I've Been Thinking...

(Yes, that does happen, occasionally). The only thing good a Liberal leader has ever done was the Shawinigan Handshake:

I Like This List

Global Warming Quotes & Climate Change Quotes: Human-Caused Global Warming Advocates/Supporters

I like the one by Christine Stewart: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

Yes, that Christine Stewart. Liberal Party member of parliament, member of Jean Chretien's cabinet. Environment minister, no less.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

From comment at Ace of Spades HQ:

"I think that, despite their different political affiliations, Harper should name former Prime Minister Jean Chretien to be the new ambassador in Washington. The Little Guy From Shawinigan would likely knock a few heads (or maybe strangle a few people) and get the job done. He’d certainly confuse the Americans given that he was widely known as the only Prime Minister to not be fluent in EITHER official language!"

Reporters Just Don't Get It! Duh!!

Harper to reporter: Ask some different questions about the Middle East

"Stephen Harper and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu essentially teamed up to say that, when it comes to politics in the Middle East, reporters just don't get it."

[---]

"...after spending a good chunk of his historic 2,400-word speech to the Knesset on Monday explaining that there was no way he was going to single out Israel for criticism in any public forum, Harper must have been wondering why the heck reporters continued to try to get him to do just that.

So he turned the tables.

'Yesterday in the Palestinian Authority, no one asked me there to single out the Palestinian Authority for any criticism in terms of governance or human rights or anything else," Harper said, speaking about the press conference he'd held Monday in Ramallah side-by-side with P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas. "When I'm in Israel, I'm asked to single out Israel. When I'm in Palestinian Authority I'm asked to single out Israel and in half the other places around the world you ask me to single out Israel.'"

[---]

"...Harper makes a reasonable point.

Since August, 2005, 16,000 rockets have been fired into Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza. The Palestinians have forever — long before Jewish settlements in the West Bank started going up — rejected Israel's right to exist.

Why didn't we ask what Abbas was doing to improve governance in his territory? What about the accountability of Abbas and the Palestinians? Canadian reporters had two chances to ask Abbas a question — in Ramallah, of all places — and instead of asking him why the Palestinians will not acknowledge Israel's right to exist, we wanted Harper to explain why the Jewish settlements were illegal.

Netanyahu spent a remarkable 10 minutes explaining to us why Harper was right, why those were the wrong questions.

"The core of the conflict is not settlements. The core of the conflict is not the absence of a Palestinian state. The core of the conflict is the persistent refusal to reconcile to an independent nation state of the Jewish people. That's what this conflict is about," Netanyahu said.

And in an any event, the major issue in the Middle East today is no longer Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Netanyahu explained. Journalists were missing the big picture.

"I think it's important for commentators in the Middle East to adopt their commentary on Canada-Israel relations to the new Middle East," he said. What are the concerns of many of the world's leading Arab countries these days?

"The first is the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons. And the second is the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood. And in meeting those twin challenges, these (leading Arab) countries do not see Israel as their enemy but as being on the same side of a difficult conflict.""

Indeed!

Related. Hypocrisy on display here.

"Mr. Chrétien was basking in plaudits on Tuesday in Toronto, where scores of variously partisan worthies gathered to sing his praises on the occasion of his 80th birthday. In light of Mr. Harper’s divisive trip, it might also be a good time to reflect on Mr. Chrétien’s own visit to Israel in 2000 — back in the glory days of Canadian diplomacy.

Day One: Mr. Chrétien meets with Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak in West Jerusalem, but doesn’t visit Arab East Jerusalem.

Day Two: With Mr. Barak jetting off to Washington to talk peace with President Clinton, Mr. Chrétien goes off-script at a joint news conference with Yasser Arafat and says Canada might support a unilateral declaration of independence by the Palestinians. “I believe, personally, it is better to keep it as a pressure point for the negotiations and that is the position of Canada,” he says.

Nonplussed Israeli officials respond that Mr. Chrétien is welcome to his “inaccurate” opinion, even though such an idea would jeopardize the peace process. At some point, Mr. Chrétien realizes his position is spectacularly misguided in light of Quebec’s sovereignty movement and his government’s soon-to-be-passed Clarity Act. His communications director is eventually reduced to explaining to reporters that whatever Mr. Chrétien said, that was not what he meant.

