I tried to post this over at the Shotgun but there is some foul up. xid indeed:

I want to sit with this until Monday.

My immediate reaction is to call PMSH a dickhead and move on. But the reality is, as commentors above have pointed out, the dickhead is a politician.

The fear/greed matrix inside politician’s head is largely unknowable; but so far as it is the fear end is all about “losing seats”. I think a well organized, skillfully targeted campaign can lose Harper enough seats to put his majority out of reach.

Plan-B is just that, 20-30 hard right/libertarian candidates running in marginal CPC seats with the sole objective of denying those seats to the CPC.

As I say, I would like to give it the weekend. but right now I am looking at electoral results and calculating where the maximum pain can be inflicted on the Liberal-lite jackass the CPC have in the Prime Minister’s Office.

The Count’s coup makes this easier as, worse case, Plan-B is a bit too successful and the Tories lose outright.

I can live with Iggy as PM.

The second three-hour ceasefire has just started. I picked up a call from the Israelis on our landline today, it said: “We are the IDF: you have three hours to go and buy what you need.”

This is the second call we’ve had, the first was at the start of the land war, then they said: “We will look after your humanitarian needs.” But the fighting keeps taking place in civilian areas.

Just before you rang, there was a message over the loudhailer from the mosque. It said: “Civilians in Nuseirat camp, stay and support the fighters and don’t let them down.”

It went on: “We will deal with all the hypocrites who spread rumours against the resistance movement.” It was a threat. We are caught between the two: Israel and the fighters. bbc

Q: Will the government amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to prevent unwarranted interferences in free expression by human rights commissions?

A: The government has no plans to do so. We’re certainly aware of the issue. My understanding—we’ve been monitoring this closely—I think you’ll actually see there’s been some modification of behaviour on the part of the Canadian human rights commissions. The most egregious cases right now are mostly at the provincial level. And it is a very tricky issue of public policy because obviously, as we’ve seen, some of these powers can be abused. But they do exist for valid reasons, which is obviously to prevent public airwaves from being used to disseminate hate against vulnerable members of our society. That’s a valid objective. It’s probably the case that we haven’t got the balance right, but I’m not sure the government today has any answer on what an appropriate balance would be. macleans

The CPC votes unanimously for the repeal of s. 13, a bi-partisan group of MPs call for its repeal, virtually every newspaper in the country calls for its repeal, the CHRC’s own investigator calls for its repeal…Harper does not care.

I have four hard days left on a project and then Plan “B” goes to the top of my agenda. Until Harper actually feels some political pain on this file he is going to do nothing.

The CPC should be ashamed of itself.

Why yes, yes there is:

Alas, the civilian death toll will unavoidably mount, which is deeply regrettable. But what must be understood is that Hamas have deliberately situated their weapons under apartment blocks, in mosques and in hospitals.

The Israelis build bomb shelters for their civilians; Hamas store bombs underneath their civilians in order to create as many civilian casualties as possible to manipulate world opinion.

What people find so hard to grasp is that Hamas actually want to maximise the number of Palestinians who are killed because, as they boast: ‘We desire death as you desire life.’ melanie phillips

Dr. Dawg points in the direction of a Times of London article which, if taken at face value, suggests that the IDF/Hamas fight is getting nasty and that bystanders are being killed.

Amidst the reports of dying mothers and blown up children this little glimpse of reality was allowed to peep through:

Thousands of Gazans have fled their homes to escape the immediate onslaught of the Israeli tanks battling Hamas fighters who refuse to halt the rocket fire that has provoked this campaign. times

Hamas is not Hezbollah (though they share the same funding) and Gaza is not southern Lebanon. The Hamas terrorists know that they are losing and losing badly. Which means that they – along with their sympathizers in the Western media and in the Western left – will now play the humanitarian card for all it is worth. Prepare for dead babies, maimed children and all the other horrors of media war.

And then remember who “refuse(s) to halt the rocket fire which provoked this campaign.”

While you are remembering that, note that Egypt has not opened its border with Gaza. And note that all calls for ceasefire are now proposing that the tunnels be blown up. And the French have even suggested a naval blockade to prevent rockets from being brought in. No one paying attention will fail to recognize that the Hamas terrorists have been identified as such by all but the most knuckleheaded lefties.

Most importantly, while many nations have deplored the civilian casualties very few have suggested that Israel should not be allowed secure borders against an enemy which has never wavered in its determination to destroy the Israeli state. There can be no two state solution so long as Hamas, by the gun, has taken power in Gaza.

