Hallowe'en greetings (ignore if you're Catholic)

Mr. and Mrs. Whiteman extend Hallowe'en greetings to all Walt's readers. Except maybe for traditional Catholics, as explained below. To the rest of you, then...

Note to Catholic readers: You realize of course that Hallowe'en is a celebration of paganism and the occult. It promotes diabolical behaviour and strictly observant Catholics shouldn't observe it. That (and only that) is the reason why Walt's log cabin is and will remain dark and undecorated. Don't come to me looking for teeth-rotting candies, razorblade-concealing apples or (especially) a donation for UNICEF.

I'm serious about the first part, though. So is Most Rev. Andrzej Dziega, Archbishop of Szczecin, Poland, who wrote in a letter to the faithful that under the appearance of innocent fun, Hallowe'en can be "destroying the spiritual life." Hallowe'en "tricks" hide "diabolical attitudes", the prelate said, by encouraging readiness to harm the others.

And the Archbishop of Warsaw, Most Rev. Kazimierz Nycz, said in a website message that Hallowe'en goes against the teaching of the Church by promoting the "occult and magic".

So, good Catholics, please keep in mind that "Hallowe'en" is derived from "All Hallows' Eve", the eve of All Saints' Day, which is a national holiday in predominantly Catholic Poland, and still a holy day of obligation throughout the Universal Church. See you in church.

Hockey lovers should throw pucks at Bettman until he goes to hell or the NBA

Yes, there's no paucity of subject material today, what with Mitt and Al and Sandy all vying for our attention. But let us speak of something truly important: the ongoing, contemptible and suicidal lockout of the National Hockey League players by the rapacious, contemptible and incredibly stupid NHL owners and their front man, Gary "Wanna" Bettman.

Readers of WWW know that Walt is a hockey fan. Perhaps the proper tense is "was", not "is". And not because of the absence of hockey from North America's arenas and TV channels. Rather, I am (present tense) a fan of hockey as it was (past tense) in its glory days. I refer to the era from, say, 1945 through 1967, although a Montréal Canadiens fan (which I'm) would doubtless extend the period of glory to the end of the `78-`79 season.

Since then, the fastest, most manly, most exciting team sport in the world -- a sport of speed, grace and power -- has been "modernized" and "improved" to suit the tastes of the denizens of regions more suitable for beach volleyball -- the good ole boys who like NASCAR, arena football and roller derby. Hockey has been transmogrified into a cartoon-like spectacle that combines the sporting qualities of "professional" wrestling with the excitement of test cricket.

If you're a fan of real hockey, think of what you've had to endure to watch today's shoddy facsimile of the game you love:

• outlandishly exorbitant ticket prices
• months and months of virtually meaningless regular-season games
• the destruction of intimate, tradition-rich rinks
• their replacement with mall-like vanilla structures whose main function is to generate luxury-box revenue and put your seats a mile up in the rafters
• the proliferation of "sales points" and "food courts" to fleece you by peddling overpriced junk
• the high-decibel aural assault you must suffer with every visit to the rink
• the diminishment of the quality of every team via runaway expansion
• the cavalier tossing-off of the traditions you love via the "bringing up to date" of uniforms and the annual procession of pointless rule changes
• the creation of a legion of new teams in cities you don't care about
• the disappearance of teams from the cities you do care about
• the liquidation of age-old rivalries to accommodate the gigantism of a league grown too unmanageably huge
• hockey in June, and
• the dumbing down of the game as a whole to teach it to yet another new generation of potential fans in distant hot-weather climes.

Ah yes, the rantings of a Canadian pissed off that Americans control Canada's national winter sport. Walt hears you saying that. But those words were written by Americans, Jeff Z. Klein and Karl-Eric Reif, sometime residents of the great hockey town of Buffalo, who have written about the game they love for the New York Times, the Village Voice and the Hockey News. 

And get this! Messrs Klein and Reif wrote The Death of Hockey, from which that excerpt is taken, in 1998 -- 14 years before Bettman's latest lockout!

I call it "Bettman's" lockout because he ordered and orchestrated it, in a third attempt to get the NHL players to give up some of the share of revenue they wrung out of the owners after Bettman's previous attempts to break the National Hockey League Players Association (the players' union).

Bettman is not a hockey man, never was. He is a New York Jew labour lawyer, whose previous experience was in the management [obviously not playing! Ed.] of the NBA.  Of Bettman it was said, "Someone handed him a hockey puck once, and he spent two hours trying to figure out how to open it."

