Is Canadian Health Care the Solution for America?

I read this item with great interest. Any Canadian who is remotely governed by facts bursts out laughing when s/he hears Americans raving about the Canadian Health Care system and suggesting that it's the "perfect solution"!

Dorothy walked down a yellow-brick road and eventually found salvation. Something tells me that Uncle Obama is taking you down a red-brick road - as in red ink, permanent & drowning red ink.

Just imagine a future America with the banks, the automakers, and health care all managed by the "super competent" governments. Yikes!

The NDP and Durban 2

Lest we forget, the NDP fully desired for Canada to participate in this conference:

The Minimum Wage Debate

This afternoon I was riled by a debate on minimum wage that I heard on CKNW, which you can listen to here (starting at 36:00). Many of the callers irritated me so much that I sent the host, Jon McComb, this e-mail:

I am now hearing with increasing regularity the following refrain from NDP callers: "If a small business can't afford to pay more than the minimum wage then maybe it shouldn't be in business." Have A-N-Y of these people ever tried running their own businesses?!?!? Why do I think not. As someone who has - three of them to date, I'm more than a little insulted by this comment and the assumptions behind it. These people seem to believe that:

1. Pretty much anybody can start their own business and be quickly on the road to riches with little to no effort.
2. There's absolutely no risk to running one's own business.
3. The only necessary requirement to being a business owner is insatiable greed and a desire to "step on the backs" of working people.

Does the majority of your audience actually believe such socialist claptrap?

As a small business owner, I work hard and struggle every single month. When one of my ventures failed, I was personally stuck with a fairly large debt, which I'm still paying back today. In my career, I've paid people as low as $11 per hour and as high as $XX per hour. Those are my personal truths. I don't complain about them normally but when I hear such despicable language about business owners coming out of the mouths of my fellow British Columbians, the hairs on the back of my neck go up.

One thing's for sure: If the minimum wage is raised then it will have a cascading effect upward on all other wages throughout out society. And that in turn will drive the prices of everything up as well. Do I want more people to live a prosperous life? Absolutely. Do I think that raising the minimum wage will help in this regard? Absolutely not.

Outrageous Quote from a Senior NDP Advisor

On Bill Good's show on CKNW this morning Bill Tieleman said (paraphrasing), "Those businesses that are only paying the minimum wage and struggling to get by have no business staying in business."

If you've ever owned a business, you'll immediately realize how outrageous (and insulting) this is!

You can listen to the full discussion here.

NDP Election Propaganda

I was walking in front of VGH today and came across this "protest" rally. I put the "P" word in quotes because anyone who thinks that this was purely about the cause at hand is kiddin' themselves. This is pure NDP politics, pure & simple. The messages for the cameras was clear: These workers, mostly women, are being taken advantage of "by that horrible Gordon Campbell".


Will people fall it? As tens of thousands of people in the private sector are starting to lose their jobs because of the global recession, will people now start to feel sorry for public sector workers? I wonder.

The Reality of the Left: Equality or Inequality?

Dennis Prager had a fascinating discussion on his program today, which you can listen to beginning at 40:20 here.

I was curious what others thought about this so I posted the following on SDA:

American radio show host Dennis Prager spoke of something today that I wanted to throw at all of you for feedback. Paraphrasing, this is what he said:

"The Left has never been spoken about Creating Wealth, the Left is only focused on Creating Equality."

I thought about this some and the only exception I could think of is the NDP gov't in Manitoba. I haven't lived there in some time so perhaps it's the case that their policies are not Left-centered in practice?

Anyhow, in the bigger picture, what do you think of Prager's statement?

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To my great delight I received this response from "ET", an female professor in Ontario:

The Left is about creating inequality. Not equality.

The Left asserts that the knowledge of 'How to live in the Best Way' exists; it is accessible to an Elite, a Chosen Set. These people have The Knowledge of The Best Way To Live. This knowledge is not found in the majority of people. Only these Few have it - They are defined as Guardians or Rulers.

The fascinating thing is that this perspective is not modern. It is not industrial. It is pre-industrial. The perspective of the Left is very much the mindset of 18th and 19th c Europe.

The class structure of pre-modern Europe consisted of an elite Landed Gentry...the people whose wealth (knowledge) wasn't made by themselves but was inherited from ancestors. Then, there was the up-and-coming mercantile merchant class - the businessmen. These people were sneered at and derided by the Landed Gentry, who scorned anyone having to 'make money' with their own work.
And..the rest were peasants, farmers, workers.

This pre-modern class elitism is exactly what is found in our modern Left. Our modern left are similar to the Landed Gentry. Their 'wealth' or knowledge isn't self-made; they are found in the universities, in the civil service...They certainly aren't in 'business'..which is condemned.

