Vincent J. Curtis
14 Feb 20
The Saltpork & Rind editorialized today that the CPC leadership canadidates should all embrace Trudeau's carbon tax as their party's answer to Climate Change. The tenor of the CPC membership is skepticism towards Climate Change and hostility towards the carbon tax. The editorial was pig-ignorant in respect of its asserverated facts and disregard for other facts.
It is
touching that the worshippers of Baal, the god of environmentalism, should be
so concerned for the future of the Conservative Party of Canada. They
suggest that the Tories can make right with Baal if they just burnt some
incense upon the altar of the carbon tax.
But there
are aspects of the argument that seem lacking in probity - and seriousness.
The first
sign of a lack of seriousness is a failure to understand the oft repeated
statistic of 1.5 percent versus 98.5 percent. Canada represents the 1.5
figure, and it means that there is nothing Canada can do about to affect the
outcome determined by the 98.5. A moral argument is sometimes floated, to
the effect that Canada should be a moral example to the 98.5.
Canada
could fall off the face of a flat earth and the effect on CO2 emissions would
be negligible, because China and India are building coal-fired power plants so
rapidly. The Chinese communists and Hindu nationalists are lifting
hundreds of millions of people out of poverty through electrification. If
the Chinese and the Indians even paid attention to Canada’s ‘moral example,’
they would point to the superior morality of poverty relief.
Consequently,
gestures of Baal worship by Canada are entirely symbolic and can have no
practical effect on the world.
Now to
probity. Baal worshippers say that Canadians realize that the planet is
rapidly overheating. This is hard to realize because the planet
isn’t. It is the worshippers of Baal who are overheated, in their
rhetoric. The poetry-readers think they understand science better than
actual scientist do. But the world isn’t going to hit a point of no
return in 2030, or even 2100. The Book of IPCC states that the earth’s
temperature will rise by 1.5℃ by 2100 if current trends continue. In the
first place, no one would notice anything over the course of their normal lives
with a temperature rise of 1.5℃; and in the second, there is no reason to
believe that present trends will continue for the next eighty years. The
1930s, when CO2 was low, were hotter and drier than the present period.
Global temperatures fell from 1940 through to 1979, and climate gurus believed
and proclaimed that an Ice Age cometh. Then, the globe warmed until about
1998. When things leveled off, the Baal worshippers became frantic to
explain the pause in global warming. Hence the coining of the expression,
“climate change” in place of “global warming.”
It may well
be that poetry-readers and guys looking for their next research grant say that
frequent and intense heat waves, storms floods, etc. are getting worse.
Except that the inconvenient historical records going back to the 1920s say
otherwise, and the claims about disasters are qualified with expressions like
“low-confidence.”
It would be
useful if the Baal worshippers actually named the conservative economists who
think that fixating on carbon taxes are just the ticket. Ross McKitrick
of U of G is highly qualified in his acceptance of a carbon tax as the
cure-all. The carbon tax in B.C. is failing, as CO2 emissions continue to
rise, and so the benighted hippies are raising the tax from $35 to $40 a tonne
in the hope that harder and faster overcomes Einstein’s observation about doing
the same thing again and expecting different results.
All in all,
the Baal worshippers seem to be hedging their bets. Sir Justin of the
Carbon Tax is clearly wounded and failing, and he may fall at the next
election. Better to have the likely successors on board with Baal than
risk losing everything. However, that is what democracy is about – the
offering of clear and distinct choices for the people to decide. If the
only difference between clown cars is color, then there is no real choice at
all, which is why America has Trump.
One cannot
blame the Baal worshippers trying to gain converts from among the pagans, but
for the health of the body politic the Conservative party ought to remain
robustly pagan, or at least conscious enough to be able to understand the
significance of the figure ‘1.5.’
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Vincent J. Curtis
13 Feb 20
It was
recently reported that Harvard and Yale Universities were being investigated by
both the U.S Departments of Education and of Justice for having received some
$6 billion in donations from foreign countries and failing to disclose, as they
are required by law to do, this money. The foreign countries are China,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. In January, the Chair
of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Harvard was
arrested by the FBI on charges of spying for China.
Here, in
Canada, various Confucius Centers funded by the Chinese government have had to
be shut down on account of spying-like activities. Last year we
discovered that 15,000 Saudi nationals were students at Canadian
universities. Then there is the airliner shot down in Iran that was found
to have had on it an alarming number of Iranian Ph.D. students enrolled in
Canadian universities. It remains a mystery how these students were able
to visit Iran when Canada has had no diplomatic relations with that country in
over seven years. Visas would not be easy to arrange, nor stamps in
passports easily explained.
It appears
that hostile foreign powers are using their financial strength to infiltrate,
compromise, and exploit institutes of higher learning in the western world, in
order to obtain knowledge and skills they cannot develop on their own.
