Is Canada dead?

I have been fascinated over the past few weeks by the quantity and quality of debate over Canada's future... if it has a future.
Captain's Quarters, a Minnesota-based Web site, has earned international acclaim (and justifiably so), for its work on the Adscam scandal that is threatening to (A) topple the current Liberal Party [read: Liberal Organized Crime Family] government of Godfather Paul Martin; and (B) drive Quebec into another attempt at separation from the Canadian federation.
And there are certainly enough sites north of the border (Angry in the Great White North and Small Dead Animals are just two of many; watch for Crittermusings, an up-and-coming site) hosting the debate over what happens next to our northern neighbor.
It seems that there is a sizable common ground between the Quebecers who are furious as hell at the LOCF and the Westerners who share that fury, even though it would appear that there are too many barriers to real cooperation. The common goal: less Ottawa in their lives.
Yeah, I know that the Bloc Quebecois and the Conservative Party would get absolutely hammered by the LOCF and their whorish all-but-Communist allies in the New Democratic Party (NDP) if their leaders ever so much as discussed their commonalities. And, in many other respects, the BQ and the Conservatives diverge on their views of the government's role in people's lives.
But they do share the goal of giving the provinces more control of their own destinies, their own programs, etc. Ottawa, therefore, is THE ENEMY.
It's probably even not so much Ottawa and the LOCF running it now as it is the unelected -- and by definition unaccountable -- bureaucracy, the Mandarins, who are the real targets of their ire.
Reading the posts, I've come to the conclusion that Canada CAN be saved/revived. But it's going to take two things to happen to make that conclusion a reality.
(1) The Liberal Organized Crime Family must be defeated in the election, whenever it takes place. It must be defeated resoundingly.
(2) The Conservatives and the Bloc must work together on dismantling of the Mandarinate set up by the far-from-sainted Pierre Trudeau. They must collaborate on providing more powers to the provinces at the expense of that Mandarinate. As a corollary, they must reduce the Federal tax take. A plan to phase out the GST would be marvelous. There are two truths to bureaucracies: (a) The first goal is preservation and expansion of the bureaucratic power; and (b) whenever money is appropriated, the bureaucracy always gets its cut first. [That's sort of like a business infiltrated by the Mafia.] Whacking the bureaucracy means that more money will get to where it's supposed to go.
The provinces, just as the individual states can be here in the US of A, can become laboratories for democracy. Ideas can be tested. And, if an idea works in one province, it can become a model for a national reform or for reforms in the other provinces. The US welfare reform of about a decade ago has been a success; it is largely a compendium of the best ideas found at the state levels. If, say, Mr. Klein in Alberta thinks he can deliver more timely health care with public-private partnerships without breaking the bank, then, by Jove, let him try. If it works, you've got a model on which to develop a better plan.
The philosophical base for this observation comes from an oft-reviled source (at least, in Canada) -- the Roman Catholic Church.
The principle of "subsidiarity" has been an integral part of Church teachings for more than a century. It holds that no government agency should do a job if a private agency is capable of doing it. And it holds that the national government should not be involved if a local government or provincial government is capable of doing it. It makes sense -- the fewer bureaucratic hands through which money passes, the more money that can be applied to actually doing the job.
So, Canada, yes, you can. But you gotta get rid of the Fiberals to do it.
Free Canada!!!

A real nuclear option

There's been a lot of talk lately about the Democrats' brazen plot to deny President Bush the opportunity to appoint federal appeals court judges. Most of it, if you follow the Dinosaur Mainstream Media (journalisti approachato extincti), is talking about how 200 years of history and tradition in the Senate are being demolished by those demon Republicans.
Au contraire, mon frere. It is the Democrats who are trashing tradition by their infantile behavior.
There has been talk of a constitutional option (dubbed by the DMSM as the "nuclear option"), in which Republicans could force up-and-down votes through procedural maneuvering.
That, friends, just isn't necessary.
The Republicans have a golden opportunity to expose the obstructionists for what they really are. All it will take is a little bit of coordination with the White House and some smarts.
As the majority party, the Republicans can control the Senate's agenda. The GOP's option is this:
Get a number of bills into committee, especially the kinds of bills that will impact states where Democrat senators sit. Then, get them through committee and ready for floor discussion.
However... before those bills get to the floor, start bringing up the nominees, one at a time. Force the Dems into filibustering... call their bluff already. Then, as they start, get the word out that by filibustering, the Dems are (1) denying action on duly nominated judges; (2) preventing the Senate from acting on legislation that those "blue" states want to see passed. As the filibuster drags on, keep pounding the point home that the Democrats are obstructing the Senate's business.
While the Democrats are reduced to reading from the Washington, D.C., phone book, Republicans will be able to go to the public and point out the obstructionism. C-SPAN cameras will no doubt gather and record for posterity Josephine A. Smith's phone number on E Street (and then be sued for invasion of privacy!), further adding to the ludicrousness of the Demostand.
Then, once you get cloture and get in the vote, repeat the process.
Simple.
But if I could think of it, why hasn't the GOP?

