Great Insights from Stephen A. Smith

Double Standards for Racism in Canada

This afternoon Roy Green interviewed the allegedly "racist" mother of an 8 year-old girl in Winnipeg. You can listen to it here at 34:00.

Here's the letter I sent to him afterwards:

Roy,

Great interview! It was very honest radio and I appreciate that. While that woman & I would probably never be close friends, I do believe she has a valid point regarding political correctness and double-standards aplenty.

Let me share a quick story with you: Three and a half years ago I founded a non-profit organization in Vancouver that refurbishes used computers and gives them for free to less fortunate families throughout British Columbia. In our first year of existence we had a young man join our team of volunteers. He was a high-school student. He and his family had moved to Canada from China about 10 years prior.

This young fellow was one of our techs, responsible for doing the actual refurbishing. Since he didn't drive, I had all sorts of other volunteers dropping off to his home computers needing work and picking up refurbished machines.

One day he called me up and had a very serious tone. I asked him what the matter was. He hesitated and then said, "I need for you to stop sending [a certain volunteer] over to my home any more. My parents insist upon it." The fellow he was referring to happened to be a dark-skinned man from Sri Lanka. I thought about it for a second and responded, "Is it just this particular fellow or all darker skinned people?" He quietly said, "All of them."

Roy, tell me honestly, do you think that any Child Service Agency in this country would ever dare to take away such a child from his Asian parents?

Robert W.

The Problem for the BC NDP: Way Too Much Hate

This morning there was a fascinating analysis of the recent BC election. You can hear it by clicking here and tuning to 37:00. Here's the first part of the discussion:

Bill Good: "Vaughn, we had an election on Tuesday. Not much has changed. The Liberals still govern. The NDP is probably trying to figure out what it has to do to remake itself. Your thoughts following the election?"

Vaughn Palmer: "Yeah, it was a status quo outcome with almost exactly the same gap in the popular vote as in 2005: 4 points. Almost exactly the same gap in the number of seats in the House: 13. Very few seats actually changed hands. The two parties sort of emerged from the election where they were going into it. And yeah the challenge for the New Democrats is - 42% is a pretty good showing in the popular vote - in tough economic times when people weren't inclined to change government, but what do you do? How do you get that last bit of the gap closed to form government or do you say, 'Well, we're going to be in opposition forever' ?"

Bill Good: "Keith, Philip asked this morning, 'Is the problem the horse or the jockey?' and I think that's a very good question. I think the horse is tired."

Keith Baldrey: "It is tired. The NDP, I think, has some fundamental problems and challenges. It's not fair at all to blame Carole James for this situation. A senior NDP strategist once told me some time ago, 'It's easy for us to get to 40 points in the public opinion arena. For us to grow after that is hard slogging.' Every vote after they hit that peak of 40% is tough for the NDP to pick up because then they're going after mainstream, middle of the road voters who can be turned off pretty quick by anything that smacks of idealogy, that smacks of something they're not comfortable with. And that's where I think the NDP hit a bump in this particular election campaign. Their relentless negative portrayal of Gordon Campbell, their advertising, I think was a turnoff to the key rump of voters that they needed to attract. I mean, that plays well to people who are going to vote NDP anyway, who hate Gordon Campbell, who hate the Liberals and would never vote for them at all. But when you're trying to attract people who are either undecided, maybe leaning one way or another, that is not the way to attract those voters. So Carole James certainly has responsibility for this outcome but there are a lot of people in the NDP camp who I think have to be held accountable here and I think are going to brought on the carpet presumably by other people in the party for making some pretty bad calls early on."

Bill Good: "Vaughn, the NDP focused on the carbon tax, run-of-river projects, privatization. Did they miss the mark about what the public was really concerned about?"

Vaughn Palmer: "Well, I think the comment many have made is that they were all over the map. They came with a scattershot series. They went after Kinsella for a few days, they went after the carbon tax and then dropped that. They went after run-of-river power. Someone worked out that they had 4 different slogans for the campaign. So there was a lack of focus. But I think Carole James pulled it out for them. With that performance in the debate and a strong finish, they really are in a dilemma. Their problem is, if they go to a 3rd election with the same leader - the last time they did that they lost 3 in a row: Dave Barrett. On the other hand, she did pull it out for them. She deserves a decent interval to think about her own future. But the other thing I think they've got to do - this other thing that Keith just referred to, this relentless negativeness - look, it pains New Democrats to admit it but the most successful politician in modern times in British Columbia is named Gordon Campbell."

