Canadian Cincinnatus

George Smitherman finds out the hard way that the rainbow coalition isn’t what its cracked up to be.

The trouble for liberals is that, all too often, they believe their own propaganda.

Take the case of failed Toronto mayoral candidate George Smitherman. George Smitherman is openly gay. Toronto is chock full of recent immigrants, many from the third world. Multicultural theory predicts that these immigrants should be natural allies of George Smitherman because they have a common enemy – the racist, sexist, homophobic white patriarchy. The trouble for George is that recent immigrants, overall, disapprove of homosexuality more than any other group in Canada. Especially the Tamil, Muslim, Sikh and Caribbean communities. 

This fact was illustrated in a late breaking campaign story when an ad aired on Tamil radio advising listeners to vote for Ford because “his wife is a woman”. There created a controversy about who created those ads but the fact remains, many immigrant communities openly sided with right-wing Rob Ford.

Of course, liberation theory is right to say that Rob Ford looks like a card-carrying member of the white ruling class to many immigrants. But unfortunately so does Smitherman. The only difference between the two is that Ford has a conventional family, which immigrant families can relate to, and Smitherman does not. What do they have in common with an effete, urban, white, gay man living in an expensive Downtown Toronto condo? And besides, many of them are small business owners as well as religious (at least the ones most likely to vote in municipal elections). 

So next time around George, put down that that textbook on deconstructionism and try and look at the world through the eyes of the people you want voting for you. You might be personally offended by what you see but, hey, we live in a democracy. Remember George that in a democracy the voter is always right so you might as well at least be aware of what the voters are thinking.

 

The professional disciplined campaign of a loudmouthed yahoo

I have got to hand it to the new mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford. He ran exactly the right type of campaign that a conservative should run.

The first thing he did right was to stay on message all the time. Campaign school 101 teaches us that the most important thing in an election campaign is to pick a good, clear message and then stick with it right to the end. In this, Ford was relentless. From opening day to his victory speech, he focussed like a laser beam on “stopping the gravy train” and “respecting the taxpayers”. The Toronto establishment threw everything at him but the kitchen sink and he stayed on message.

Which brings me to the second thing he did right: he never apologized for anything. And this is important because it is common mistake made by Red Tories. George Slitherman dredged up politically incorrect quotes, the media tried to make an issue of the fact that he used his influence as a councillor to support a non-profit football team. He shrugged it off. They accused him of slander because he called (now former) Councillor Sandra Bussin’s untendered 20-year contract to the Tuggs restaurant corrupt. When Tuggs threatened to sue Ford for $6 million, Ford said bring it on. Unlike former provincial conservative leader John Tory who twisted and back-pedalled his way through the faith-based funding controversy, Ford never wavered – controversy be damned.

Result: Rob Ford looks like an alpha male leader and John Tory looks like a bumbling wuss. Who do you think voters find more appealing?

Most of all, what Rob Ford’s decisive win on Monday night demonstrated was how a conservative can win deep in Liberal country without compromising an inch on principles. So when all the Red Tories out there persist in their bogus claim that you have to ‘moderate’ your principles to appeal to ‘moderate’ voters, you can say bollocks to that. Ford was his own man and he won. In stark contrast, provincial Red Tories Ernie Eves and John Tory ‘moderated’ like it was no tomorrow and both got shellacked in TO.

Red Tory David Crombie endorses Liberal George Smitherman for Mayor of Toronto

David Crombie was the ‘reform’ Mayor of Toronto from 1972 to 1978 and a Progressive Conservative MP from 1978 to 1988. He was also a cabinet minister under Mulroney in various ministries. In federal politics he was known as a Red Tory. On Friday he endorsed Liberal George Smitherman for Mayor of Toronto.

Never mind that Crombie is (or was) a conservative and George Smitherman still is a Liberal; never mind that as Ontario’s health minister, George Smitherman lost around $1 billion in the E-Health scandal; never mind that George Smitherman awarded $10 million in sole source contracts to the Courtyard Group; never mind that after 2 terms of David Miller as Mayor, Toronto is a fiscal train wreck and Rob Ford is the most fiscally conservative mayoral candidate. David Crombie endorsed Smitherman anyway.

