bounds – and in this case aren’t above threatening legal action against those who dissent from the orthodoxies. Lots of Americans loathe Ann Coulter but it takes a Canadian like François Houle to criminalize her. The strictures he attempts to place around her, despite his appeal to “Canadian law”, are at odds with the eight centuries of Canada’s legal inheritance.

It’s not a coincidence that Mark is typing this from the US, Ann again.

I would like to know when this sort of violence, this sort of protest, has been inflicted upon a Muslim — who appear to be, from what I’ve read of the human rights complaints, the only protected group in Canada. I think I’ll give my speech tomorrow night in a burka. That will protect me.

I feel bad for those Canadian vets at Normandy who game their lives for this. I suspect they would be asking someone to explain how it came to pass that the only person with balls in Canada is an American woman?

UPDATE: At 12:16 A.M. Glenn Reynolds linked to a poll at CBC news on if Ann’s speech. As of 5:35 a.m. the poll is inaccessible. I wonder why? Perhaps they don’t like the results.

Update 2: Alinsky when he was not clogging restrooms suggested people use their own rules against them. Ann obliges.

The “[i]nflammatory right-wing pundit” spoke at the University of Western Ontario yesterday. In a move that has to be tongue-in-cheek, Coulter said she will file a human rights complaint alleging that University of Ottawa vice-president academic and provost Francois Houle’s e-mail to her constituted “hate speech.”

I hope it is not tongue-in-cheek I say use their own courts against them. Make them defend their rules and spend their money to do it.

As you might have noticed I like to quote Tip O’Neill book Man of the House to explain how politics works. There is a particular passage on page 134 that brings to mind what is going on behind the scenes right now.

The background: In the book was a Congressman Leo O’Brien who had promised a vote to Sam Rayburn on an issue and was getting killed at home over it. Since his word had been given (Yes that makes a difference, I still believe that one’s word is sacrosanct) Tip told him he had no choice but to go to Rayburn and ask to be released. (How hard must that have been) I’ll let Rayburn and O’Neill finish the story:

“…you gave me your word and I expect you to keep it. However I can certainly appreciate your situation, so here’s what I’ll do for you. On the day of the vote I want to see you in the front row. Keep your eye on the doorkeeper. If I don’t need your vote, Fishbait Miller will give you the sign and you’ll be free to vote your district.”…

…when Leo took his seat in the front row, he looked around and saw thirteen other guys that Sam had in his pocket in case he needed them. It wasn’t just Leo. The entire front row was sitting there and waiting for the nod from Fishbait Miller.

This is the real question that we don’t know the answer to. Does Nancy Pelosi have the votes and is just deciding who sits in the front row or is she scrambling for votes? And if the media knows what the truth is will they tell us?

The War Lovers: Amazon Vine review

Posted: March 14, 2010 by datechguy in amazon reviews
Tags: , ,

My review through the Amazon Vine program of Evan Thomas’ book The War Lovers Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst and the Rush to Empire 1898 to be released April 27th is available at Amazon.com here.

I think the book would have been a whole lot better if he didn’t attempt to use it to cheap shot the Bush Administration on Iraq and if he had made it a point at the start to acknowledge the cooperation of members of the Castro government in the volume at the start rather than at the end. Even with that it isn’t bad at all.

I’d really like to hear Val’s opinion of it as a free Cuban.

This is what happens when you take a much longer nap that you expect (and dream that you have already woken up).

Let’s start with Baldilocks who finds that one can’t escape liberalism even at a TED conference:

…notice the language the guy is using here. He’s speaking to one political party, one political tradition, about another political tradition or two. The entering argument is that everyone at TED, each of those well-off fancy schmancy hoi polloi types, is assumed to be of one political persuasion.

Well of course they do, you don’t think that there are any of the central Massachusetts rednecks there.

Damian Thompson has two beauties at his place. The first focusing on priests unclear about the job description:

The Church must turn back to prayer and place God, and not itself, at the centre of this prayer. At the same time it should re-emphasise that suffering and pain are not best papered over with folksy communal singing and hand-shaking any more than they are by narcotics or recreational sex.

Indeed. And there’s the further danger, of course, that exposure to Celebration Hymnal folksy communal singing might drive sensitive souls to narcotics to erase those shocking memories of elderly groovers…

Shades of the Curt Jester there, his second concerns SMP (stand media procedure) of trying to smear the Pope and the informed nature of the commentary.

And then there is this gem:

The Pope is pretty unassailable. He is not elected…

Ruth, it long ago became clear to me that you do not know nearly enough about the Catholic Church to comment on it authoritatively. But surely even you have heard of something called a conclave.

Ah, nothing like those layers of fact checkers that the media employs.

At David Pinto’s Baseball musings we see a really interesting article on the all time doubles record that has stood for nearly a century (The great Tris Speaker with 793):

Whoever is going to break the record needs to be close through age 34. Albert Pujols currently has 387 doubles through age 29, so he has to hit 200 more doubles over the next five seasons to really have a shot at the record. With his current average of 45 doubles a year, he should be able to break the record. If he averages 35 a year over the next five seasons, however, I doubt he’ll get there, because he’ll only decline more after that.

There is an experience curve to home runs that someone compensates for the decline phase of power hitters. Since home runs are purely about the swing, better pitch recognition and perfection of the swing with experience can keep totals high as other skills decline. Doubles, however, are also about speed, and experience can’t help there much. Maybe a batter will recognize a mistake by an outfielder and stretch a single into a double, but the pure speed doubles go out the door.

Speaker is one of the great players who has been forgotten these days. He doesn’t deserve to be.

Finally at American Freedom Barbara Espinsoa continues her series of “Jukebox John McCain” in her words “Changing his tune on every issue”. Today’s topic Military issues:

1. McCain recently claimed that he was the “greatest critic” of Rumsfeld’s failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”
2. McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions, concluding, on multiple occasions, that a Korea-like presence is both a good and a bad idea.

Barbara’s site was trying to re-direct me, might be an embedded ad or script gone wrong. I dropped her an e-mail about it, if it starts to happen to you just click on the “Stop” (red x) button once the site comes up. She is all over the race in Arizona.

Update: E-mailed Barbara there was an issue with a gadget, it’s now fixed.

Well that will do for now, we’ll have more on Monday.