Notice how Obama condems the business and manufacturing peoples as based on 'greed'. That's such an 19th c statement..made by an elitist!

The Landed Gentry of the 18th c, who are now the modern Leftists, sneer at anyone who 'makes wealth' or 'makes knowledge'. They deride the investors, or the businessman, or industrialists, or the bankers. These people, who make the wealth - they are 'corrupt'. They merely make wealth; they are greedy.

The worker class are the people who work for wages.

The Left, the modern Landed Gentry, the modern Guardians, do NOT consider the merchant and business class as their equal! After all, merchants and businessmen are 'nouveau riche', and are 'wealthy' out of greed..not out of ancestry and 'noblesse oblige'.
And they consider the workers..ignorant and hapless..beer and popcorn victims of the wealthy businessmen.

The agenda of the Landed Gentry, the Left, is not to enable equality, for they reject equality. It is to reduce the power of the people who make wealth - the industrialists, the businessmen. And, in this era of voting power, they'll give this wealth..first, to themselves (they'll always have high salaries and benefits and perks in office..Recall Pelosi's perks and plane rides)...and second..to the peasants..to keep them passive and meek.

Posted by: ET at March 30, 2009 11:02 PM

"Human Rights" Commissions in Canada

Ezra Levant recently appeared on Michael Coren's TV program, discussing the horrendous behaviour of the 14 so-called "Human Rights" Commissions across Canada. He cites several real-life examples that will leave you incredulous:


Click on the image below to learn more about Levant's new book:

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Update: Rex Murphy has a lengthy but superb review of Shakedown. Here's a snippet:

Now, some people do not like Levant's style. They say he is too aggressive, too noisy and assertive, that he courts controversy and publicity. They should read Shakedown, and they will quickly realize that anyone less "aggressive" or "noisy" would have long ago been suffocated by the remorseless, inequitable, taxpayer-funded, bureaucratic grinding of Canada's human rights tribunals and commissions.

On the matter of his alleged taste for controversy and publicity, again, after reading Shakedown, they will realize that without his ability to withstand controversy and generate publicity, an insidious and largely unaccountable process of diminishing the central concepts of our democracy — freedom of speech, press and thought — would largely have gone unnoticed, and what is far worse, unchallenged.

Anti-Semite in the BC NDP?

Anyone following politics in Canada for some time knows that BC has had perhaps the strangest politics of all for many decades. That has pretty much subsided but the bizarre meter may get a new life now that we're entering a new provincial election campaign.

Over the weekend the NDP held a nominating meeting in the riding of Vancouver-Kensington. The despicable Jinny "I make my own laws" Sims of the BCTF was defeated by a woman named Mable Elmore. I had never heard of Ms. Elmore before but now it's coming to light that she once said, "convincing union members to oppose the conflict in Iraq was difficult because of vocal Zionists in our worksites." You can read more here.

Not a surprise that a Radical Leftist (or you can use the term "Peace Activist" which she prefers) doesn't like Jews - it's pretty much par for the course here in Canada - but to be so vocal about it requires a special kind of arrogance.

Isn't it interesting, and more than a little telling, that of all the possible candidates for Vancouver-Kensington, the NDP insisted on choosing between a known lawbreaker and another who has a problem with Jews (though let's just call them "Zionists" to appease the socialist narrative). What a pathetic disgrace.

Future Headline: All Media & Hollywood Wages to be Capped

I shuddered when I read this article about Obama's possible plans to cap the wages of many more private companies, even those which have received no government bailouts. The reaction to this in many quarters still seems muted at best and even supportive at worst. So I thought it appropriate to offer this prospective future news story, which is [currently] just a work of fiction:

WASHINGTON: Today the Obama administration announced a new bill which will cap the wages of all members of the media, as well as everyone working in the television, movie, and music industries.

"Every person working in any of these areas will have their remuneration capped to a maximum of $10,000 per month or $100K per year, whichever is less", said Obama spokesman, Robert Gibbs. "This includes but is not limited to writers, news anchors, actors, directors, and producers. Any wages or other kinds of payments exceeding these amounts will be met with a 105% income tax. We have great confidence that our longtime allies in these businesses will support this initiative for the good of their fellow citizens and the good of the USSA."

When asked whether these amounts will ever go up, Gibbs said, "there is a clause in the bill that the amounts will be reviewed only once the entire U.S. debt has been done away with. Until then, no, they will not change."

Katie Couric, Matt Damon, and Barbra Streisand were all contacted for this story but refused comment.

Later in the day President Obama was quoted as saying, "Because of the financial crisis at hand, this bill must be voted on and signed within 48 hours. Failure to do so may result in dire permanent consequences for our nation."