Bill Good: "Yes, he's lost one election in 25 years and he lost that by a whisker."

Vaughn Palmer: "Yes, he's won 9 elections! They loathe him. They pander to the people who hate him. They think it's hilarious to run an ad showing him as a drunk. I've been hearing people from the election, 'The media let him off the hook for his drinking & driving'." Face it folks, this guy is your adversary, he's more successful in politics than you are so how do you beat him?"

Keith Baldrey: "Yeah, the NDP, by focusing on Campbell actually helped solidify the Liberals main strength, which is Gordon Campbell."

Bill Good: "Well you know, I thought the most interesting thing, or certainly one of them in the election, and I certainly didn't expect it, he was front and centre in every ad, he was on the posters, they didn't try to hide him. The NDP hid Carole James. She did a really good job, I agree with you, on the radio debate, on the television debate - whenever she was seen - but she was not seen in their advertising, she was not seen in their posters. Gordon Campbell they turned what many would have thought to be a negative into a positive and he was the centrepiece of the campaign. And they won!"

Keith Baldrey: "That wasn't Carole James' idea. This was the brains of the NDP campaign."

Bill Good: "So called."

Keith Baldrey: "[The NDP 'Brains'] who thought they'd come up with a winning strategy. So it's not Carole James. The NDP's campaign missed the mark on so many points and one of the strengths of the NDP is Carole James' positiveness, her warm demeanor, her personality, and they completely sheltered that and kept it from the public and focused entirely on Gordon Campbell. And again, one of the Ipsos-Reid polls before the election found that when it came to Liberal supporters and people who might be considering voting Liberal, Gordon Campbell was a strength for them. So by emphasizing Gordon Campbell I think just simply played into the Liberals hands of focusing on their best asset. NDP'ers are never going to vote for Gordon Campbell but that soft middle ground, they will vote for Gordon Campbell and they did this time."

Bill Good: "So Vaughn, how does the NDP grow? Or is it another party that comes along and says 'we're going to be centre left, we're going to be friendly to small business, we are going to somehow try to attract people who might not be onside with the Liberals but we're tired of the negativity of the NDP' ?"

Vaughn Palmer: "Well, I think they should - a question that arose, that Norman Spector actually raised when I talked to him on the TV show last night was, 'Do New Democrats ever talk up their own leader? Do they really go out there and say, here's what our leader's done for us and here's what's really worked?' They don't take pride in the fact, I don't think, not enough of it, that she's moderated their economic message. On the contrary, they gave her a platform that made it sound more left-wing than she is. She went around for 4 years, giving speeches to the business community, talking about growth, investment, how the NDP made mistakes in the 1990's and the New Democrats never talked that up. You get a New Democrat going and they'll tell you 'oh no, the 90's were great, there were no economic problems, it's all the media'. I think part of the problem is that they have to resolve among themselves to unite behind their leader and let her move them a little closer to the middle. They don't have to move very far, you know. The gap isn't huge between these two parties. It's like 4 points. Keith's right, it takes a bit of effort to get to the middle. The problem in the NDP you've got is that there's a bunch of people in the NDP that think the solution is to move left."

Keith Baldrey: "Yes, that's the problem. There's the class warfare element of the NDP who think that's how to win power in this province because they did it once in '96, where the vote was split big time, where the Reform Party was able to get 9 points. That's a lot of voters and that's what gave Glen Clark the election. It wasn't his assault on banks. But there are class warfare advocates in the NDP who think, 'If we just move hard left then we'll win' but that's just not enough voters."

Vaughn Palmer: "These people are crackpots. Here's their strategy summarized: 'We're going to move to the left and we're going to win - we're going to get our people really happy - we're going to win an election with 39 or 40% of the vote. How we're going to do that? Well, you know what we're going to do, we're going to talk up the Conservative Party because the Conservative Party will split the Liberals and then we get to split the vote in British Columbia and we'll win with 39%. This is a crackpot idea! It depends on the Conservative Party. Look what the Conservative Party did in the election: they took 20% of the vote in one riding, they took 17, 16 - they took a big chunk of the vote - they split the opposition vote. The Liberals won ever riding where the Conservatives did well. James should put the people that make those arguments on Call Block at party headquarters!"