Klein and Reif quote an op-ed piece by Stu Hackel, a former NHL director of communications, written during the 1998 Stanley Cup final:

When the present regime [Bettman and his minions] came to power in 1993, they moved to "fix" the game and the business with an army of executives from other sports and fields. Their unspoken theme was that hockey people had made a mess of things and they were going to show how it was done.

Their modernization has included a damaging lockout [the first of three], an on-ice officials' strike, four franchise relocations, two realignments, a flattening of licensing growth, a merry-go-round of rule changes, an ill-conceived venture into the Winter Olympics [Klein and Reif -- and Walt -- disagree on this point], unmanageably soaring salaries, escalating ticket prices, too many empty seats, the specter of four more diluting expansion franchises, lots of red ink, and now a drop in television viewership on both sides of the border.

One trusts that these are all temporary conditions or problems of growth, but if this were politics, an incumbent with that record might have trouble getting reelected.

That was in 1998. But hockey is evidently not politics -- not by a long shot -- and things just got worse and worse and worse. And now the National Hockey League is out of business. Is this a temporary condition? The removal of Mr. Bettman -- not just from the negotiating table but from any position whatsoever in organized hockey anywhere in the world -- would be a good way to begin the resuscitation of the best of all sports.

Catholic voters must put Church teachings ahead of politics, say US bishops

The Church ordinarily tries not to interfere in "the democratic process", we are told, but these are extraordinary times, and America faces an extraordinary crisis -- not just a political crisis and/or an economic crisis, but a moral crisis. That being so, good Catholics should pay close attention to statements made by three American bishops this weekend.
Most Rev. Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia, called on Catholic voters to "stand united" on the issue of abortion. The killing of innocent children before they have a chance to take their first breath outside the womb is "a big issue today," the prelate said, "and I think what it requires of Catholics is a loyalty to the Church prior to their political party. We’re Catholics before we’re Democrats. We’re Catholics before we’re Republicans. We’re even Catholics before we’re Americans, because we know that God has a demand on us prior to any government demand on us. And this has been the story of the martyrs through the centuries.

"If we don't stand united on this issue, we're bound to failure," Abp. Chaput continued, "not only in the area of protecting unborn human life but in maintaining our religious freedom."

Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo, who also serves as apostolic administrator of his former Diocese of Portland (Maine), issued a statement on the upcoming election, in which Maine voters will be asked to permit same-sex marriage.


"Maine citizens have the right and obligation to cast their votes for federal, state and local candidates for office, as well as to make decisions on various referendum issues, including the referendum that would attempt to redefine marriage as something other than the union of one man and one woman open to children,” the bishop said.

But he reminded Catholics that "we do not scrutinize a candidate’s positions or other issues within a vacuum, but within the context of an educated conscience formed through scripture and the teachings of the faith. For us, the sanctity of life from conception to natural death is non-negotiable; euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are never to be sanctioned; embryonic stem cell research and experimentation are considered nothing short of the taking of human life; marriage between a man and a woman must be valued and protected as the foundation of family and society; religious freedom must always be protected, and the care and nurturing of the poor is not simply a kind act, but a societal obligation…

"A Catholic whose conscience has been properly formed by scripture and Church teaching cannot justify a vote for a candidate or referendum question that opposes the teachings of the Church. The definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, open to the birth of children, is a matter of established Catholic doctrine. Any Catholic who supports a redefinition of marriage -- or so called “same-sex marriage” -- is unfaithful to Catholic doctrine."
A third bishop, Most Rev. Thomas Paprocki of Springfield IL, has explained his recent statement that "a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy."

"Some who try to navigate this labyrinth of moral analysis simply rationalize their way to a desired conclusion, for example, by saying that voting for a pro-choice candidate is justified by their support for other 'social justice' causes," said Bishop Paprocki. "But such people should apply the Golden Rule by placing themselves in the shoes of the people who are going to be killed by abortions. Would these voters really think it is more 'just' to vote for the 'pro-choice' candidate if they or their own children or their brothers and sisters were going to be deliberately killed -- along with 1.3 million others?"

Good Catholics, as we are so often told by the President who wants to destroy our Faith and our freedom, let us be clear! As these three American bishops have told us, the key question is whether we love God more than a political party or candidates that promote intrinsic evils and serious sins. The First Commandment is that we not worship false idols. That means God comes first and his moral law trumps politics. Vote your faith on November 6th!