Mark Steyn: AIG Execs the New 'Enemy Combatants'

The first two months of the Age of the Hopeychange have been an eye-opener. I expected it to be ideologically distasteful to me, but I didn't expect it to be so inept. Not because I had any expectations of President Obama's executive skills. But I assumed he'd have folks around him who could take care of details like governing, while he pranced around as the smiley-face hopeychange frontman. But the bench is still empty save for a handful of mediocrities. And the disconnect between the smoothly scripted mush and what's actually happening makes the telepromptered cool look even more ridiculous.

Full article

Ujjal Dosanjh: Dope of the Day

Today, near 54th & Fraser an attempted execution went awry and then one of the two assailants was shot dead. This all occurred in the middle of the federal Vancouver South riding.

Its MP, Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh, who just squeaked by in the recent election, was on CBC Radio 1 demonstrating for all the citizens what a complete & utter fool he is. During his Kumbaya refrain, Dosanjh admitted that "some dangerous people do need to go to jail" but that this recent streak of terror throughout Metro Vancouver "is a complicated issue". When pressed by the interviewer for what he would do to resolve things, Dosanjh cited "better daycare" and "English lessons for New Immigrants".

What an ultra left-wing, head in the clouds, out of touch M-O-R-O-N! What else can be said about someone like this?!? I only hope that the citizens of Vancouver South pay attention to his words when they go vote in the next election.

Is it too much to ask to NOT have our society turn into that of Mexico or Colombia anytime soon. I lived in Mexico City for a year and very much know what it's like to live in a place where everyone is on edge because violent crime frequently occurs in any neighbourhood, anytime.

With "eminent" crime fighters like Dosanjh vs. the gangsters, we are certainly heading in the same direction. :-(

Obama the Blunderer

Barack Obama boosters are confident that their Messiah will be remembered for all time as the greatest president in at least 100 years. Perhaps this is what some Jimmy Carter fans once thought too. History has quickly proven the latter wrong and current news headlines may soon proven the former wrong as well.

From the UK comes a very important editorial about the financial bill that Obama deemed "absolutely necessary". And in the Wall Street Journal they focus in on how quickly his "Hope & Change" has turned into pure fear mongering.

After you read it, ask yourself two pertinent questions:

1. If Obama, Pelosi, & Reid were to take $1,000,000,000, place it in a large pit, and light it on fire, would this also be called "stimulus"?
   
   
2. Assuming most people would answer 'No' to that question, then why is it that any money spent on any program, no matter how wasteful or even useless, is now called "stimulus" and considered acceptable by all too many?
   

The Longest and Most Elegant Comment Ever

Last June I added this posting about Dr. Anne Wortham. Sadly, the video of her talking was removed from YouTube. And it's a shame that there's so little on the Internet about her because she is a truly brilliant person. In many ways she is the Left's worst nightmare because:

• She's a woman
• She's African American
• She's extremely eloquent
• She disagrees with the Radical Left entirely!
  

My posting without the video is pretty much nothing but for some reason it attracts a lot of attention and some of the longest, most passionate comments ever seen on my blog. A new one just arrived, from an American in Japan. It deserves reposting here, though before reading it you might want to go to the original posting and read what's there, to put everything in context.

I can't agree with M.LaMarre, and setting the obvious arguments against Socialism aside, I would bring up the fact that there are physical hurdles to success and there are internal personal hurdles. You only address the former.

These restrictions to success need more than just "to be opened" and all shall be cured.

Success is a process, not a passage, not a line in the sand.

People can't be awarded success, anymore than they can be awarded knowledge, pride, or prowess in action. A man can be successful in one area and less-so in others. The battles we fight are diverse! One man may think his life has meaning by himself playing a guitar well, and another, by being a good husband and provider.

To another, success is being skilled at robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, and I suspect that is where LaMarre, in his/her ignorance fits in the grand scheme.

It is the challenges that make success something that is rewarded. In "moving the boxes" or striving towards the "door" as LaMarre calls it, true value is earned. Value is created, not bestowed.

We gain value in our life by becoming better people, and we all have to start at some level. We are born on some level and work up if we have the desire, or stay put, or sink.

Going through the door doesn't mean you become a better person, because there isn't a door; there is continuation of life. The "full realization of self" comes from the self. You can't give it to anyone, no mater how much you want to.

"Forgive us (because)we reject and abandon (America) and that stale ass argument and mindset that have dominated America for far too long."

An interesting mindset you have, and I place my cards on the table, and counter your false interpretation with facts:

The "reality" that the Victory of Vietnam, was our leaving it alone. 1,100 US soldiers were killed each year for ten years, and 3 million Vietnamese died in the three years following this victory. That was good? No more "real" than Pro-choice, where the one who has to die has no choice. That is good?