So, by the gun, it must be removed from power.

If the Palestinians were not so politically feckless they would do the job themselves (a fact Hamas has attempted to forestall by shooting suspected Fatah supporters in the legs or the hands to render them “non-combatant”. Perhaps the Palestinians will rise to the challenge. Or at least save themselves by pointing out where the rockets are kept and the Hamas leaders are hiding.

The poor Palestinians had to first deal with the entirely corrupt Troll of Ramallah ^tm and now the gang of armed Islamic thugs calling itself Hamas. In reality, only the Palestinians can be blamed for making such stupid choices and then not having the wit to correct those choices. Nothing will change for the Gazans until they themselves embrace change.

On Wednesday, Obama is invited to the White House for lunch with President George W. Bush and former Presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, in the president’s private dining room off the Oval Office — in the words of deputy press secretary Gordon Johndroe: “a very interesting and historic lunch.” star telegram

So, does Laura throw lunch for Michelle, Barbara, Rosalyn and Hilly? Does W. call H.W. Dad? (A pal of mine told me that he was playing tennis on the next court from Jeb, W. and HW and Jeb and W. called H.W. “Sir” and he had not yet been elected vice-President. As in “Good shot, Sir.)

And, does Jimmy remember where the White House is?

There is something especially nauseating about the latest Middle East war — scenes of worldwide Islamic protests with photos of Jews as apes, protesters (in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida of all places!) screaming about nuking Israel and putting Jews in ovens, parades of children dressed up with suicide vests and fake rockets, near constant anti-Semitic vicious sloganeering, Gaza mosques stuffed with rockets to be used against civilians — all to be collated with creepy Hamas rhetoric about the annihilation of Israel. This is the world in which we now live.

Almost no other issue in recent memory has illustrated the moral bankruptcy of much of the international community. Hamas has no pretensions, like the PA, of being a governing authority; it used violence to rout the PA and then bragged that its charter pledging the destruction of Israel remained unchanged. Israel evacuated Gaza; Gazans in response looted their own infrastructure, alienated both the PA and Egypt,and then sent off more than 6,000 rockets against Israeli civilians, while eagerly becoming a terrorist puppet of theocratic Iran. victor davis hanson

Clarity in the face of theocratic evil is very, very important.

More pics and story here.

Polar bears always look to me as if they are smiling…likely thinking of having Al Gore in a similar position.

h/t Tim Blair

“This has always been a stage-by-stage process,” said Shlomo Dror, a Defense Ministry spokesman, in a telephone interview as the ground campaign was getting under way. “Hamas can stop it whenever it wants,” by stopping its rocket fire, Mr. Dror said. new york times

I suspect that most of the activity will be somewhat invisible. First off there will be the sappers taking out tunnels in Southern Gaza. Second, there will be the detailed destruction of particular and well identified Hamas targets. Many of those targets are underground and will require the IDF to secure a particular area and then send in the sappers. Third, I would expect Israel will send in small parties to shoot Hamas one by one.

We know that Hamas has been fortifying positions in Gaza city especially. I would be very surprised if the IDF actually tried to take those positions directly. As well we know that the Hamas “fighters” have been stripping off their uniforms and blending into the civilian population. Apparently their doctrine, inspired by Hezbollah’s success a couple of years back, is to attack from the rear at night. I suspect the IDF may have learned one or two things in Lebanon as well.

Most importantly, Shlomo Dror has set out exactly what Hamas must do to make this end as well as what Israel will be seeking as an operational goal.

Colby Cosh takes a property rights view of abortion in today’s National Post. Essentially it is an argument premised on the interesting idea that we, personally, own our bodies and therefore have the right to do with those bodies what we want.

It is an interesting idea because, after all, if we don’t own our bodies, who does? The state?

One of the difficulties of the hard libertarian position is that it divorces freedom from good action. It really is the furthest possible extension of moral relativism: because I want to do “x” is all the reason and justification I need offer for doing “x”.

I have a great deal of sympathy for this position with application to things like freedom of speech, the right to read what I will, the right to believe and think what I want. These are rights which impinge (except in very unusual instances) on anyone else’s rights.

Things get dicier when we get to the right to ingest non-lethal substances of various sorts. On intoxicants the argument can be made that while you have a right to use, you do not have the right to have your use impinge on other people’s rights. Drink all you want but please take a cab, shoot heroin if you can actually afford it without stealing my stereo. In these cases there are certainly arguments – which I agree with – that the current prohibitions make no sense at all and simply drive up the price term.