Red Tories like to believe they are morally superior to principled conservatives (whether social conservatives or libertarians) because they are not as ‘extreme’ as the latter, invoking Aristotle’s Rule of the Golden Mean – the golden mean being the calmly reasoned approach straddling two opposing emotional extremes. However, what’s so extreme about balancing Toronto’s budget? and what’s not extreme about spending $1 billion in Ontario taxpayer’s money and getting nothing for it?

It is clear that George Smitherman is a liberal golden boy with the reverse Midas touch, in the tradition of David Miller and Alan Rock. The eHealth scandal suggests Smitherman would simply keep wasting the City of Toronto’s money on useless stuff-white-people-like vanity projects. 

No, the real reason people like David Crombie endorse people like George Smitherman and are frightened of people like Rob Ford is ruling class solidarity. David Crombie belongs to the respectable ruling class, George Smitherman belongs to the respectable ruling class, David Miller belongs to the respectable ruling class, Rob Ford most assuredly does not. Effectiveness, ‘moderation’ and ‘extremeness’ have nothing to do with it. Incidentally, it is precisely this same reason why the respectable ruling class (of both US parties) hates Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell.

Down with our respectable ruling class bumblers! Up with Rob Ford!

 

 

The Velvet Underground’s Maureen Tucker on why she’s a Tea Partier

For the average Joe Six-pack, the coolest band ever is probably the Beatles, or the Stones, or if your younger, maybe Gun’s ‘n Roses. But if you are a stuff-white-people-like urban hipster, preferences like that only mark you out as a member of the lumpenproletariat. For ‘smart’ people, there is a band that is way, waaay coooler: The Velvet Underground - a sixties band mentored by Andy Warhol that was obscure in its day but which has since gained an outsized influence. These days, idolizing the Velvet Underground is practically a prerequisite for being a downtown trendy. Which is why a recent TV news clip with the Velvet Underground’s drummer, Maureen Tucker, at a Tea Party event was greeted with waves of shock and horror by the in-crowd. Here she explains, in her own words, why she is a Tea Party supporter:

 What specifically about the current administration do you disagree with? ”I disagree with spending / borrowing / printing -- damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!  I disagree with the "we won" attitude, which is the cowardly way of saying fuck you! I disagree with an administration that for twenty months blames Bush. If the President and his minions are so damn smart, why didn't they know the severity of the situation? The president has actually said (and I saw it on video) that they didn't know!”

What would you like to see change? ”The current administration!”

 I love this kind of cultural incident: the sort where left-wing contradictions are brought to the fore. The lefties can’t not like Maureen Tucker because she is - what’s their word for it, oh yes - a cultural icon. But they also can’t bring themselves to believe that Tea Partiers are anything but extremist, racist, polyunsaturated homophobes.

 Keep twisting and turning on those contradictions, liberals! You are making my day.

 

 

The David Chen case shows why Mayor David Miller was powerless to stop crime in Toronto

When it comes to crime control, David Miller’s City Hall is like the hapless gang who can’t shoot straight. When Jamaican drugs gangs got caught up in a violent drug war a few years ago, David Miller targeted gun clubs, where peaceable citizens go to practice their law-abiding sport. While some of them may be guilty of paperwork crimes dreamed up by Alan Rock and Kim Campbell, they have absolutely nothing to do with the competitive activities of drug dealers. When Miller tried to explain away his perverted priorities by asserting that gangs get most of their guns by stealing them from law abiding gun owners, he not only further obfuscated the distinction between victims and criminals, he also contradicted an OPP study which concluded that most guns used in crime are imported from the US. End result: gun crime in Toronto unaffected during his tenure.

