Fact: The Alberta Human Rights Commission can't protect you from bear attacks

Today I see that Ezra Levant is being offered up as some kind of martyr by Stephen Taylor. There seems to be a vague attempt to reference Martin Niemöller's poem - perhaps too vague to be a Godwin's Law-type situation, but still.

If I am honest, there is some kind of case to be made for very robust free-speech laws, the problem is that Ezra is such a self-important, hyperbole-driven asshole who appears to have published the cartoons simply as a kind of publicity-stunt for his faltering (now failed) magazine. What's funny if you go to Taylor's site is how Ezra comes off in the hearings. He reminds me of TV's favourite assistant to the regional manager, Dwight Schrute. If Ezra had the shred of self-awareness that would allow him to get around his playground ego he might have some kind of a case.

And now, what you really want: Compare and contrast, first Ezra:

Now Dwight:

Enjoy.

Stephen Taylor is shocked! Shocked at the Liberal website!

According to Stephen Taylor, the Liberals may be using Photoshop! He documents the horror:

"A familiar technique has been used here to emphasize the dirty particulate colour of climate change (who knew that CO₂ was a sulfuric red/yellow/brown?)

The Liberals have modified an image of a smokestack in alarmist fashion with a sepia filter to exaggerate the evils of Canadian industry and economic production."

This is very bad since we all know that the Conservatives never alter any images on their website. Once again Stephen Taylor is distraught because other parties use the exact same political tools that his party uses. I'm sure that he longs for the day when every other party will roll over and play dead for him.

Don't Let the Facts Ruin a Good Fundraising Drive

Back to politics:

Buckdog reports that Doug Finley is beseeching the Conservative Party faithful to fight the evil CBC. This all goes back to the tempest in the teapot over a CBC reporter feeding questions to a Liberal MP about Mulroney. This is amusing because a while ago Paul Wells pointed out that this sort of thing happens all the time in Ottawa. A sample:

"I don't know whether I ever did it with Reform, Alliance or NDP MPs when the Liberals were in government, but I know it got done and if I had a story I needed advancing, I'd have done it in a second. 'Hey, you might want to ask about....'"

Anyone who has anything other than a totally, totally naive view of politics must surely assume that such things happen all the time. Of course feigned naivety is a great political tool. Stephen Taylor and Doug Finley are shocked! Shocked that the media and the opposition sometimes share information.

Deep Blue Something

Last week this was my speculation on what would become of the Ontario PCs should they lose the election and should John Tory lose his seat:

"Right now I'm wondering if the mentality of the PCs will be that a moderate (Tory) didn't work nearly as well as a hardliner (Harris) and in light of that, they may go hunting for another deep blue type of leader."

Well, it appears that at least Stephen Taylor is thinking along those lines - and almost gleefully:

"If there's any hope that can come from the results of this election for conservatives, it is that PCs in Ontario will rebuild around offering Ontario clear and articulated conservative policies just in time for what may be a strong desire for change after four more years of McGuinty."

One can only wonder what those "clear and articulated conservative policies" might be - perhaps some sort of private healthcare (a Frank Klees favourite) or a more radical education platform, maybe a flat tax - but if the Liberals are starting to look a little shopworn in 2011, they may be coming to a Queen's Park near you.

Stephen Taylor: Nuclear Power is Magic!

In an attempt to slag the Ontario NDP and Liberal parties, Taylor expresses his frustration that they have not rushed to embrace nuclear (nukular, for you Bushophiles) power. He asks,

'Is nuclear not a "green" form of energy?'

Of course "green" means whatever an author wants it to mean, so perhaps it is for Taylor. You can call a car "green" but it's not as green as walking. I'm not sure what Taylor thinks is going to happen with all those incredibly radioactive fuel rods for the next several centuries. Can we keep them at his house?

Don't worry though, this is the best part:

"From an engineering perspective, we want select[sic] methods of energy production that maximizes output, minimizes cost and minimizes waste."

HAHAHAHAHAHA! That's funny, Stephen, ever heard of the Darlington nuclear plant? It ended up costing over $14 billion dollars. At the time it was often said that the only megaproject that had cost more was the Channel Tunnel. How about the cost of refurbishing the Pickering nuclear reactors? A billion here, a billion there and soon, as they say, you're talking about real money.

Of course maybe this is just a problem with CANDU reactors and Ontario ought to let free market competition determine whether France's Areva (among others) has a more reliable, cheaper product. But wait, Taylor's own party seems to want to insist on a sort of CANDU monopoly in Ontario. At least that's what I gather from Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn's take on any new nuclear construction in Ontario. That sounds like a great way to minimize cost and waste. Given enough time, between this and all the no-bid military contracts, the Conservatives are going to make adscam seem like a bargain.

Note to Stephen Taylor: When did the PM start having a "first family?"

