Happy New Year

To all our family members, friends and loyal readers. Unfortunately, the last category doesn't even include all of the former, ha ha. Greetings and welcome to readers who popped in courtesy of SteynOnline, Blazing Cat Fur, Lynch Mob, and Freedom Through Truth. Have a great 2010. Stay warm.

They know how to push your buttons.

My friendly municipal power company wants to give me a free thermostat! Isn't that awesome? All I have to do is let them control my air conditioner during the hottest summer afternoons...you know, the only time I'd want to use it.

The program is explained using the complex graph on the right. The guy represents the average Ottawa citizen. His pointy hair represents his personal responsibility for managing his resources, and the upper dotted line shows where Ottawa Hydro will nip a leeetle bit of his "hair" off for his own good - so little he'll hardly notice! The lower line represents the spot where the ad had to be folded to fit in my mailbox, creating a delightful element of surprise when it is unfurled.

What, you're still not lining up to let the power company adjust the temperature in your home? I guess you'll be getting one of these, then. (Click for a closer view.)

I am so NOT going to see this movie.

Andrew Bolt's review of Avatar pretty much sums up the respect and admiration I have for James Cameron. 

Here’s Cameron condemning consumerism by spending almost half a billion dollars on a mass-market movie for the Christmas season complete with tie-in burger deals from McDonald’s and Avatar toys from Mattel.



Here’s Cameron damning our love of technology by using the most advanced cinematographic technology to create his new green world.


In fact, here’s Cameron urging his audience to scorn material possessions and get close to nature, only to himself retire each night to the splendid comfort of his Malibu mansion.


[...]

In all of this, Avatar captures precisely - and to the point of satire - the creed of the Copenhagen faithful.


[...]


Take Prince Charles, who flew in his private RAF jet to Copenhagen to deliver a lecture on how our careless use of resources had pushed the planet “to the brink”.



And then had his pilot fly him home to his palace.

And could be there possibly be anything more mind-numbingly, skull-crushingly boring than a movie about greedy militaristic Americans exploiting tree-dwelling nature-loving Greenies? Like THAT's never been attempted before. Good grief. Didn't they make Fern Gully at least 20 years ago? Not even great computer animation can improve on that lame idea. Avatar certainly won't convert anyone to the Climate Change Church of Settled Science, but I guess that's not what Cameron ultimately wants. He's only interested in money and exploitation. Just like the villains in his film.

David Warren: saving the planet, one cathedral at a time.

Amen to that. This, in my opinion, is the best part, but do read the whole thing.

The creation of new "carbon credit" schemes to reduce "greenhouse gas emissions" was not going to alleviate any of these problems. It was only going to line the pockets of some of the world's most corrupt bureaucrats and businessmen. Their pockets were already well-lined, and if they can't profit from Copenhagen deals, they will find other ways to be paid for useless services, and continue living like Al Gore. We needn't pray for them too earnestly.

But we do need to think about ways to reduce our actual "environmental footprints," strange as this must sound coming from me. We do have major pollution problems, coming out of China and through all the "third world" as massive populations are raised out of abject poverty, wherever old-fashioned capitalism is permitted.

For the most part, even the most primitive of "third world" dictators saw through the Copenhaggling immediately, and joined in only as a way to board the latest gravy train of western guilt money. This is by now a venerable suckering operation, that began the morning after each backward country became nominally independent. It has kept their politicians rich and their peoples poor.


We can't do anything about that, unless we are prepared to invade and occupy these countries. And given our reluctance to continue even in Afghanistan and Iraq against terrorists, I see no prospect of restoring the old imperialist order.

But we can, in more than principle, move ahead of our imitators again, by setting a better example of how to live, one man and one woman at a time. We could -- I know this sounds a little idealistic, but bear with me -- try to export the best of our old Christian civilization, instead of the worst of our post-Christian one. For my reader may recall that civilization had nothing to do with conspicuous consumption, and put more of its money in cathedrals than into personal and corporate display.

To say this would be "good for the environment" is an understatement: there is so much joyful life we could recover, by simply discarding what is not genuinely useful, and getting on with the root human task of salvation, through the advancement of the good, the beautiful, and the true.