And now when a confrontation between a thief and a law-abiding merchant ensue, David Miller’s police force targets the merchant. Make no mistake about it, David Chen’s persecution is not accidental. It is a deliberate act of police policy. It is not an accident that police response time to shoplifting in Chinatown is measured in hours while their response time to law-abiding citizens defending themselves is measured in minutes. The police have their priorities; when they decide which call to go to first, they go down the priority list. Protecting criminals from ‘vigilantes’ (i.e. law abiding citizens) is high on that list. Theft from those same law abiding citizens is a bit lower down. Even then, the cops could have chosen to interpret Chen’s citizen arrest as having occurred while the crime was being committed instead of afterwards. Given that Chen arrested the man immediately after he had stolen something from him, this would have been a reasonable interpretation and there the matter would have rested. But they didn’t, thus precipitating the current controversy. This happened only because somebody higher up values the rights of criminals more than the rights of citizens. 

If Miller had concentrated on prosecuting criminals instead of persecuting citizens he might have gotten somewhere with Toronto’s crime rate but he didn’t. This is one reason why he is hated and most people will be glad that on Oct 26^th his unionized garbagemen will take him out with the rest of the trash.

 

More proof that feminism is just the ladies auxiliary of the left

Meg Whitman is a highly accomplished woman. She was the CEO of eBay. When she joined eBay in 1998 it had 30 employees and revenues of $4 million. When she departed in 2008 it had 15,000 employees and annual revenues of $8 billion. This year she is running for California governor against an old man who is a card-carrying member of the California patriarchy (he is a former governor and his father was governor of California before him). In short, she seems to have just the kind of ‘non-traditional’ career arch that feminists should love.

Last Thursday an aide of the white male patriarch Meg is running against was caught on tape calling Meg Whitman a “whore”. One would expect feminist groups to up in arms over the insult.

And if one did indeed expect that, one would be disappointed. In fact, the President of the California chapter of the National Organization of Women, Parry Bellasama, sides with the patriarchy. Parry said, “Meg Whitman could be described as ‘a political whore.’ Yes that’s an accurate statement.”

You see there is one little itsy bitsy, teensy weensy problem with Meg Whitman. She isn’t a doctrinaire leftist. This is the same reason why organized feminists also hurl vitriol and spit venom at other accomplished powerful women leading ‘non-traditional’ lives, such as Margaret Thatcher, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Michelle Bachman and Michelle Malkin (who is also a visible minority).

If feminism was merely a movement dedicated to ‘empowering’ women in non-traditional roles - and nothing else – then they would be supporting all of these people. But they are not. Their consistent opposition - often hysterical – of conservative women betrays their true calling. At their core, feminism has as little to do with empowering women, as environmentalism has to do with conserving nature. They are just front groups for socialism that are used to deceive people who otherwise would not find socialistic policies appealing.

 

Self-defence and the justice system in the age of David Chen

Us conservatives love law and order. As a result we naturally side with cops, prosecutors and hard-boiled judges. Normally I am no exception. On the flip side, we are also predisposed to personal responsibility and are inherently suspicious of big government as it accumulates more power. The trial surrounding David Chen citizen’s arrest case detailed yesterday’s post is what Barack Obama might call a ‘teachable moment’ for us. What it teaches conservatives is that the justice system is not immune to the flaws inherent in other Big Government departments so that we should never uncritically embrace the expansion of police power.

The truth of the matter is that the justice system behaves like every other government entity when their monopoly is being threatened. Normally cops and citizens are united in their hatred of bad guys, but the interests of the two groups diverge when it comes to self-defence. The average law abiding person loves it when his fellow citizen gets the better of a hooligan. But not the police, as evidenced by the ubiquitous police department spokesman who warns us on TV that people should not resist criminals: “It’s dangerous,” he intones, as if obeying psychopaths is safe. The existence of plenty of sociological studies, which conclude just the opposite (that resistance is at least marginally safer than obedience, and that the armed citizen is a better deterrent than even capital punishment), is neither here nor there to him. Public safety is not the main motivating factor in the police department’s disapproval. Rather, cops don’t like spontaneous citizen action because it infringes on their monopoly on force. They look at citizen arrests the way unionized city garbagemen view private contractors who haul away the trash for less money.

The David Chen incident also teaches us is that ordinary citizens can sometimes be far more effective than the government. David Chen caught the thief as soon as he attempted it. The Metro cops, who are paid 70+K a year to serve and protect him, were stumped for years. As Glenn Reynolds likes to point out, the self-organized citizenry is a pack not a herd. 