Stephen Taylor of the Blogging Tories has written a post insisting that the Harper family is "ordinary" while Stephane Dion's family is not. As is fitting, this has been ridiculed as, well, a bit silly.

Let's set aside how completely stupid Taylor's main points are (Dion's wife kept her maiden name!) and consider Taylor's use of the term "first family" in discussion of the Harpers is well, a bit weird. When did we have a first family in this country? None of the prime ministers that I recall used this terminology. Mulroney didn't use it, neither did Chretien. If anything the "first" terminology is usually reserved for the head of state. Harper is the leader of the government, not the head of state.

Those who recall their civics lessons know that Lizzy Windsor is the head of state. I'd venture to say that Dion's family and Harper's family have a great deal more in common with each other than they do with Canada's real first family - those crazy Windsors.

Why (Global) Villages Suck

Think about that term, "global village," it sounds warm and fuzzy, doesn't it? We all like villages, there's Santa's Village in Bracebridge, Value Village to buy your hipster skinny pants for $2, and the Village People who'll tell you where you can hang out with all the boys.

I think villages though are overrated. I think villages (and indeed all smaller centers, be they "hamlets," "corners," or "towns") are overrated for reasons that are now becoming apparent in the aforementioned global village. In a smaller center, everyone knows what everyone else is doing and what everyone else is saying. Harper (or at least his lackey, Stephen Taylor) is freaking out that his minions are saying things on Facebook that might somehow reflect badly on his government.

Until Facebook (which IDs everyone by their real name) the internet was far more akin to a metropolis than it was to a village. You could make up a name and commit the digital equivalent of flipping off another city-dweller in traffic. Your blog/myspace/whatever was the political/musical/cultural equivalent of yelling "nice turn-signal use, asshole!" out the car window on a crowded street. No one would know who you were or what you did.

Now your every Facebook utterance is traceable to you. It's a village, and now we are finding the idiots.

Media Bias: The Stephen Taylor Edition

Stephen Taylor of the Blogging Tories is up in arms about some report on the CBC. From what I'm able to tell the problem was that Tom Flanagan didn't get a chance to comment about the story. Thus, in Taylor's mind some kind of artificial balance was thrown out of proportion.

I'm somewhat concerned by balance fetishists because balances of opinion are artificial. Everyone's idea of a "balanced" news report is shaped by their own sense of what constitutes "balance" in the media. I'm sure that Flanagan has other reasons to be upset with CBC, and to him this is another in a long list of grievances. What is fascinating about Flanagan's letter to Taylor is that the one thing that the media needs for better balance is more Tom Flanagan.

Of course it's not as though Tom Flanagan (or Stephen Taylor for that matter) are silenced by the media. I've read lengthy Flanagan Op-Eds in the Globe and Mail and I see that Macleans has anointed both Flanagan and Taylor as two of their 50 extra-special opinion-shaping people. It is evident that there are lots of opportunities for both Taylor and Flanagan to get their opinions out there. So what if one reporter ditched Flanagan's shimmering pearls of wisdom on one story? I've seen plenty of one-sided articles emanating from both Macleans and the CanWest Global empire that I vehemently disagreed with.

What did I do?

Well, I didn't waste time trying to dig up some journalism code of ethics with which to sully these institutions. No. I accept that everyone is biased, you, me, Stephen Taylor, everyone. I criticized and/or mocked the pieces that I found disagreeable instead. There is nothing wrong with an editorial board having a point of view - in fact the media that I consider most suspicious are those that swear up and down that they are unbiased. It's humanly impossible to be unbiased, when some outlet says it's unbiased it likely means that the bias is more insidious than in other cases.

On a side note, what happened to the whole conservative pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps mentality? I mean this seems to be an appeal to have someone else fix a problem for you. Shouldn't true conservatives busy themselves using entrepreneurial energies to create a leaner, more innovative market-driven competitor to a big mushy government apparatus like the CBC?

I am shocked! Shocked that anyone would call Harper "far right"

I was reading Cherniak's post about Stephen Taylor's little pants-wetting over CTV's use of the term "Far Right." Cherniak makes the point that Dion is allowed to characterize Harper as he sees fit. Fair enough. What I want to know though is why the Conservatives are so cowed by the term "far right" all of a sudden? Oh wait, they want a majority. Anyone serious examination of Harper's connections should scream "far right" - or at least to the right of mainstream Canadian politics. From the National Citizens Coalition to his stance on Iraq, Harper has lots of far-right credentials.

Oh, and one more thing, Taylor makes the point that CTV needs to address the "issue" of kid gloves. Issue? Please, Harper won't speak to anyone who doesn't treat him with kid gloves. Ask the National Press Gallery.

The Conservatives like to talk tough. They talk tough about terror and law and order, but really, what a bunch of wusses. One soft interview - ON A MORNING SHOW and they start crying in their milk. No one mentioned that either. They probably put Dion in between some guy with zoo animals and a child xylophone prodigy. It's softball TV.