The Elves and the Shoe-taker: A Christmas Shopping Story

I hate shopping. I understand some people look upon it as a form of recreation, but I've never been able to see it in that light. The only problem is that Mr. Beazly hates shopping even more, and so each Christmas I give him the gift of not having to shop for his own clothing for another year. Naturally this means I sometimes have to buy him footwear.

In the old days, when he used to buy his own footwear, we once had an amazing experience at a certain department store I'll call "Zellers". Mr. Beazly foolishly took off his shoes in order to try on some new ones, and then made the second mistake of leaving his shoes unattended while he stepped into the next aisle to find another pair to try. When we came back, Mr. B.'s shoes were gone. There was no one else in the department except a clerk, but she certainly hadn't taken them! She did hint, however, that thieves were always stealing shoes and leaving their old ones behind in the box. "So if someone thought that was what happened," the clerk concluded, "Those shoes would be thrown away."

"Where would they be thrown to?" Mr. B. wanted to know, but the clerk had already said too much.
"They're gone," she said firmly, and that was all she knew.

Now, Mr. B. is a pretty smart guy. He knows that matter is not created or destroyed, and that passages to other dimensions are rarely found in the Zellers shoe department. So those shoes had to be somewhere. A little more insistence, and the clerk finally revealed that, in the unlikely event that someone totally unknown to her had picked up the shoes and thrown them away, they might be on the lower level of the store.  A little more cajoling, and she was even talked into phoning down to the lower level of the store to see if, by some absurd chance, the shoes were there. At this point it was her turn to make a fatal mistake. By carefully listening to her encoded conversation we deduced what had occurred. I will reproduce in full the cunning and enigmatic phraseology she used when speaking with her colleague, and, if necessary, decipher it for you:

"HI - DO YOU STILL HAVE THOSE SHOES I THREW AWAY?" 

Perhaps she should have used more of a stage whisper; she was certainly still playing dumb when she got off the phone and realized how close we'd been standing. The usually mild-mannered Mr. B. said, somewhat incredulously, "So it WAS you!"

"No, it wasn't," she answered stubbornly.  Hmmm, a store where your property is confiscated and then you are lied to about what has been done with it. Is Zellers now an arm of the Federal Circumlocution Office?

So, we got the shoes back. They had not been sucked into another dimension or converted into anti-matter. They had not even been tossed into an idling garbage truck which peeled rubber for the city dump the second it had a payload of one abandoned pair of shoes. They were sitting in a bin behind the cash register on the main floor of the store, and we never shopped for shoes at Zellers again. The moral of this story is: it actually had nothing to do with elves.

Copenhagen summed up

by James Delingpole:

I take it all back. Copenhagen was worth it, after all – if only for the sphincter-bursting rage its supposed failure has caused among our libtard watermelon chums. (That’s watermelon, as in: green on the outside, red on the inside).

The funniest thing is that eco-religionists kept insisting that Copenhagen was the LAST chance, the VERY LAST CHANCE for the world to DO SOMETHING about CLIMATE CHANGE!!!! And it's so true, until next time, that is, and the next time after that, and the next time after that. Climate Change conferences are the Never-ending Story.

A page from the Climate Change Church's playbook.

By Stephen W. Mosher of the Population Research Institute:

Trick No. 1: You Destroy Conflicting Data:
Trick No. 2: You Cherry Pick Your Data to Show a Recent Rise in Temperatures:
Trick No. 3: You “Adjust” Away Inconvenient Trends That Threaten to Derail Your Hypothesis:
Trick No. 4: You Cherry Pick the Model to “Prove” Global Warming is Real.
Trick No. 6: “The Science is Settled. The Science is Settled.”

"At the end of the day, it may turn out that the only thing “man-made” about Global Warming is the hysteria and hot air that has been generated by theory’s heated backers. That is certainly anthropogenic."

Read the whole thing on Lifesite News.

Come for the turducken, stay for the Steyn!

I have had the pleasure of listening to the first hour of The Mark Steyn Christmas Show. Songs, stories and great food - it's like having a little Christmas party poured right in your ear! I enjoyed it so much I'm going to write Al Gore RIGHT NOW and thank him for inventing the internet!

I shall no doubt have more high praise for the program after I have listened to hour two.