This post is an adaptation of articles in CatholicCulture, for which Walt and Ed. thank God.

"I'll kill you! And your little dog too!"

OK, Hamed Shafia didn't say those exact word directly to his sister Geeti, aged 13, on their sister Zainab's wedding day. When 19-year-old Zainab's husband-to-be arrived at the wedding reception alone -- unaccompanied by any members of his family -- Hamed told his sister "If you leave with him, I'm going to kill everyone here and then I'll kill myself."

And, even though the wedding was called off, that's just what he did. Or someone did. Late last year, Hamed Shafia was convicted of first-degree murder, along with his father, Mohammed Shafia, and mother -- Shafia's #2 wife -- Tooba Yahya.

The Ontario Superior Court jury found that the three of them had acted together to murder Zainab, and two of her sisters, Sahar, 17, and Geeti (the one with the little dog) and Rona Amir Mohammed, their father's first wife in his polygamous marriage. Their bodies were dumped into the Rideau Canal near Kingston, Ontario.

As reported in WWW in January, the convictions are being appealed, but journalist Ron Tripp isn't going to await the results of the appeal. His book on the most sensational "honour killings" ever to be perpetrated in Canada will be released by Harper Collins this coming week.

Without Honour: The True Story of the Shafia Family and the Kingston Canal Murders reports Hamed's threat, and details the layers upon layers of violence and control exerted by the Shafia men over the female members of the Muslim family. Here, from the book, are a few glimpses of life inside the brutally oppressive Shafia household.

• Sahar told a schoolmate just weeks before her murder that she was pregnant, although the truth behind that claim remains unknown;
• Before arriving in Canada, the Shafia family was kicked out of Australia, when trying to immigrate from Afghanistan, for violating the terms of their visa, a fact that contradicts evidence presented at their trial;
• The Shafia children got into trouble at a school in Dubai, including Geeti, who was suspended for kicking a teacher, and a younger brother (not named because of a publication ban) who was expelled when caught with pornography;
• A schoolmate, who did not testify at trial, said the girls' younger brother had told him that shunning Sahar at home was a Shafia family "rule" because she upset her father;
• Other school friends with stories of the girls' abuse at the hands of their father and brother Hamed, and others with accounts of the desperate ploys the girls used to avoid their father's wrath, were not interviewed by investigators or called to give testimony at trial.

Although the girls spoke out to friends, classmates and even teachers, there was no effective follow-up by provincial or local authorities. Mr. Tripp puts the lack of concern or action down to political correctness. When talking of the missed opportunities, the writer told an interviewer, "Teenaged girls trying to be teenaged girls is no rationalization for murder."

"The cultural sensitivities among organizations and institutions [suggested] that we need to allow this family to preserve their culture, and that is a noble goal," he said. But the good intentions meant that a dangerous family situation went unchecked. "Political correctness and this belief that families are sacred cows, and cultural sensitivities: all those things conspired to seal the fate of these [women]."

Even after the horrific murders, Mohammed Shafia had nothing good to say about the dead girls. "Even if they come back to life a hundred time, if I have a cleaver in my hand, I will cut [them] in pieces. Not once, but a hundred time," he ranted.

"May the devil shit on their graves… whore… honourless girl… They betrayed kindness, they betrayed Islam, they betrayed our religion and creed, they betrayed our tradition, they betrayed everything." He added, "There is nothing more valuable than our honour."

Click here to read the National Post 's full report on Without Honour: The True Story of the Shafia Family and the Kingston Canal Murders.

Previous posts here on WWW:
"Honour killing trial: video on dad's testimony"
"GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY in Shafia honour killings"
"What's wrong with Afghans?"

SSPX gives Bishop Williamson the boot

Rorate Caeli reports that the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has expelled Bishop Richard Williamson for what it calls "refusing to show respect and obedience to his lawful superior". That would be the Society's Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, who Bishop Williamson has criticized repeatedly for betraying the True Faith and the work of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in  Bishop Fellay's quest to bring the society back into communion with Rome.

Bishop Williamson was declared "excluded" from the Society on October 4th, 2012. However, he was given a final deadline of October 14th, by which date he had to "bend the knee" -- declare his submission to Bishop Fellay and the Society's council. Bishop Williamson evidently thought he could not do so in good conscience, and announced the publication of an “open letter” asking the Superior General to resign.

He also travelled to Brazil recently, where he administered the sacrament of Confirmation without approval from the SSPX leadership.