Over on the other side, what if I have that “disease” and want to end my own life before I am a burden to myself and to others. Here we come head to head with the hard question: do I owe my life to anyone? At the moment, I have real obligations, willingly assumed to my children and my partner. But kids grow up and, sadly, a partner may die before you do or your own deteriorating quality of life may make suicide an good option for everyone. I cannot imagine any obligation which would require a person to live on in agony or collapse into senility. That seems to be a personal rather than social choice.

Which brings us around to abortion. Colby’s position boils down to the idea that a fetus is rather similar to a kidney. We own our kidneys and, on Colby’s logic, we must own our fetuses as well.

Property is a bedrock upon which we can base a good deal of law and lots of transactional analysis. It gives rise to a sort of economic thinking which suggests that there are no questions which really matter other than price. “The price of everything and the value of nothing” is the Wildean response.

Property carries with it a glorious concept of entitlement. I own my library because I worked hard and was canny in its acquisition. You own your Porsche because you skate very well and can shoot a small, black rubber disk faster than a goalie can see.

So how did you come by that kidney?

You didn’t “find” it. And, unless you are a higher up in the Chinese gerontocracy, you didn’t steal it. You might have bought it but, frankly, I would love to see the legal case when the paid donor decided to break his contract. You might have been given it by a now dead person who no longer required it; but that is still relatively rare.

No, for most of us, our kidneys are the gift our our parents. At one point or another Mr. and Mrs. Cosh played hide the salami and, after a good deal of cell splitting, young Colby arrived on the planet with a couple of kidneys, a liver, heart, brain and the assorted other features we laughingly call human.

Property understands gifts and, critically, once given, they generally cannot be taken back. If Mrs. Cosh needs a kidney she can certainly ask Colby for one of his; but he has a perfect right to say “Sorry Mum, need them both.”

The strange part of the gift of Colby’s kidneys is that, like most gifts, some assembly is required. Happily, Mrs. Cosh had the plans and the materials to make sure Colby arrived in this world with his gifts intact.

(We will leave aside how exactly she came to have these and what impact Mr. Cosh’s role in the proceedings had. And we will go nowhere near that God thing.)

Most arguments about abortion divide into two questions – at what point, if any, is it permissible to deny young Colby the gifts he has been promised – and – does Colby in utero have, in principle, any right to the eventual use of the kidneys, brain and liver he is busy growing. The second question is interesting, the first really a matter of how comfortable one is with the slicing and dicing of a late term fetus.

Our current regime has decided that in utero Colby, if Mrs. Cosh decides otherwise, has no rights at all. As his mother’s property he can be disposed of as she sees fit. (I note that Dad, in Canadian law, has no rights whatsoever.) This has the great legal virtue of certainty. So, until Colby pops into the air, his kidneys and other appurtenances clearly belong to Mummy. (It is, I think, a medically open question as to whether she is allowed to abort Colby in order to give his kidneys to another of her children. But it is a question which will need to be answered soon.)

The way that Colby wants to frame the debate assumes that there is only the single stakeholder – Mum. But, rather obviously, there is a second party to the transaction, in utero Colby. (And a third in Mr. Cosh, and at the margin, a fourth being all of the rest of us for whom, with the exception of this harebrained article, Colby’s existence on the planet has been something of a gift.)

If, as Colby suggests, the gestation of a child is all about property a woman has in her body and the ownership thereof, then the fetus enjoys the status of a rather complex wart or cyst or carbuncle. I suppose there might even be a market for a really big cyst or a particularly fruity wart. And, when medical technology is sufficiently advanced, perhaps the “tissue” will command a decent price on E-bay. Especially if it’s fresh.

Pity to let such a gift be wasted when it might be sold.

So you want to take your yacht into a warzone. Hello!

We lost a good man in 2008. Whom I disagreed with as often as not. Which was not the point. Buckley knew how to argue at the top of the heap. You did not have to agree with him to see his point.