Gitmo's Jerk House

A 'Hate America' Poster Boy Speaks to Dennis Miller

Canada's Preeminent Free Speech Advocates

Tonight at 7pm PDT / 8pm MDT / 9pm CDT / 10pm EDT

Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant will be appearing live on Chicago radio station WGN.

You can listen live here.

The Less Than Subtle Prejudices of the Left

Today, Charles Adler featured a long segment on some recent whiny callers from Alberta who shared the common distinction of hating everything and everyone in Alberta. You can listen to it here (7:00). Such snobs who look down upon people who [apparently] have less education than them annoy & anger me to no end. After listening to the show, I felt compelled to send Adler this letter:

Charles,

Thank you for following up on the calls from the two Albertans who hate everything about Alberta. Listening to them again I was reminded of numerous conversations I've had over the years with such left of centre folks. Such discussions always start out pleasant enough but eventually arrive at some point of contention. Rather than just agreeing to disagree, quite often the Academic Card is pulled out by these individuals, citing what degrees they have, what schools they went to, and thus making it "so obvious" that they know more than I do.

Such people frequently have an undergraduate degree in History or English or Philosophy and are lawyers or teachers or baristas. Yet miraculously their education and "high intelligence" has made them experts at:

• Economics (ex. Obama's stimulus bill is brilliant)
  
• Environmental Modeling (ex. Al Gore knows more about the environment than even God)
  
• Structural Engineering Design (ex. 9/11 was 'obviously' carried out by Bush & Cheney)
  
• Carbon Sequestration (ex. It's so easy to do but those damn oil companies are too greedy)
• Canadian Constitutional Law (ex. It's 'so obvious' that The Coalition is a normal part of our country's electoral history)
  
• The Middle East (ex. Israel is no different than Nazi Germany and Canadian & American soldiers in Afghanistan are no different than Al Qaeda)
  
• Demographics (ex. Canada is so overcrowded that anyone having a baby is damaging Mother Earth)
  

And on & on it goes.

They have convinced themselves that all academics (only of the left-leaning kind, of course) are the most brilliant citizens of the world who we must listen to or face certain peril within just a few years. In their minds, Barack Obama must be a genius because he went to Harvard, Stephane Dion is brilliant but just misunderstood, and Michael Ignatieff represents intelligentsia without compare. When asked how Stephen Harper ranks amongst this crowd, they sidestep it by referring to him as an "Evil Genius".

In their everyday lives they treat anyone without a post-secondary education with disdain. This includes waitresses, shop clerks, cleaning staff, farmers, construction workers, plumbers, etc. In the old days they'd refer to such people as being from the wrong side of the tracks. Nowadays the PC terms include "The NASCAR Crowd" and "Monster Truck Fans". It's the same prejudice though, just disguised in a less forthright package.

They have rebuilt a Class System alright. But what these faux academic snobs don't realize is that they belong to a Class System of the Clueless.

Mark Steyn Guest Hosting Rush Limbaugh's Show

Tuesday & Wednesday at 9am PST / 12pm EST.

Alex Tsakumis on the Recent Canadian Budget

If you would like to hear a GLORIOUS discussion of federal Canadian politics then click here (7:00) to listen to CKNW's Sean Leslie interview columnist Alex Tsakumis.

IMHO Tsakumis skewers all politicians fairly, but especially the Video Professor, Jack Layton. Absolutely hilarious!!! But the best lines of all he reserved for Iggy:

"Michael Ignatieff is in deep trouble and let me tell you why. Michael Ignatieff is colder and harder than Stephen Harper could be after spending 2 hours getting drilled by a dentist."

Improvement to Canadian Radio Stations Web Page

Lately I've found myself copying lots of radio program links from the Radio Stations web app I built a while back. Before, the only link you could directly get was the actual "http://" one. But more often than not, I was using the link to embed in a comment on a blog. This required me to construct the HTML code each & every time.

I've improved things such that there are now 2 textboxes one can copy from. The first provides the same link as before. But the second includes HTML code which presents the link like this: click here
You can still customize these two words if you like.