Iran wants a nuclear bomb, a missile to carry it, and increased cyber warfare
capability. China wants to be able to spy on the world in order to protect
the regime. The Arab countries want to suppress any hostility towards
Islam.
Lenin used
to say that a capitalist would sell you the rope that will be used to hang
him. I accuse our institutes of higher learning of having mercenary
interests, such that foreign students get preference to Canadian students -
because those institutes get triple the money for enrolling a foreign student
than they get for a Canadian student. These institutes unwittingly
advance the war-like technical capabilities of hostile foreign powers.
It is time
for the Canadian government to investigate the full extent of foreign
penetration into our institutes of higher learning, and to put a stop to the
transfer of our technical sophistication adaptable for war-like purposes to
foreign powers. It is also time for Canadian universities to understand
the Faustian bargain they are making. Universities came into existence
out of Western enlightenment, but Western enlightenment is not what many of
these foreign students are giving to their home countries. The mercenary
attitude of taking money and growing bigger for the sake of it has to
stop. At one time it made sense for Canadian universities to educate
foreign nationals from the third world, but it no longer does.
This isn’t
about racism – it’s about realising the nature of power politics in the modern
world.
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Vincent J. Curtis
11 Feb 20
The Saltpork & Rind reported a story that a technical college and local school boards were going to put their student's heads together to think of ways of reducing the schools' carbon footprint.
Mohawk
College and nine local school boards provided further proof that climate change
is more a cult than a fact.
The Climate
Change Collective (which represent 270,000 area students, whether they know it
or not!) has made a non-binding agreement with itself to take steps to reduce
its carbon footprint. Since the agreement is nonbinding, no one is
holding their breath. Given the state of the world, its effectiveness
will be indistinguishable from zero, but it will make a lot of people feel
better about themselves.
What kind
of “steps” you ask? The Collective’s components are going to explore ways
of minimizing their carbon “outputs.” Not actually implement anything,
just think about them - within the limits of their funding. The students
get dragged into it by forcing them to explore “all forms of collaborative
learning and research.” Research that “focuses on creating and sustaining
a low-carbon economy.” (Hint: a hunter-gatherer economy in the tropics is
low-carbon.)
Proving
that being on a school board is no indication of intelligence, Wayne Joudrie
boldly declared, “We need to become less reliant on greenhouse gases.”
But CO2 is the greenhouse gas at issue, and we are in no way reliant upon it
for anything, though our plants are. These educators want a “greener”
future by denying plants the food they need to become green!
I’m sure
Baal, the god of environmentalism, will be pleased.
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Vincent J. Curtis
11 Feb 20
MAID stands for Medical Assistance in Dying. Medically assissted suicide was made legal in Canada by order of the Supreme Court. Now, the Quebec Superior Court wants the grounds on which medical assistance to be expanded from death foreseeable to death not foreseeable.
The entire
saga of MAIDness is based upon rank incompetence in logical reasoning.
The
disastrous and incompetent busybody Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of
Canada Beverley McLachlin discovered in the Charter right to “life…. and the right not to be deprived
thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice” a
right to a medically assisted suicide. At her instance the Court
overturned its own decision on the same subject of 1993.
Perhaps by some twist of logic, one can discover the
morally hazardous right to suicide implicit in the right to life. That
means that suicide should not be a criminal offence. But where does the
medically assisted part come in? Medical assistance is not a kind
of principle of fundamental justice. McLachlin pulled the medically
assisted part from the nether regions of her robes – to make the morally
disastrous seem palatable. A right to medically assisted suicide exists
nowhere in the Charter or in Common Law, it is a judge-made law invented out of
whole cloth that has the force of a constitutional right.
Along comes the Quebec Superior Court that says that
limiting medically assisted suicide to the terminally ill is –
unconstitutional! We have an inferior court telling the Supreme Court
that the latter’s decision is unconstitutional. But based on what logical
premise? MAID is completely arbitrary. It was invented out of whole
cloth. There simply is no logical premise for the inferior court to say
McLachlin was wrong by being insufficiently broad. What was arbitrarily
in McLachlin’s head at the time of the ruling is the full and complete
statement of the constitution – since she was deciding what it was.
Canada’s judicial system is filled with rank
incompetence. The governments of Canada need to impeach large numbers of
activist judges on the grounds of incompetence. The trouble is there is
no group in Canada like the Federalist Society in America to help staff
judicial positions with people who understand that the role of judges isn’t
law-making from the bench.
Canada is ruled by moral and legal idiots.
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Vincent J. Curtis
10 Feb 20
Professor
Geoffrey Stevens, former managing editor of Canada’s National Fishwrap,
mysteriously still gets to vent his considerable spleen regularly, having once
been told to get lost from his typing gig.
Stevens
made a rare display of his powers of bombast, describing Republicans as “his
party of bootlickers” and to “his Republican lickspittles in Congress.”
