Rohirrim
To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
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Saturday, November 12, 2005
Monday, November 07, 2005
Mr. Hewitt was going to talk free trade, so...
Hugh,
Mr. Bush (a great man whom I take a LOT of flak for supporting in this neck of the woods) is going to have a very difficult time selling the concept of free trade to anyone in the Americas so long as the United States continues to refuse to play by the rules of the the FTA & NAFTA. The Softwood Lumber Dispute has gone as far as it can go in the dispute resolution process, the Canadians have won at every level, and the United States' Federal Government still refuses to abide by the rulings. Five & a half BILLION dollars which belong to Canadian lumber producers - some of whom are American companies - is sitting in limbo, when it ought to be repaid immediately. This administration is handing a big stick to Hugo Chavez with which to beat the possibility of any new trade agreements with. It also makes it very difficult for Americaphiles like myself to get an ear here in Trudeaupia. Why would any cold-eyed, intelligent, trade-friendly, business-like president or prime minister sign a trade agreement with a party - the United States - who can't be trusted to follow through on the agreement?
As I tell my friends here, who shake their heads when they see the Stars 'n' Stripes hanging in my office (and which I have had hanging somewhere close to me almost non-stop since 9-11), Mr. Bush is a free-trader. Unfortunately, Senators & Congressmen - of all stripes - are protectionist to the core when it comes to the goring of their constituents' oxen - even when those oxen are sick and dying of the protectionist disease, and the North American lumber industry is a case study in how tariffs hurt everyone, especially those they are meant to protect. (And Mr. Bush is unwilling to tell the Commerce Department to enforce trade tribunals' rulings or lobby Congress hard to lay off the protectionism, because there are Senate seats up for grabs in lumber producing States - understandable, but unproductive in the long run). Under tariffs, the Canadian lumber producers have become lean and hyper-efficient, while the U.S. producers have become fat, unproductive, and lazy - to themselves and U.S. consumers alike - just ask Home Depot.
If free trade is to work, the players have to follow the rules. Play hard, play tough, play to win - but when the ref rules it a touchdown, line up for the kickoff - don't sit down in the middle of the field and refuse to let the game continue.
Mr. Bush (a great man whom I take a LOT of flak for supporting in this neck of the woods) is going to have a very difficult time selling the concept of free trade to anyone in the Americas so long as the United States continues to refuse to play by the rules of the the FTA & NAFTA. The Softwood Lumber Dispute has gone as far as it can go in the dispute resolution process, the Canadians have won at every level, and the United States' Federal Government still refuses to abide by the rulings. Five & a half BILLION dollars which belong to Canadian lumber producers - some of whom are American companies - is sitting in limbo, when it ought to be repaid immediately. This administration is handing a big stick to Hugo Chavez with which to beat the possibility of any new trade agreements with. It also makes it very difficult for Americaphiles like myself to get an ear here in Trudeaupia. Why would any cold-eyed, intelligent, trade-friendly, business-like president or prime minister sign a trade agreement with a party - the United States - who can't be trusted to follow through on the agreement?
As I tell my friends here, who shake their heads when they see the Stars 'n' Stripes hanging in my office (and which I have had hanging somewhere close to me almost non-stop since 9-11), Mr. Bush is a free-trader. Unfortunately, Senators & Congressmen - of all stripes - are protectionist to the core when it comes to the goring of their constituents' oxen - even when those oxen are sick and dying of the protectionist disease, and the North American lumber industry is a case study in how tariffs hurt everyone, especially those they are meant to protect. (And Mr. Bush is unwilling to tell the Commerce Department to enforce trade tribunals' rulings or lobby Congress hard to lay off the protectionism, because there are Senate seats up for grabs in lumber producing States - understandable, but unproductive in the long run). Under tariffs, the Canadian lumber producers have become lean and hyper-efficient, while the U.S. producers have become fat, unproductive, and lazy - to themselves and U.S. consumers alike - just ask Home Depot.
If free trade is to work, the players have to follow the rules. Play hard, play tough, play to win - but when the ref rules it a touchdown, line up for the kickoff - don't sit down in the middle of the field and refuse to let the game continue.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Another missive...
Wow! The CBC actually had a listenable conversation on about sports! So I wrote 'em: "Now THAT was interesting to listen to - the debate about "intuition v. statistics" in baseball management. So often the discussions on The Current are boring, biased, and ignoramuses-sharing-their-ignorance. The lesson? Do more sports! (Real sports, please, not boring Olympics crud). My complements to Kevin Sylvester, as well. It is great to have a guy do sports interviewing and discussion on CBC who appears to be genuinely interested in sports!"
Friday, October 14, 2005
Must... write... daily...!