Whale update 2

Remember that whale from Quebec that was in the Delaware River near Philadelphia a couple of weeks back?
The experts thought that the whale had gone out to sea.
Not.
The whale is no longer in the Delaware River... it's in the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.
For all of you who know next to nothing about the Surekill, it was once among the most polluted streams in the eastern U.S.A. It's a tributary of the Delaware, entirely within Pennsylvania.
Man, it just must NOT want to go back.

Connecting a few more dots

France's fingerprints are all over the Oil-For-Food scandal that has enveloped the United Crooked Nations, and even tainted our northern neighbors in Canada severely.
Why would the untrustworthy quiche-and-escargot swallowers do that?
Well, it's all about the oil... and maybe more. It's all about a revived French Empire, one that includes the Arab world.
The latest National Review (for my Canadian friends, this is the magazine founded by the intellectual godfather of modern U.S. conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr.) contains a review of a book called "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis" by Bat Ye'or. Reviewer David Pryce-Jones, an NR senior editor who specializes in international affairs, highly recommends it.
According to the review, France has had dreams of an empire encompassing the Arab world for about two centuries now. But, beginning in the mid-1970s, the book says that something called the Euro-Arab Dialogue began to form... with the general idea of establishing France as the Arab world's best friend in the West. That explains why the French have kissed up to the murderous Yasser Arafat, Saddam Insane, Moammar Khadaffy Duck, and are even now kissing up to the murderous mullahs of Iran on that nation's nuclear dreams.
The question, as reviewer Pryce-Jones notes, is will France be the controller of the Euro-Arab axis (a stunningly adept choice of phrase, recalling the axis powers of World War II), or will the Arabs. And there are signs that the French -- and their friends in the Canadian power structure -- may have triggered something that they cannot control, but will instead be controlled by.
Ms. Ye'or is uniquely qualified to reflect on the Arab world. A native of Egypt, she lost her citizenship in the Suez War era of the 1950s and now lives in Switzerland. And she knows what it's like to live as a minority in a Muslim country.
She describes the conditions under which religious minorities must operate... in effect, according to the book review, they must admit their total inferiority. This practice, called "dhimmi," leads to a phrase she coined to describe the mindset -- "dhimmitude." In fact, that is the name of her Web site -- www.dhimmitude.com .
The review also notes how the French have done nothing but make concessions to the Arabs, who are not stupid negotiators. The French, on the other hand, are reflecting the concessionary nature that did not contain, but only emboldened, the likes of Hitler and Stalin.
The key to the future of France's dangerous dance with the Arab world lies in two factors: France's ridiculously low native birth rate and the high birth rate of its immigrants from the Arab world. Could there come a time when Frenchmen will be a minority in their own country? The demographic charts suggest so.
Dhimmitude = dimwit-tude?
The positive out of all this is, unlike our Canadian neighbors, we were wise enough not to give an admirer of France the keys to the top office in the land.
... Unless, of course, the Canadians in Oil-For-Food have figured out a way to outfox their French counterparts.
Then, heaven help us all.

Corruption, thy name is...

It was said, back in the day, that the people of Chicago had a tremendous tolerance for corruption.

I’ll tell you what… Chicago was filled with fire-breathing reformers compared to an apparent majority of people in Canada.

The carefully-projected image of a hard-working honest country to our north is being blown apart, almost day by day, with revelations of more and more scandals with links to the Liberal Party, which now operates a minority government.

It seems the Liberals have developed the habit of looking at the federal treasury as their own rather lucrative piggybank.

There’s a national gun registry in Canada. It was only supposed to cost “a few” million. Try two billion dollars (Cdn). With a nation of only about 30 million people… that figures to about $67 for every man, woman, transgendered, and child in Maple Leaf land. Where did all that money go? Nobody seems to know.

We are, however, finding out where some of the money for the Sponsorship program went. That was a program designed to promote Canadian unity during the mid-90s heyday of Quebec separatism. Well, Canada’s auditor general, Sheila Fraser, figures that a lot of that money -- nine figures worth of money -- couldn’t be justified. And an inquiry now well under way is pointing out that some of that money wound up in the coffers of the Liberal Party.

That was happening during the Jean Chretien era in Ottawa. Chretien has since been “retired” by a putsch led by current Prime Minister Paul Martin, who built a reputation for fiscal responsibility while finance minister in the Chretien regime.

Last week, Martin admitted that he was, in effect, asleep at the wheel while the Liberals were looting the sponsorship program.

Martin, though, is looking less and less like a Mr. Clean. Look at some of the other stuff that has been going on…

* A former adviser to Chretien has raised some serious questions about contracts that Martin’s finance ministry gave to a company that… guess what… is tied tightly with Martin’s eventually-successful bid for Liberal leadership.

* People with close ties to Martin (and Chretien, too) are turning up as players in the United Nations’ Oil-For-Food scandal. In fact, the infamous Saddam Insane put $1 million of his Oil-For-Food profits into a company owned in part by… Paul Martin.

* The peculiar anti-freedom publication bans in Canada may be hiding another scandal involving key federal Liberal political operatives in British Columbia, as Andrew Coyne (www.andrewcoyne.com) reports, quoting the Globe and Mail.

But my friends north of the border tell me that it’s quite likely that even if a no-confidence vote topples the current Martin government, the Liberals have a better-than-even chance of retaining control of the government.

And why am I whistling “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” the Cher hit from the early 1970s, as I’m writing this?????