The interwebs are a force-multiplier, like a bow, or a Pole Axe. Using them, I helped create a major online Anglican news network (including inspiring & naming the unofficial alternative Canadian Anglican Newspaper), getting timely useful and officially ‘unapproved’ news out to the masses: I was hacked by the Episcopal Church (twice), mocked by online liberal Anglican news sources, even threatened with legal action by the Canadian Anglicans, and read (on the side) even by the liberals, because they couldn’t get news fresh & fast via the official organs, which were more interested in spin favourable to the politically correct revolution underway in the Church since the 1970s, and not to the well-being and holiness of the church, or the good of her misinformed flocks, who should just take it and keep ponying up forever, like good sheeples.

One guy (with some welcome geek-help): thousands of subscribers, zillions of hits, spawning and supporting other sites, slowing down & changing the nature of the Anglican decline. Binks was a big deal for a while. Enough was enough, however. As I recently wrote to someone, living inside a gangrenous corpse of a church is not a spiritually healthy life. The mutant pod-church that replaced real Anglicanism does not give life, it drains vampirically it.

Thence FreeMarkSteyn, for the past year– and thanks for the hits, and the friendship, and encouragement– this will keep on for a while. the binks

I suspect that the Binks and I would disagree profoundly about the Anglican faith, Church and the way forward. But we could also go and have a beer – or three. He is a joyous warrior and a gift to the ‘net. He has certainly made life Hell for assorted Bishops of my Church. As well he should.

What the internet does is give us all the capacity to hold holy feet to the fire.

I trust we’ll see more of that in 2009.

Happy New Year Binks…and all the rest of you shit disturbers out there in blogland.

215,000 uniques. About half a month’s traffic at Kate’s.

It has been a year when blogging engaged with the world outside. Ezra and Mark lead the charge against the CHRC and s. 13. We went from s. 13 being entirely marginal to s. 13 being the talk of the MSM and the Tory Policy Convention. Kate, Kathy,the National Post, Ezra and Free Dominion got sued by a worm.

Dr. Dawg came into his own as the one relatively rational member of the lefthand side of the ‘sphere who was not Terry Glavin.

The Lying Jackal continued with his mix of fact and fiction.

Politically this was as interesting a year as could be imagined. The Count’s coup has narrowly avoided the final destruction of the Liberal Party of Canada. The “Coalition” concept could have put the Libs under but Iggy is too smart for that.

Harper now has an opponent at least as smart and twice as stylish as he is. Frankly, unless and until Harper starts governing from the right – beginning with s. 13 – if I have to have a Liberal or Liberal-Lite government, I will go with the full bodied, rather stylish, Liberal. I mean what is the point of electing so called conservatives if all they do is bailout auto companies and suck up to vis-mins. Repealing s. 13 should be a complete no brainer – but apparently vast study is needed. Spare us all Steve – keep doing this and I will happily vote for the Count so as not to be embarrassed by the silliness you pretend is conservatism.

On the broader stage, the close of 2008 sees the Israelis taking a swipe at Hamas. I hope they keep going. Someone has to free the Gazans and the Palestinian people from their terrorist masters. The Israelis have made a start – but soon it will be time for the Palestinians to free themselves.

W. leaves office with 0 further attacks in America and Victory in Iraq. (And a deeply tanking US economy but, hey, the One will be able to solve that with a lift of an eyebrow.) I suspect history will be sweetly indifferent to W. There will be little praise but the vitriol of the last six years will fade as well. My own sense is that Bush was far too limited to ever get ahead of the day to day on the job. Great Presidents set agendas, mediocre ones respond to events. W. was a responder.

The world economy has been falling into abyss after abyss. Trillions of imaginary dollars lost. The key word here being imaginary. If two people make a bet on the fall of a raindrop and each puts up, say, their shoes, the bet is a real bet. If they put up cash it is very close to a real bet. IOUs, are not much of a bet. Someone else’s IOUs? Still less of a bet. A good deal of imaginary money is going to money heaven which is sort of like saying that your stuffed animal is dead. As it was never actually alive it is hardly a matter of profound sorrow.

Lots of formerly smart people are running about announcing that the sky is falling, fallen, underground – which may all be true. Or, more likely, it may not be true because for the world, the United States, wayward child that it is, is simply the perfect example of “too big to fail”. America is about to become a good deal smaller as will England, Germany, Italy and China. The Oil states have already shrunk. If a degree of order can be maintained in the face of the deleveraging economy there is every chance that all nations will come out ahead – bubbles bursted – but ahead in the sense that realism will have been restored.

2009, which I will write about tomorrow will likely be about reality. Nasty. Cheap. Hard. But with the flinty taste of real.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year!

In the last days of his administration W. gets to have fun. Kathy has the details and a video.