Selfless saviours of a new faith

My new article on Mercator Net.

The church of climate change is on a mission to convert the infidels. But does it believe in free will?

Lovely Clutter

This is not my house, but I wish it was.

I found the image at http://www.christmas-wallpapers.co.uk/

Christmas baking has begun.

Cappuccino balls (though technically, you don't bake these).

We also made butter tarts (with and without pecans), fudge, Oreo bark, almond bark, and coconut logs. Didn't take any pictures, of those, though. Maybe later.

Have Yourself a Nazi Little ...er... "Holiday"

Joanna Bogle on Mercator Net. This is priceless.

The Nazis put massive efforts into persuading Germans to leave Christ out of Christmas: they took pains to produce booklets and newspaper features explaining that Christ was a newcomer to the scene and that Germany’s ancient pagan religions had celebrated a midwinter festival based on the solstice. Christianity was presented as an artificial imposition, disruptive of a true sense of community and respect for conscience and individual rights. Young people were urged to take part in dawn ceremonies to mark the winter solstice –much lighting of fires, sounding of music, unfurling of banners and inauguration of feasting. Church events were marginalised, and tolerated only as a private matter, not to be associated with public life or supported in any way by holders of public office.



More than this, there was an emphasis on non-Christian decorations, Christmas tree trimmings, and general Christmas paraphernalia, with a deliberate attempt to sideline the traditional Christmas crib scenes. The Christian imagery of Christmas -- the child in the manger, Mary and Joseph, angels, shepherds, kings and star – were seen as belonging to something that modern-minded people should reject and abandon.

It gets better. Much better:

Children at German schools were taught a non-religious form of “grace before meals” that specifically celebrated the earth and banned any mention of God – today’s politically-correct campaigners, including those milling about the climate summit in Copenhagen, would warmly approve of it: “Earth that did this food bestow/Sun that made it riper grow/Dearest sun and dearest earth/We will not forget your worth”.

Every soul who objects to the whole "Happy Generic Holiday" vibe should photocopy this essay (if that's allowed by Mercator Net) and hand it out to every nazi store manager, media-person, and public official they encounter.

Merry, merry CHRISTmas.

Steyn: Global Warm-mongers left out in the cold at COP15.

It doesn't get much more ironic. Mark Steyn in NRO:

With U.N. security letting in only those cleared last week, hundreds of accredited delegates, journalists and NGO representatives were left to stand for hours in near-freezing temperatures before being let through. "It was crazy," AP's Seth Borenstein said. "You couldn't leave the line. You couldn't go to the bathroom, you couldn't eat. Then snowflakes started falling..."

One has to admire the heartless indifference of the climate-change jet-set in the VIP enclosure to a lifelong toady like Borenstein. The rest of us, though, might draw the conclusion that, even if you think it a good idea to transfer trillions of dollars from the functioning part of the world to a transnational bureaucracy in an attempt to recalibrate the very heavens, these chaps might not be the ones you'd want running it.

Hungry for Climate Change

Climate Justice Fast! Link courtesy SDA.
(click post title to view video)




Svenson discusses how her sacrifice has not been easy, but is worth it. Priceless quotations:

“I get colder than usual.”
Heh, that ought to be a good thing, what with...er, global warming and all.

"You can't just put forth some text from the sky"

Chaos at Copenhagen--gee, ya think??  This is just hilarious. Story at POLITICO. Link courtesy of SDA.

And yet, that's mostly what the climate change creed is: Divine Revelation; text from the sky--of the Chicken Little variety.

But no sooner had Rasmussen assumed the presidency than those tensions burst out in the open again, with China, India, Bolivia, South Africa and Sudan saying they would block attempts by the Danish delegation to produce a draft text favored by most Western countries.

Minutes after taking the gavel, Rasmussen angrily denounced developing countries for seeking to delay consideration of the text, accusing them of focusing on "procedure, procedure, procedure."

He was immediately rebuked by a representative of China, a member of the G-77 bloc, who said moving forward too quickly was tantamount to "obstructionism" and a bullying attempt by the West.


"I think the matter isn't ‘procedure, procedure, procedure.’... You can't just put forth some text from the sky," the representative said.