It has been waaaaay too long... let's see... what to write about? The kids just finished watching their Lilo & Stitch movie... Tarzana Joe's poem of the week is on the Hewitt show... I've been sitting in front of the fire, just chatting in a friendly & cozy manner with "The (very) Fetching Mrs. B"... but the invasion of the munchkins has broken that spell, and it's time for a different kind of interaction, mainly a family conference on the future of the bunny, whom Natalie appears to be slightly allergic to... unfortunately this leads to some conflict between the sibs, and now I'm almost alone in the living room, with Amy curled up in the green wing chair, waiting to be carried off to bed and tucked in... funny, she'd been sent to her room for cutting her brother with a sharp comment... a busy weekend? The ducting for the overhead microwave/range hood needs to be installed, fortunately the Dad-in-law drew up plans before he departed for home, Toronto... I need to do some work... I'm doing Promiseland on Sunday, and we need to spend some time together.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
People are waking up all over
The Dutch began to wake up after Theo Van Gogh's murder by Mohammed Bouyeri. The British never really went to sleep, completely, I don't think, but they're certainly awake now. This article from the Telegraph contains this excellent quote: "Living fish swim against the stream. Only the dead go with the flow." Whoa. I think I've found a blogmotto. Now to translate back to latin...
Friday, July 22, 2005
Leadership
Monday, July 18, 2005
Joe Wilson follow-up
Powerline (here, here, here, and elsewhere), Barone, Steyn, Captain Ed (many places), & Tom Maguire sum it all up pretty well. It is funny to see how this "scandal" is crumbling like sand-cakes in the Dem's hands. The whole "the White House outed Valerie Plame for revenge" line never made much sense to me. That kind of behaviour would be so out of character for this White House - and this President - that it just didn't ring true. The pettiness of such an action didn't make any sense in the context of an administration that is focused on a very serious war. I can't imagine a smart political operator like Karl Rove taking such a stupid risk, either. Now that the true facts are emerging, the whole scenario makes a whole lot more sense. Ms. Plame has been working at Langley at a hardly-undercover desk job since 1997! Matt Cooper called Karl Rove, not the other way around, and according to Mr. Cooper, Mr. Rove's intention was clearly to ensure that Mr. Cooper didn't put too much stock in anything Joe Wilson had been saying recently, not to "out" an "undercover" "CIA operative". Yikes. Could the lefties have gotten this one any more wrong?
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Plame was "undercover"? Letter to "The Hill"
Sirs:
Your article as noted above says:
"Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, had been an undercover CIA agent working on issues involving weapons of mass destruction until columnist Bob Novak printed her name in a column in July 2003."
"A federal law makes it a crime to disclose the name of a CIA undercover agent." [My emphasis].
How "undercover" could she have been if it was common knowledge in DC that she worked for the CIA? As Captain Ed Morrissey [actually it was Dafydd on Captain'sQuarters - sorry!] has noted, as follows:
"So we are thrown back to the question I discussed in Dafydd: If It's Rove... Part Deux: is there any evidence at all that Karl Rove was aware that Plame's employment was classified information? The answer to that question is no, there is not. If there were, I trust that it would have been a banner headline, above the fold, on every newspaper in the country. Rather, as Andrea Mitchell and others have admitted (and as I mentioned before), Plame's employment was commonly known around the D.C. cocktail circuit, and that is almost certainly where Rove found out about it -- not from classified sources that he would have had no access to in the first place.
There is thus every reason to suppose not only that Rove did not believe that information to be classified, but further that he was under the impression that reporters already knew it... as indeed they may well have. After all, the focus of Rove's comment was not that she was in the CIA but rather that she, not Cheney or Tenet, was the one who suggested her husband, Joe Wilson, for the trip."
Secondly, the article alleges that "Bush had said that he would fire any administration official involved in leaking the name of an undercover agent." Captain Ed [umm... Dafydd again] takes that one apart as follows:
"I probably should not assume that everyone is on the same page of the dictionary. But one of the commenters to a previous post of mine, Dafydd: Bride of "If It's Rove"..., raised a definitional point that deserves response.
Attempting to prove that Bush indeed made some sort of "firing pledge," he notes a press conference on June 10, 2004 in Savannah, GA, in which the following exchange occurred:
Q: Given -- given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney's discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, a suggestion that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leaked the agent's name?
THE PRESIDENT: That's up to --
Q: And, and, do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts.
The first point that leaps out at me is that the last sentence indicates that Bush's "yes" was in fact answering the first question -- whether it would be difficult to find the source -- not the second about some "pledge" that in fact cannot seem to be located. The referrant of the word "that" in Bush's response cannot possibly be the pledge, unless Bush is suggesting that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald should be trying to discover whether any such "firing promise" was made.
The second point is one that also went unnoticed by the commenter: the rather wide divergence between the "pledge" that Bush is said to have made, to "fire anyone found to have" "leaked the agent's name," and what Sen. Reid claimed yesterday that Bush had pledged: "The White House promised that if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration, his administration."
Even if such a pledge were made, Reid's statement was still a wild-eyed exaggeration of it."