Funny, I’ve never heard this teacher of political science use such language in
reference to the followers of Kim Jong-Un of North Korea, Xi of China, Castro
of Cuba, or Maduro of Venezuela. You have to wonder what it is about
Trump in triumph that drives Stevens around the bend?
Experts in
poly sci know about the “never-Trump” movement in the Republican Party, and
that David Frum is one of the last and most discredited members of that
near-extinct sect. Yet, Professor Stevens quotes Frum for two whole
paragraphs, either out of writer’s fatigue or because he can use Frum’s
vituperation without assuming responsibility for it, and for Frum’s creative
and frequent variations on the word ‘lie.’
Stevens
inadvertently exposed himself when he referred to Rush Limbaugh, a 32 year
veteran of talk radio and who is dying of lung cancer, as “reprehensible” and
“a pre-eminent race-baiter.” Anyone who has followed Rush for any length of
time knows that Rush is a “liberal-baiter” and a “progressive-baiter”, but not
a race baiter. Steven’s evidently swallowed Rush’s bait a long time ago
and is still thrashing about on the hook.
You have to
wonder about the quality of education the poor J-students at Moo U are getting
from the benighted Stevens.
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Vincent J. Curtis
7 Feb 20
The Saltpork & Rind published an editorial which lamented the acquittal of President Trump at the impeachment trial. The editorial expressed distress at 'Trump as the new normal' - as if that were a bad thing.
The
fainting couch in the editorial department must be getting worn out as the staff comes to the realization of: Four More Years!
Here’s a
fearless forecast: Trump will increase his Electoral College majority over 2016
by at least four states, even if the most centrist Democrat candidate gets
nominated. If socialist Bernie Sanders takes the nomination then the roof
will cave in and Trump’s win will approach landslide proportions. The
Republicans will take back the House because the people are tired of
impeachment, they were lied to by the Democrats in 2018, they want the illegal
immigration problem settled, and health care will need to be fixed after the
debacle of Obamacare. (You’ve got to pass it to find what’s in it!) None
of this can be accomplished so long as Nancy Pelosi behaves like a hate-filled
ex-wife in charge of the House.
Trump’s
great sin is that he is a pragmatist and has no use whatsoever for
progressivist ideology. Not only does Trump stomp all over progressivist
sensibilities, his success makes him dangerous to that cult-like religion.
Mitt Romney
and his failures are why America has Trump. With Trump, you always know
where he stands, and he never shrinks from defending himself and his supporters
from the vile and low attacks Democrats employ to bring down their
opponents. Trump is a bigger, tougher gutter fighter than all the
Democrats and media (though I repeat myself) put together. Trump
supporters stand by him because he stands by them.
Quite
unlike Barack Obama, Trump loves America and her constitution. The only
danger Trump presents is to Democrats who don’t want to work with him and are
only intent on his political destruction.
The phony,
passive-aggressive snowflake crowd who hate Trump are going to have a tough
time of it through 2024. He doesn’t care what they think, and his
supporters are tough enough to keep him in office.
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Vincent J. Curtis
22 Jan 20
On Wednesday, January 22, 2020, the Saltpork & Rind treated its readership to a double dose of intellectualism - so it thought. In fact, one of the Ph.D.'s is a product of the tragic destruction of the Humanities at schools of so-called "higher" learning. The doctorate is in some cultural "studies" course. The other is a out-and-out perpetrator of that destruction. He's carried his sorry act from one school to another until he completed his carrier, not in the hated home of his birth, but, sadly, in the Great White North. One guesses the Opinion Page Editor was dazzled by the brilliance of the credentials because the opinion pieces were dreary, predictable, tedious, and lunatic. Truly a case of baffling with bullsh*t, as my father used to say.
On
Wednesday, the Saltpork & Rind treated its readers to a double dose of faux
intellectualism. Latham Hunter, Ph.D., expatiated upon the ‘deeper social
significance of Harry and Megan.’ Yeah.
Henry A.
Giroux, Ph.D. in his usual bile filled way, regurgitated Democrat party talking
points to blame Trump for the constitutional crisis brought on by his
impeachment. Giroux concluded with the wish for impeachment “to be a call
to battle to put on trial the capitalist system” and for reforms that will
“usher in a radical and socialist democracy.”
When Giroux
condemns the capitalist system, one wonders if he includes the capitalism
practiced by Communist China and the People’s Liberation Army. I suspect
he doesn’t think that far ahead. It must be baffling to him for a
communist country to be practicing radical capitalism and suppressing
democracy,
The
constitutional crisis of Trump’s impeachment is brought on, not by Trump, but
by the little Robespierres of the Democrat Party: Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler,
and the imperious Nancy Pelosi. The articles of impeachment do not allege
an actual ‘high crime or misdemeanor.’ And all the sound and fury of
wrongdoing signify nothing impeachable. Yet, Trump was nevertheless impeached
- out of a need to condemn him before history as deplorable.
The
SP&R failed to see the difference between credentials and quality.
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