My story on the Interim website

About the U. of S. ratification of the campus prolife group. Even though there were some delays, I am gratified that U. of Saskatchewan is one of the few remaining universities that still recognizes freedom and the right for pro-life group to be present and active on campus.

Adam Lambert is boring.

And here's why.

Why, then, did Adam Lambert -- who is arguably both degenerate and perverse -- insist on shoving his sexual politics into the faces of TV viewers who tuned in to a music-awards show? Why are complaining viewers accused of "homophobia," while TV networks are accused of "discrimination" for editing out or digitally obscuring the man-on-man kiss?


There is a whiff of totalitarianism in the implied insistence that TV networks can be compelled to broadcast such stuff -- lest they be charged with violating someone's rights -- and to further insist that viewer complaints are inherently illegitimate.

Robert Stacy McCain explains the phoney "outrage." (American Spectator)

"Totalitarian Sentimentality"

Interesting article by Roger Scruton at The American Spectator that nicely sums up liberal v. conservative views of life and government, with insights into how Europeans and Americans think.

An excerpt:

As the state takes charge of our needs, and relieves people of the burdens that should rightly be theirs -- the burdens that come from charity and neighborliness -- serious feeling retreats. In place of it comes an aggressive sentimentality that seeks to dominate the public square. I call this sentimentality "totalitarian" since -- like totalitarian government -- it seeks out opposition and carefully extinguishes it, in all the places where opposition might form. Its goal is to "solve" our social problems, by imposing burdens on responsible citizens, and lifting burdens from the "victims," who have a "right" to state support. The result is to replace old social problems, which might have been relieved by private charity, with the new and intransigent problems fostered by the state: for example, mass illegitimacy, the decline of the indigenous birthrate, and the emergence of the gang culture among the fatherless youth. We have seen this everywhere in Europe, whose situation is made worse by the pressure of mass immigration, subsidized by the state. The citizens whose taxes pay for the flood of incoming "victims" cannot protest, since the sentimentalists have succeeded in passing "hate speech" laws and in inventing crimes like "Islamophobia" which place their actions beyond discussion. This is just one example of a legislative tendency that can be observed in every area of social life: family, school, sexual relations, social initiatives, even the military -- all are being deprived of their authority and brought under the control of the "soft power" that rules from above.

David Warren: Green is the new Red

Someone please nominate this man for chief advisor to the future President of the World. Oh, I forgot. By time One World Government is in force, Mr. Warren will be a political prisoner for disseminating Badspeech.

  "Environmentalism" has moreover ballooned since the fall of the Berlin Wall, as the Reds of this world, defeated in the ambition to impose socialism directly, have turned Green in pursuit of the same end: the creation of an international command economy, under their own "expert" direction.

[...]

Copenhagen takes the prize, for consummating the biggest fraud in history -- a vast scheme of financial appropriation, premised upon rogue science, from tainted research.

New career for Michael Coren

...as an Obama speech writer. Yes, I could actually hear the Big O's voice in my head as I read this.

"I say this and I say this loudly and clearly and without any fear of exaggeration -- we are all Obama now."

via the Toronto Sun.

You said a mouthful, Gordon.

From Yahoo news:

This is what worries me about the climate summit in Hopenchangen. I am one of those "men and women" of whom Mr. Brown speaks, and I don't particularly want my life "reshaped", unless I myself decide to reshape it. Especially worrisome is the "legally binging within six months" part.

"There are few moments in history when nations are summoned to common decisions that will reshape the lives of men and women potentially for generations to come," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. "This world deal in Copenhagen must be ambitious, global, comprehensive [sic] legally binding within six months."

Take a page from Pope Benedict's Caritas in Veritate.

But it should also be stressed that it is contrary to authentic development to view nature as something more important than the human person.

Bring back the Inquisition...and I mean that in a good way.

Notorious ex-bishop Rembert Weakland, writes Catholic blogger par excellence Diogenes, "had an effective method for dealing with embarrassing documentation. He shredded it." Evidence has recently surfaced that Weakland routinely shredded reports about sexual abuse by priests.