I have a new project called cash-stocks.com.

One of the articles is about why holding shares in Canadian dollars makes sense.

Canada is going into what looks like a nasty world wide recession in an enviable position. We have secure banks, an abundance of energy supplies, loads of water and a highly educated population. We also have a federal government which has run surpluses for a decade and provincial governments which are getting their fiscal houses in order.

Most importantly, Canada’s national debt stands at roughly 30% of GDP. cash-stocks.com

Read the rest…it has charts and graphs and is very boring.

The site is still being built but it should be a good stop for the investors – both of you – who stop by.

[We will return to normal programming in a moment – this is really a post for the Googlebot – Hi Bot!]

Note to Prince Harry: Divine right entails duty as well as privilege. Think of this as the oblige part of the job. Send a thank you note to your Gran thanking her kindly and informing her of her retirement, raise your standard at Oxford, close Parliament and do what is necessary to save your country. the flea

The state of England as outlined in the flea’s post and elsewhere really does appear dire. And, unfortunately, the Tory Party is no better than Labour when it comes to how to deal with the mess leftover from the mass immigration mania of the 60’s, 70, 80’s and 90’s.

I am interested that it is the younger son to whom the flea looks for deliverance.

David Beers of The Tyee is a pal of mine – who even publishes an occasional piece I write – but he is not on our side.

Ken Whyte backed up Mark and told the socks to stuff it. Go vote for him. (And remember jsource is a John “No Google for Me” Miller approved hangout.)

http://jsource.ca/english_new/detail.php?id=3144

Vote early and vote often!

(By the way, when I checked ten minutes ago, David was winning at 55% and Ken had 1.5%)

Update: Nick, Kathy and Mark have picked up the meme.

Ken is now at 18.5%.

(And lest people think I am trying to freep the poll, I found out about it via the Tyee weekly newsletter which is promoting David. And here is a suggestion, if you want to get a take on what’s happening on the Left Coast, read The Tyee. Sure it’s left and a bit Bush Deranged and carries the torch for Global Warming; but David Beers and his crew run one of the best online magazines in the world. So go check’em out.)

Update #2: Kate has weighed in and Ken is now at 50.5%

Update #3: 60/20 Ken Whyte. Hilarious objections as to freeping over at the voting comments. Along the lines of “No fair, you have more friends than we do….Waaaaa” Democracy is a bitch; the people who show up count.

Huh?

The Black Rod has the details.

They really are whackier in Winnipeg.

So long as Hamas controls Gaza the rockets will fly and, more importantly, no comprehensive peace can be worked out.

The Hamas takeover of Gaza – yes they were elected but not to throw out the Palestinian Authority – effectively blocked a two state deal. Hamas expressly demands the end of Israel. Not much to negotiate.

So, with a little disinformation, Israel was able to hit the gunmen of Hamas – aka “Security Forces” – very, very hard. The vast majority of the dead in the last two days have been those gunmen.

An Israeli intelligence briefing this morning argued that many Palestinians in Gaza were fed up with Hamas.

Israel seems to believe it can work on the divisions that already exist between Palestinians until it is possible to detach Hamas from all but its core support, and force it to accept its terms.

But Israel might not get it all its own way. Hamas is unlikely to surrender. It has an ideology of resistance and martyrdom. bbc

I suspect that the BBC is wrong about Hamas and surrender in that the more senior Hamas people will do a bunk if the Israelis show that they are really serious here.

Killing several hundred gunman is a start – the question the Israeli briefer raises is more interesting. If Hamas can be detached from its dominant position in Gaza, would the Gazans be willing to reach a deal with Israel?

Life in Gaza under Hamas has not been pleasant. At a certain point even the Palestinians have to realize that the rockets rarely kill Israelis and, when they do, it merely ensures that Gaza will be cutoff or attacked. They must, at some point, also realize that the Egyptians want nothing to do with Hamas or Gaza so long as Hamas is in charge.

Will the Gazans look for a better way? Will they take one if it is offered?

Resistance and martyrdom do not put food on the table. Thrilling as Palestinian “pride” may be, it has lead to a series of military humiliations which are unlikely to end. Real negotiations which recognize Israel’s right to exist and be free of terror attacks, could well begin the process of the Palestinians’ rehabilitation.

Unfortunately, for those negotiations to take place, the Gazans must have a leadership which is more interested in progress than martyrdom. And that means the elimination of Hamas.