The Editorial Times.ca: August 2009



The Editorial Times.ca

"The Thorn of Dissent is the Flower of Democracy"©

or, if you'd rather...
"Its my blog and I'll pry if I want to, pry if I want to"
with apologies to Leslie Gore




"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” CS Lewis.


©Chris Muir

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Gun Control Canada signs off...

The quixotically named "Gun Control Canada", so named in order to compete in search engines with Wendy Cukier's website, has hung up its spurs. Cross-posted from GCC:

As of this weekend, Gun Control Canada, the dot-org, dot-com and dot-ca domains, will be allowed to expire. The core programming, the Blogger link guncontrol-canada.blogspot.com will continue for a time, as will the links (for as long as they remain valid) and the articles on the blog pages. Most of the articles referenced in the links were archived off for safe-keeping in the event the link went bad.

I thought long and hard as to whether I would keep funding the domains or not. When they came up for renewal this month, I decided it was time to let them go, "to all things, there is a season". Traffic levels have never been high enough to support the efforts, even amongst those who profess to defend the right to bear arms in Canada, and while the fight continues in earnest, my time is done. I am simply getting too old to continue the fight on the front lines. I will do what I can when I am able, but its time for me to focus my remaining good years on the many other things that I enjoy, and to maintaining some quality of life as I enter old age.

The Conservatives have been a huge disappointment on the gun rights front. While their lack of majority has prevented some of the legislative changes, they also have not taken advantage of the orders-in-council approaches they might have. Moving the registry to the RCMP was a huge strategic blunder on their part. No police organization in Canada supports an armed citizenry. While individual rank and file members get why the right to bear arms is a fundamental necessity to a free people, its simply counter to the objectives of para-military forces to support such freedoms. The legislative changes they introduced only hands the registry off to the provinces.

The Conservatives have also squandered an opportunity to fix a horribly broken and patronized civil service. Thirteen years of Liberal trough-dipping and grossly incompetent mismanagement have left departmental ruin in its wake. My own department, in which I am a LEO, has now been given the last rites - it is no longer capable of even the simplest of effective enforcement programs.

Forced attrition through programmed staff budget cuts, retirements (and, indeed, early retirements of those no longer interested in carrying on in such an environment), lack of new hires, suspension of meaningful training programs, "corporatization" initiatives, and senior management postings filled with people who don't understand what the work is, or how its done, have destroyed what was once a proud, attuned, professional cadre of civil servants looking out for Canada's interests. Repairs will now take two parliamentary cycles and a massive expenditure. Billions of tax dollars have been squandered, and will have to be spent, to fix what could have been done in the first year of the new Conservative mandate.

The last British WWI veteran was laid to rest this week. My crystal ball, cloudy as it is, predicts that freedom as we understood it, and fought for it, was buried alongside him. The outrageous thuggery of Obama and his administration may be a bellweather of the turmoil to come, if the Americans don't re-align things in 2010. He is well on his way to becoming the most ignoble of US presidents. Americans may need their right to bear arms before his administration finishes.

I will have control of the domains for about 20 days longer for anyone on the side of right wishes to acquire them. Email me.

And to those young enough to carry the torch, hold it high, for the sake of the children (an inside joke, perhaps, but never more appropriate). See you on the range, or in the camp. ... Skip

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Obama, Spock? Palin, Kirk? Kobayashi Maru!

Leadership: If Barack Obama is Spock, Sarah Palin is Kirk

by Leigh Scott

When Sarah Palin resigned a few weeks ago every blogger with a keyboard chimed in on it. I didn’t want to be late in the game with a Sarah Palin blog, so I put this blog in the old hard drive of justice, right next to my Buffy the Vampire fan fiction and an un-produced screenplay about the Braves leaving Milwaukee.

Then I saw one of my childhood idols, Bill Shatner goofing on Sarah Palin. At last, my geeked out political observation had new relevance! Apple “C.” Apple “V.” Send to Big Hollywood.



We were treated to some really lame comparisons between Obama and Mr. Spock a few months back. Let’s ignore the obvious fact; that Mr. Spock is and always was the #2 guy. The Captain’s chair rightfully belonged to Kirk. Spock lacks the passion and empathy to be a leader. Trying to make a flattering comparison between the leader of the free world and a legendary sidekick seems like a non-starter.