Israel vs. The Media & Hamas

Dennis Prager had a fascinating show today, including a detailed example of how the media manipulates the facts.

Dennis Prager on the Situation in Gaza

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

And here is a follow-up discussion between Prager and Israeli citizen Yossi Klein-Halevi.

Mark Steyn Guest Hosting Rush Limbaugh's Show

Absolutely brilliant political insight + comedic genius:

John Kaponi Paper Review on Big George's Show

While I'm working, I frequently listen to ["Big"] George Webley's show on BBC London Radio. So much so that he has given me the nickname of "Doctor Robert". I like it because it allows me to honestly say, "I'm not a real doctor but I play one on the BBC".

John Kaponi is the editor of the TheLondonDailyNews.com. Once a week he appears on George's show, where the two of them do a fairly comprehensive review of the latest newspapers. Here's a video of part of their segment:

Big George's show used to begin at 2am London time but now starts at 10pm over there. If you live in North America, then you can listen to it at these times:

• 2 - 6pm : Pacific
• 3 - 7pm : Mountain
• 4 - 8pm : Central
• 5 - 9pm : Eastern

P.S. I know that this video seems a little dry & serious but most of the show is actually quite comical & lively. Listening to it is a great way to get a feel for the zeitgeist of the UK.

Enhancements to the Canadian Radio Stations Player

Thanks for all your feedback so far! I've just implemented 2 minor enhancements:

1. I've added station CJAD from Montreal. It was my primary station when I lived there and has some great hosts & shows.
2. If Cookies are enabled on your browser, you'll now be able to set any station as your default. Just click the button underneath the station's logo and the next time you return, it'll be preset for you.
   

Listening to Radio Stations Across Canada

If you're like a growing number of Canadians then you're catching more & more of your news via the Internet. A terrific way to learn about what's going on across the country is to listen to talk radio stations from coast to coast. To assist with this endeavour I've created a single web page that provides links to the audio feeds from assorted stations across Canada. You can access it directly here or you can reach it via a hidden link on the Pelalusa.com site.

When you get to the Pelalusa home page you'll be presented with a daytime or nighttime map of the world (depending on your local time). In either case, in the lower right corner you'll find a hidden link to the radio station page. It's easy to spot because your mouse cursor will change.

Clicking on this link will take you to this page:
I've tested it with Firefox 3.0 and it works perfectly. In both IE7 and Chrome there appear to be problems with the [necessary] popup window being blocked. I don't believe there's anything inherently wrong with my code so you may need to adjust your security settings.

I'm very much open to suggestions of future enhancements. Please just leave comments here or write me directly.

E-mail Sent to a Calgary Radio Station

Just read by Mike Blanchard on-air:

Hi Mike,

I'm listening to your show this afternoon from Vancouver. It might make your listeners pleased to know that since it has dropped just a few degrees below freezing and a few centimetres of snow has fallen that most Vancouverites are in a major state of stress! This weather has clearly interfered with their internal notion that they're really Southern Californians, just with a different passport!

Robert W.

Kudos to "Enrico"

In the off chance that a CKNW listener named Enrico reads this, I want to profusely thank him for saying to Christy Clark what a LOT of us have felt like saying for years.

Paraphrasing, he told her that he was pleased that democracy in Canada works and that the Coalition was stopped dead in its tracks. Then he added, "at least I have the courage to admit my bias, unlike you Christy". This must have thrown her completely by surprise because she seemed absolutely flabbergasted that someone would "dare" say this to her.

But she reinvented history, pretending that she wasn't an adamant cheerleader for the Coalition last week. How telling is it that she's now seen the light only after they've proven a flop with people who actually care about democracy. Then she had the gall to tell Enrico to be more "honest". Pot. Kettle. Black ... a thousand times over!!!

WE WANT DAVID BERNER BACK ON THE AIR!!!

Miro Kantarsky: Canada, Our Love

Here's a fascinating video of a trucker who goes back & forth across Canada and does a lot of thinking about what's going on in our beloved land:


Canada Our Love from Miro Kantarsky on Vimeo.

The John Batchelor Show

If you'd like to hear what I consider to be the very best, most informative radio program available in North America, then click here (right-click to Save As). Might make an interesting contrast to the usual stuff you carry on your iPod!

More on John Batchelor can be read here and here.