Your article as noted above says:
"Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, had been an undercover CIA agent working on issues involving weapons of mass destruction until columnist Bob Novak printed her name in a column in July 2003."
"A federal law makes it a crime to disclose the name of a CIA undercover agent." [My emphasis].
How "undercover" could she have been if it was common knowledge in DC that she worked for the CIA? As Captain Ed Morrissey [actually it was Dafydd on Captain'sQuarters - sorry!] has noted, as follows:
"So we are thrown back to the question I discussed in Dafydd: If It's Rove... Part Deux: is there any evidence at all that Karl Rove was aware that Plame's employment was classified information? The answer to that question is no, there is not. If there were, I trust that it would have been a banner headline, above the fold, on every newspaper in the country. Rather, as Andrea Mitchell and others have admitted (and as I mentioned before), Plame's employment was commonly known around the D.C. cocktail circuit, and that is almost certainly where Rove found out about it -- not from classified sources that he would have had no access to in the first place.
There is thus every reason to suppose not only that Rove did not believe that information to be classified, but further that he was under the impression that reporters already knew it... as indeed they may well have. After all, the focus of Rove's comment was not that she was in the CIA but rather that she, not Cheney or Tenet, was the one who suggested her husband, Joe Wilson, for the trip."
Secondly, the article alleges that "Bush had said that he would fire any administration official involved in leaking the name of an undercover agent." Captain Ed [umm... Dafydd again] takes that one apart as follows:
"I probably should not assume that everyone is on the same page of the dictionary. But one of the commenters to a previous post of mine, Dafydd: Bride of "If It's Rove"..., raised a definitional point that deserves response.
Attempting to prove that Bush indeed made some sort of "firing pledge," he notes a press conference on June 10, 2004 in Savannah, GA, in which the following exchange occurred:
Q: Given -- given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney's discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, a suggestion that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leaked the agent's name?
THE PRESIDENT: That's up to --
Q: And, and, do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts.
The first point that leaps out at me is that the last sentence indicates that Bush's "yes" was in fact answering the first question -- whether it would be difficult to find the source -- not the second about some "pledge" that in fact cannot seem to be located. The referrant of the word "that" in Bush's response cannot possibly be the pledge, unless Bush is suggesting that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald should be trying to discover whether any such "firing promise" was made.
The second point is one that also went unnoticed by the commenter: the rather wide divergence between the "pledge" that Bush is said to have made, to "fire anyone found to have" "leaked the agent's name," and what Sen. Reid claimed yesterday that Bush had pledged: "The White House promised that if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration, his administration."
Even if such a pledge were made, Reid's statement was still a wild-eyed exaggeration of it."
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Get Effective!
...listening to Mark Steyn on Hugh Hewitt; subject: the deaths of a number of Navy SEALS in Afghanistan. Mr. Steyn makes the point that we haven't heard a great deal about Afghanistan lately because these specialized troops and others like them have been so effective, and that troops like these are the future of warfare.
It has been clear for years (and I've been telling anyone who will listen to me - umm... not a lot of people, really, but the dogs, the computer screen, the radio) that, if the Canadian government was not going to spend the money to support a full-fledged fighting force, it should fund a specialized commando force, a quick-strike, smart, steely-eyed group of soldiers - a group of significant size - that can be dropped into any place in the world on a moment's notice. I believe the Canadian Armed Forces have made some movement in this direction, but the direction must be committed, decisive, and backed with substantial money. Secondly, the Forces need to invest in the equipment to deliver these troops to the theatre. Given that we have a pretty decent Air Force, an aircraft carrier - a real one - is actually a really good idea. Then the next time we are called upon to fight alongside our American brothers, we'll be "ready, aye, ready!"
Oh, and please pray for the families of the Special Forces members killed yesterday, and visit Soldiers' Angels and the United Warrior Survivor Foundation to help out.
It has been clear for years (and I've been telling anyone who will listen to me - umm... not a lot of people, really, but the dogs, the computer screen, the radio) that, if the Canadian government was not going to spend the money to support a full-fledged fighting force, it should fund a specialized commando force, a quick-strike, smart, steely-eyed group of soldiers - a group of significant size - that can be dropped into any place in the world on a moment's notice. I believe the Canadian Armed Forces have made some movement in this direction, but the direction must be committed, decisive, and backed with substantial money. Secondly, the Forces need to invest in the equipment to deliver these troops to the theatre. Given that we have a pretty decent Air Force, an aircraft carrier - a real one - is actually a really good idea. Then the next time we are called upon to fight alongside our American brothers, we'll be "ready, aye, ready!"
Oh, and please pray for the families of the Special Forces members killed yesterday, and visit Soldiers' Angels and the United Warrior Survivor Foundation to help out.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Amnesty Int'l dives into the swamp
I sure am proud of having a President and a Vice-President who will stand up to idiocy. (Amnesty Int'l calling Gitmo a "Gulag"). (Sorry, I think you have to register to read it, but it isn't a huge hassle).
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