No, let’s focus on the fact that Obama does not follow the Vulcan path. The path of logic. His demeanor may be calm, cool, and unemotional, but his thought process is driven by raw emotion. He represents decades of grievance education, America bashing, and misplaced empathy. There is nothing logical about the man. Exhibit A is the “stimulus plan.”

So with the whole Obama is Spock meme D.O.A. I went searching for another apt Sci-Fi/Politics metaphor. Let’s see, George W. Bush is Luke Skywalker? Cheney is Paul Atredies? Donald Rumsfeld is Optimus Prime? Joe Biden is a Tribble?

Then, as Sarah Palin announced her resignation, it hit me. Sarah Palin is Captain Kirk. Why? Because she just passed the Kobayashi Maru.

For those of you who don’t know what the Kobayashi Maru is, let me explain. In the Star Trek universe it is an unwinnable test. It’s creator, Mr. Spock, designed it to test how Starfleet captains deal with failure and death. There is no right way to successfully navigate through it.

But cadet James Tiberius Kirk found a way to beat it. He rigged the computer simulation to allow him to complete the mission without killing his crew. Starfleet accused him of cheating, but Kirk’s response was simple, eloquent, and very revealing. “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario. I don’t like to lose.” Kirk didn’t change the strategy. He changed the rules.

Since Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene she has been savaged. The media, the Left, the Right, the Middle, you name it. People either love her or hate her. In the media it seems people love to hate her. The “elites” on both sides of the aisle hate the populism she represents. Traditional feminists hate the fact that she has both a family and a career; something that their paradigm teaches is impossible. Her future rivals hate her because she isn’t a typical politician. Her authenticity makes Mike Huckabee look about as real as the Guinea Pigs in “G-Force”.

Palin was faced with her own Kobayashi Maru. How could she effectively govern the state of Alaska while facing ridiculous ethics charges and the scrutiny of the national media? How could she increase her exposure in the lower 48 while staying true to the people in Alaska who elected her? Perhaps if the wingnuts in Alaska didn’t stalk her with silly lawsuits she would have simply put her larger ambitions on the back burner and continued to do her job as governor. But it wasn’t meant to be. She was perfectly set up to fail. Her popularity in Alaska would decline. The national media would point to it as an indicator of her overall effectiveness. The Klingons…I mean the left, would have won.

But Palin defied them. She changed not her strategy, but the very rules. She resigned her position, turning the state over to her loyal Lieutenant Governor to continue the plans and policies she put into motion. Like any good story, it was an unexpected twist, yet when viewed in retrospect it was the only way it could play out.

The notion that a candidate with scant command of policy, who either lacks experience or didn’t complete the duties of their elected position, is doomed to failure doesn’t take into account a little thing I call history. In 2008 this nation elected a President who spent the majority of his Senate term campaigning for his next gig. I only wish he had the class, respect, and decency for and towards his constituents to resign. And while Palin may lack the depth of foreign policy knowledge, that say a Joe Biden has (yes, I just did that cough/laugh thing), she has a damned good grasp of energy policy. According to a lot of folks that energy thing is a big deal. Sarah Palin understands that people should have more freedoms. Government should be small. Taxes should be low. I understand that too. Neither of us has a Doctorate in Economics. I think that’s a good thing.

For all his talk of being different, representing “hope,” and bringing “change” Obama has turned out to be quite the bore. He is the consummate insider, a recycler of old ideas and failed policies. People wanted to beam up to the starship and explore strange new worlds. We wanted to boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before. Obama is in the wrong franchise. He and crazy Doc Brown, I mean Joe Biden, gassed up the DeLorean and took us back in time. To 1976.

Palin passed the Kobayashi Maru. She is qualified to command the ship. She has all the qualities we want in a captain; valor, principals, vision and most of all, the ability to change the rules.

Will Palin be a candidate in 2012? Will she run for Senate? Will she be a third party spoiler? Who knows? Maybe she should just enjoy the spoils that are the dividends of her hard work. People get paid millions of bucks because their coffee at McDonald’s is too hot, I think she’s entitled to a book deal and a TV show after having her entire family slandered by a bunch of elitist vampires. But something tells me she won’t just become the “White Oprah.” People like Kirk and Palin don’t retreat. They have an innate craving for responsibility and adventure as well as a desire to help their fellow man.

Go ahead. Write her off. Make a joke out of her. Be my guest. But that would be about as smart as marooning Captain Kirk on Seti Alpha V.

We all know how well that worked out for Khan don’t we?