Diogenes continues:

Everyone has his favorite Rembert Weakland story. Many lovingly recall his remark that pro-life Catholics "need a hug and a laxative." My own heart is particularly warmed by the priestly solicitude he displayed in August of 1984. In July of that year, three lay teachers at an archdiocesan school wrote the archbishop that Salvatorian Fr. Dennis Pecore was inviting boys to his bedroom for purposes of sexual mischief. Weakland turned the tables on the informants and sternly wrote back: "any libelous material found in your letter will be carefully scrutinized by our lawyers." The teachers took the point, but they ignored the threat and continued to plead for an intervention. For their pains, all three were fired. In January 1987 Pecore was convicted of sexual assault on a juvenile (and later sentenced to 12 years in prison for another sex offense). After paying out $600,000 to Pecore's victims, Weakland wrote in his May 26, 1988 Herald of Hope column: "Sometimes not all adolescents are so 'innocent,' some can be sexually very active and often quite street wise." The pastoral touch.

Do read the whole post.

M4GW does it again

Minnesotans For Global Warming's Christmas video. Hilarious:


Link from SDA

OK, let me get this straight:

Regarding "climate change." If it's really happening (of which I am not at all convinced), the choice is between doing nothing and suffering ANY DAY NOW cataclysmic global catastrophe (ie. the earth perishing in fire and water) (TM) OR living in a "globally governed" micro-regulated totalitarian dictatorship where the government monitors your food intake, the temperature of your home, how much toilet paper you use,  how often and far you drive your car (or whether you are allowed to own one at all), if, when, and how often you exercise your powers of fecundity, and (perhaps most horrible of all), requires us to read Al Gore's poems.

Cataclysm is looking pretty good. Screw Copenhagen. Bring on global warming...and not just because it's freakin' minus 30 Celcius in Saskatchewan right now.

"Vapors rise as Fever settles on an acid sea..."

Is it Al Gore's poetry, or is it indigestion? You be the judge. You can't say the guy isn't versatile.

Michael Cook has a little fun with the poem at Mercator Net.

Who is the shepherd, do you think? Who is guiding us into the land of milk and honey? Who is ringing the bells in the City on the Hill? Is it Al the Prophet? What are the tools? His book? If we all buy one for Christmas, will Al become very rich?

Old Obama had a Planet

Greenpeace isn't exactly thinking this one through. (Now there's a surprise!) New Greenpeace ads that show how world leaders might look in 2020, apologizing for not stopping global catastrophe? Umm...here's the rub. If there is such a thing as catastrophic climate change in the works, then perhaps the Earth will have been destroyed by 2020, and there will be no Old Obama (or Old Angela Merkel et al) on whom to lay blame. Imminent, that is, ANY DAY NOW global destruction/cataclymsic catastrophe (TM) is, after all, what the climate change-gang have been fervently promising us for, oh,  at least the last 18-20 years, no?

All I can say is...yawn. (And that I hope to the good God above that Obama will not still be in any form of public office in 2020. But some hopes are even more vain than faith in global warming. By 2020 Obama might be the Dear Leader For Life of the United Arab Emirates of America.)

"Family Edge" on Mercator Net

It's a blog that I hope to contribute to when time and inspiration permit. The piece linked below is an edited version of an article I've already posted on this blog. Do check out the home page of Mercator Net too.
 http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/children_change_climate_for_the_better/

Two hours in heaven

I attended the Saskatoon Symphony's performance of Handel's Messiah this past weekend. It was sublime. Considering that the choir consisted mostly of music students and amateur church and community choirs, they did a fabulous job. Soloists were baritone Jordie Hughton, tenor Michael Harris, alto Heather Molloy and soprano Lisa Marie Baldwin.

Happy Feast Day to all you Nicks Out There!

                                                         Good St. Nicholas, pray for us!

The bishop who grinched Christmas

Anglican Bishop Nick Baines (the bane of St. Nick? really, I'm not making this up)...
Trashing people's beloved Christmas traditions? How terribly avante garde!  Take a number and get in line.

From Maclean's "Need to Know" files:

In his new book, Why Wish You a Merry Christmas, Baines cites the line in “Away in a Manger” that goes “no crying He makes,” and wonders, “How can any adult sing this without embarrassment?”

Gee, I dunno, your grace, it's not like adults in the church haven't (ever since the 70's) been singing utter, deplorable nonsense: Just the word "Kumbaya" makes me shiver. How about this title: "Break Not the Circle of Enabling Love."