 

The David Chen trial and the enemies of the law abiding citizen

Reading the details of small businessman David Chen’s ongoing persecution by the Canadian justice system makes my blood boil, so much so that I have difficulty following it. But nevertheless I digested enough to compose the following synopsis:

David Chen is a grocer. He is the type of hard working entrepreneur that immigration advocates point to when they say Canada needs more immigrants. Mr. Chen runs a produce mart in Toronto’s Chinatown that was unfortunately plagued by shoplifting, a problem that the Toronto Police were lackadaisical (at best) in solving. When the thief who robbed him the most attempted to steal from his store for the second time in one day, Chen took matters into his own hands. He and his employees ran the thief down, apprehended him, tied him up and called the cops. The cops surprised Chen by showing up in 4 minutes instead of the customary 4 hours. They arrested Chen and his staff at gunpoint, charging him with assault, forcible confinement, kidnapping and carrying concealed weapons. The concealed weapons were box cutters. Eventually the latter charges were dropped when the even the dimwitted cops realized that grocers use box cutter mainly to cut boxes. Duhh.

Important background information: the Criminal Code of Canada states that a civilian’s powers of arrest are the same as that of a police officer while a crime is being committed - the principal difference being that a police officer can arrest criminals after the fact and a civilian can’t. In other words, I can arrest a bank robber if I happen to walk into a bank while it is being robbed but I can’t hunt the robber down to Montreal to bring him to justice. Fair enough. Unluckily for David Chen, the police and the prosecutors chose not to interpret Chen’s arrest as occurring while the actual crime was being committed – as most reasonable people would - but instead felt it occurred afterwards because of the small time lag between the time of the attempted robbery and when the actual arrest occurred. For this reason, they proceeded to interpret Chen’s actions as if none of the events that motivated Chen’s actions had ever occurred. The crowning outrage was that the Crown plea-bargained the career criminal’s sentence down in exchange for his cooperation in Chen’s kidnapping trial.

The only conclusion that can be reached from this sordid affair is that all of the police officers and crown attorneys involved in this case acted in a manner indistinguishable from dedicated enemies of law-abiding people. If any justice at all is to come in this case, they should all be fired, disbarred and thrown in jail – to serve beside the district attorney in the Duke rape hoax.

 

Christine O’Donnell the teenage witch

Christine O’Donnell, the Republican senatorial candidate for Delaware has replaced Sarah Palin as the woman the left most likes to hate.

The trouble for the Democrats though is that it can’t get its message straight. Shortly after beating RINO squish Mike Castle in the GOP primary, two negative stories appeared about O’Donnell’s extremism: an anti-masturbation video done when she was 21 that appeared on MTV in 1996; and the fact that she apparently dabbled in witchcraft as a teenager.

Though I don’t think the current consensus that witchcraft is an acceptable alternate religion is a positive societal development, the fact remains that, for most adolescents who dabble in it, it is nothing more than a harmless childhood foible.

The problem for this anti-O’Donnell message is that the message that she was a teenage witch undercuts their other line of attack, that she is a Christian fanatic. So which is it, is she a witch or a Christian fanatic? She can’t be both.

 

Mark Holland must be punished

I rarely make partisan appeals on this blog, guarding my independence so that, when necessary, I can criticise Conservatives as well as Liberals and the NDP, but I have to make an exception this time. 

Bill C-391, the private members bill to kill the gun registry came to an end a week ago Monday because of a motion sponsored by the smart-alecky Liberal, Mark Holland. If it weren’t for him, it is entirely possible that the gun registry would be history today. For this reason, Holland has to feel the wrath of gun owners. There must be a price to be paid for gun-grabbing. It is not enough to win, somebody has to lose. 

The Conservative’s star candidate in Holland’s riding of Pickering – Ajax is Christopher Alexander. He is the former Ambassador to Afghanistan and would be an excellent choice to represent Pickering – Ajax in the future. He is certainly a better, more accomplished man than career politician Mark Holland. Chris Alexander’s web site is here.

You know what to do.