Millions died and continue to die for these "liberal realities," yet you talk of boxes. As our world turns to liberal ideology, it doesn't get better. It gets profoundly worse. The boxes you build are no less a box just because you build them.

LaMarre, I don't forgive you and can't join you in your delusion. I remember history too well, and see now too clearly.

I live in Japan. I am one of the few that moved from America. Not because I hate it, but because I love the principles it is built on. They are needed in more places in this world. Even Japan.

I am not trying to take from the rich and give to the poor, I am trying to give hope to all.

There are challenges here. I didn't come here because there were fewer challenges; I came here to be part of humanity. There is no substitute for freedom, and the opposite of freedom isn't war, it is slavery.

Liberal slavery, even well intended, is still slavery.

Freedom, even conservative, is still freedom. I would rather be free and poor, than equal and level in chains. The world has been dominated by chains for too long. Obama and his ilk hold the chains out and people like you, LaMarre, are all to happy to slap them on people like me.

Socialists vs. Anarchists

Q: What's the difference between a socialist and an anarchist?

A: A society controlled by either will eventually (and usually rapidly) fall into a state of permanent disrepair. But to the bitter end a socialist will tell you that they're doing everything "for the people" whereas an anarchist will be honest and admit that they're doing it for their own selfish reasons!


P.S. Together they make up that portion of society we call "The Radical Left".

Obama's Big Vote Buy

Amy Alkon just published a biting article, asking why so many Americans are so eager to give Barack Obama much more of their money.

Here's the comment I left:

Much like a parent doesn't want their child to learn about touching a stove by actually getting burned, those of us outside the U.S. who have not had our minds numbed by the Socialist Kool-Aid, are hoping against hope that Americans don't embark on Obama's Great Socialist Experiment. But this suggests that you are.

And Michael Medved has a detailed article on why the changes made in an Obamanation will be permanent and devastating.

I have never felt that McCain is the optimal choice but it truly is shocking to me how so many Americans have been brain washed by the socialist rhetoric espoused by Obama and his many protective pals in the MSM.

Let's talk 2 years from now and see if many still feel Obama is the transformative Messiah figure that so many currently espouse him to be.

Who Pays The Bill in America

Kind of throw a wrench into how Obama is going to cut taxes for 95% of Americans. But on this and many other things I'm convinced most people are going to be very disappointed when reality hits home by mid 2009 in an Obamanation.

Is Amerika Following the Path of the Soviet Union?

Here's a fascinating and possibly very prescient interview of Yuri Bezmenov from 1985. Listen to the end. It's important.


Yuri Bezmenov
Uploaded by onmyway02

Canadian Federal Election: Prediction with 24 Days Left

The Liberals, the NDP, and the Greens are all going to keep on promising endless new programs costing hard working taxpayers who knows how many tens or even hundreds of Billions of dollars. Stephen Harper will stay mostly silent and let these social engineers on the Left out promise each other ad nauseum. Hopefully a majority of Canadian voters will not buy into the 1970's style socialist nirvana and will vote in a much needed Conservative majority government.

If the price to pay for that is us concerned citizens having to listen to copious amounts of twaddle then I for one am willing to do my duty!

Dear Mr. Obama: Economics 101

"We've got to transform Washington, and we've got to do some housecleaning," Obama said. "But what we also want to do is to remind young people that if it weren't for government, then we wouldn't have a Civil Rights Act. If it weren't for government, we would not have the interstate highway system. If it weren't for government, we would not have some of our parks and natural wilderness areas that are so precious to America. And so part of my job, I think, as president, is to make government cool again."

Barack Obama
September 12, 2008

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Not everyone's buying it though:

Inside the Mind of the Radical Left

Yesterday evening I heard the following conversation on BBC London Radio:

[Male] Caller: The problem with capitalist countries like Britain is that there's not enough social justice.

Host: What do you mean?

Caller: Well, for example, the minimum wage of £5.75 should be increased to £10.00.

Host: That's an easy thing to say but all that will do is force companies to raise their prices.

Caller: Oh no, I wouldn't let them do that. A big company earning $100 Million will have to stop being so selfish and just settle for $75 Million.

Host: How on earth could you stop them from earning more?

Caller: I would impose a cap on the profits of big companies or put a cap in the ass of the leaders of those companies.

Host: Are you joking?

Caller: Not at all.

Host: Do you realize that you're sounding a lot like Stalin and Hitler?

Caller: Funny you say that. When I was a child my mother used to say I was "A Little Hitler" because of the way I ordered the other little kids around.