And how about this chorus: 

Thank you, God, for giving us us!
Thank you, God, for giving us us!
Thank you, God, for giving us us!
Ri---ight where we are!

Or (every bit as appalling)

Life can be so lonely when nobody caaaaaaaaares
Life can be so empty when nobody shaaaaaaares…


Or the perfectly horrendous:

A rainbow makes a promise that life is here to stay…
Promise means there’s more to life than what we know today.
I can share tomorrow, if there’s one to pledge it to.
I’d like to be a rainbow and promise life to you.

(Yes, folks, these songs REALLY are in a Catholic hymnal or online music database near you.) But I digress...

The good Bishop Baines continues:

In the carol “Once in Royal David’s City,” a particular favourite in Britain, its line “mild, obedient, good as He” smacks of “Victorian behavior,”

Ah yes, that deplorable Victorian behaviour. Perhaps the bishop would prefer us to sing about post-modern behaviour: "wild, discontented, nihilistic and shagging everything in sight."

Oh, bring us some figgy pudding.  (and I don't feel one bit embarrassed about singing it.)

Mrs. Beazly adds...

Humbug!!

 I feel sorry for anyone who can listen to "Once in Royal David's City" and not hear a distant echo of the angels who summoned the shepherds to the manger. Certainly, some carols are written in simple language, but when I hear "Christian children all should be/mild, obedient, good as He" I confess that the first thing that pops into my head is not "Pfft. How Victorian! I'm far too sophisticated for this." but rather, "Am I mild, obedient, good as He?" (Newsflash: the answer is 'NO!'). Likewise, I can sing "no crying He makes" without any embarrassment because the God Who created the universe felt no embarrassment when he came among us as a helpless infant, "like us in all things but sin".  I am puzzled by the bishop's assertion that these carols "could [not] be further from the truth" when they so eloquently express it in words that even a child can understand.

Mrs. Pinkerton weighs in again...
Well, there you have it, Mrs. Beazly. "Ye must be like little children" to enter the kingdom of heaven. Isn't there something about bishops having a hard time getting through the eye of a rich man's needle or summat? Just joking. But Christ certainly spoke of revealing truths to "the little ones" that were hidden from the great and the wise. It is obvious that many in the church are FAR too wise for their own britches. But hey, it sells books, so "it's all good."

Children DO cause climate change, but not the kind you think.

I read with interest Brian Lilley’s November 21 contribution to Mercator Net. He discussed how the high priests of the climate-change creed are officially targeting children (and specifically third world children) as causes of climate change.

The latest report from the United Nations Population Fund was released on Wednesday at news conferences in Ottawa and other key venues: …more babies will undermine attempts to stop climate change.

This nonsense from the UN is not new: we have heard for some time now that the most climatologically (ergo morally) responsible thing you can do is have fewer children or none at all. I have read countless columns, articles, and comments on blogs and websites blasting large families for increasing their “carbon footprint” and jeopardizing the future of the planet. (I get so annoyed, in fact, that I have often wanted to have my gas-guzzling, 15-passenger van stencilled with a nickname such as “Bigfoot,” just to rub a little salt into self-inflicted, angst-ridden eco-fascist wounds).

"That doesn't work....Let's keep doing it."

Matthew Hanley at Mercator Net discusses why "harm reduction" is not working in the battle against AIDS.

At a deeper level, what all these risk reduction measures have in common is a deflating absence of hope. And hope for the future is what is needed most -- hope to be healed of past traumas; hope to live free of disease, discord and inner turmoil.

Fostering real hope is difficult, because it means first recognizing and then aspiring to a preferable alternate behaviour, a standard even. But this is precisely what our culture tends to deny, relativise, or deride. This is why risk reduction, harm reduction and safe sex are the only politically safe ways to engage the issue. To foster hope, the public health establishment needs to be courageous and break free from the bonds of culture and from the deadening despair of relativism.

The virtually exclusive focus on risk reduction measures amounts to the quiet institutionalisation of hopelessness.


Is this really the best we can do for our fellow human beings? Or is it time for a change?

Human Rights Complaint Filed by Lovers of Satire and Parody...

...because soon both of the above will cease to exist.