Day Three: At a news conference in Nazareth with Shimon Peres, Mr. Chrétien endorses Israel’s claim to the Sea of Galilee — a sticking point in peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, where Mr. Chrétien was due to travel on the same trip. His statesmanlike reasoning follows: “Apparently there was a border that was occupied a long time ago and there was war and so on. For a Canadian, we have 30 million lakes so we don’t see it in the same perspective but I can understand the need for Israel to keep the only lake they got.”

Day Four: Reports say Mr. Chrétien, in conversation with Mr. Barak, has offered to resettle as many as 15,000 Palestinian refugees in Canada. Jaws drop, as Canada had been officially neutral on refugee issues such as the right of return. Liberal staffers frantically try to spin the conversation out of existence, while the PLO politely tells Mr. Chrétien where he can stick his offer.

Day Five: Having managed to anger the Palestinians somewhat more than the Israelis, Mr. Chrétien is accused by a Syrian cabinet minister and a Lebanese newspaper of — of all things — abandoning Canada’s “honest broker” tradition. Nevertheless, his visit to Damascus goes ahead as planned.

In short, Mr. Chrétien’s trip was a thoroughgoing disaster in which he came off as a poorly briefed bumpkin. “If we needed further evidence that Mr. Chrétien’s self-image as le petit gars from Shawinigan excludes even the appearance of worldliness and the discipline of thinking ahead, this trip is providing it,” the Globe wrote in a scathing editorial. (“You can’t take Jean Chrétien anywhere,” was the lede.)"

CBC Pravda

Don't ya just love it when Pravda proves its bias over and over again.

Once again, it's a darling in the CBC Ottawa bureau that does it.

First there's this report, filed by Janyce McGregor at 6:14 pm, October 26th:

Watch and judge for yourself

Then, the same reporter files this one at 9:57 am the next morning:

About that blood

and then finally, later the same day, she files this report at 5:55 pm:

Blood on the video

Let's review these reports, shall we.

In the first report, "Watch and judge for yourself", she says:

"The good thing about being broadcast journalists is that sometimes we can stay quiet and let the tape tell the story."

Right, Janyce. No need to do any actual investigative journalism, is there. After all, when the protesters themselves hand you a video that tells their side of the story, it has to be taken without question. Any CBC journo knows that.

Then she suggests the "looks on the MPs faces" in one of the video clips in her article is supposed to be telling. Telling of what she gives us no idea, but I think it's safe to presume she feels that when protesters begin shouting the moment an MP from the Conservative side begins answering a question from Jack Laytoon, they are not supposed to have somewhat annoyed expressions on their faces as they are looking up into the gallery where a ruckus that was clearly meant to disrupt the Conservative MP immediately developed.

Keep going, Janyce. We know the CBC Pravda is officially opposed to any political party to the right of the Natural Governing Party of Canada, that in the past has generously provided funding for your sorry-assed CBC salaries.

While she admits that the cacophony began as soon as Jack Laytoon had finished his question, it appears she opted to make no conjecture, never mind investigation, about any possible connection between that little factoid and the "yelling" that ensued. After all, the NDP have never gone to bed with the Libs before, now have they. Very dutifully done, my girl. I'm sure a promotion is on its way.

In the second article, after it has been revealed that the protester had no blood on his face prior to his interview with CBC journo, Evan Solomon, but was all bloodied up at the time the Solomon interview took place, she says:

"As those of you who read my tagged-on comment to my raw video post yesterday already know... re-viewing some of the CBC's footage later last evening revealed this discrepancy.
I'm not going to speculate further about it, because I think the onus is on the protesters to explain this."

Of course not, Janyce. After all, you let them do your job for you the day before and now that your "speculations" concerning their video have been somewhat bloodied themselves, why would you not blame them for the blood on your face, too? I mean, really. Shame on them for not doing your job properly.

In the final article, she at least has the courage to post an audio clip from another CBC reporter who actually did some real investigative journalism. I wonder if Janyce will be relocated to the Toronto bureau where she can get "more coaching" from Krista Erickson? We all know that CBC Toronto is completely bias free, now don't we.

Actually, the funniest part of this whole story is Saskboy's hysterical reaction to it. Gotta get some greens in Parliament one way or another. Useful idiot protesters will have to do.

And by the way, doesn't that photo of the protester with the bloody face make him out to be barely old enough to shave? I wonder if he knows what a ballot box is.

One thing you gotta love about Jean Chretien. He knew how to handle idiotic protesters:

UPDATE: BWHAHAHAHAHA!! This one is from SDA. Geeze. You miss all the fun when you're on the road and way from the 'puter.