Unfortunately for the Superior General, Bishop Williamson is not the only one who believes that Bishop Fellay has gone too far -- much too far -- towards conformity with the modernist teachings and practices of Pope Benedict XVI and the Second Vatican Council. He will not be silenced by his "exclusion", and others will listen... and follow.

"My wife dissed me; I couldn't stand it", Muslim wife-killer tells trial

What with the presidential "debates" and other inconsequential matters, a week and a half has gone by since we had an update on the murder trial of Peer Khairi, the immigrant who allegedly slit his wife’s throat, as far back as her spine, because she wouldn’t follow the Islamic customs of their "old country" -- Afghanistan.

It was Khairi himself who called 9-1-1 to report that his wife had been "murdered" and was lying dead in their cockroach-infested west Toronto apartment that very minute. After the corpse had been removed, Toronto's finest escorted Khairi to the batcave [police station, surely! Ed.] where they interviewed him for over three hours.

Standard operating procedure now is to videotape these interrogations, to obtain statements which may be used in court and to ensure that no rubber hoses or other extreme interrogatory techniques are used. But you know how it is with modern technology. Unnoticed by the gendarmes, the video camera quit functioning after the first hour or so. Weak batteries, perhaps. They did have a backup camera, but the detective in charge, errr, forgot to turn it on.

Nevertheless, the presiding judge has admitted, as part of the Crown's case, not just the videotape, but the testimony of the inquisitor, Detective Sergeant Peter Code, as to what he remembers of the conversation. Following are excerpts from Khairi's tearful depiction of the pitiful image of his life in the months before he almost cut off his wife's head.

"He said [his life] was unbearable," Det.-Sgt. Code testified yesterday. "He went on to make a comparison by stating that even an elephant, when it has too much weight on its back, will start to moan or cry."

The great weight, said the accused, was his family's incomprehensible willingness to embrace Canadian culture after emigrating from Afghanistan by way of India. Imagine! Not only did his children refuse to dress "sufficiently Muslim", but his wife not only allowed this, but stood up for her six kids' freedoms and her own!

That, Khairi told the police, was the last straw. Det.-Sgt. Code remembers him saying "he couldn't take it anymore and [the killing] happened."

At various times during the interrogation, Khairi said he was "out of his head" or "not thinking properly" when he butchered Randjida Khairi in March of 2008. But the more he told his tale of woe to the police, the more the fatal stabbing appeared as the culminatino of years of repressed fury, rather than the temporary loss of control which might see the charge reduced to second degree murder or even manslaughter.

"The children were doing anything that they wanted, they were wearing whatever they wanted, and [their mother] would let them do whatever they pleased," the detective testified. Khairi, now 65, was furious at his four daughters for going out at night. One even had the audacity to sleep over at her fiance's house.

He was angry at his two sons, who were unemployed, for "stealing communication services." He was angry at his wife for failing to properly dote on him after he crashed his car. She would make breakfast and do laundry for the children, but leave him to fend for himself, the admitted killer told police. "His family wouldn't even get him a cup of tea, let alone a meal, when he was suffering," Det.-Sgt. Code testified, reading from his notes of Khairi's statements.

The night he killed Randjida Khairi, the two were embroiled in a fight over his son's alleged theft, the court heard. "His wife had taken his son's side and she was yelling at him to leave their son alone," the court was told.

Their son eventually left the room, but Mr. and Mrs. Khairi continued screaming at each other. Tired of being "disrespected" by members of his family, Mr. Khairi then armed himself with two (2) knives and stabbed his wife until she was dead.

Two knives, right? You'd think that would indicate some degree or premeditation. Wouldn't a man in the grip of an insane rage just grab one knife, the first one that came to hand? In his interview with police hours later, Det.-Sgt. Code asked the accused if he believed he was crazy. "Mr. Khairi advised no, that he had problems but that he was not crazy," the officer testified.

At two points in the interview, according to the detective's testimony, Khairi began to cry. One was when the accused spoke of his first wife, the one he married before Randjida Khairi. Sadly, she was barren, lost a leg in a car accident and then died by, errr, accidentally falling down a set of stairs.

The other time Khairi shed tears was when he spoke of the elephant. His family life had become "too much," he said again and again. "Even an elephant," he whined, "will cry underneath all that weight."

Det.-Sgt. Code was the Crown's last witness. The defence opens today. Agent 3 will be on hand to see if Khairi takes the stand to turn on the tears for the jury.

Debate? What debate?

Some debate, eh, boys and girls? When I went to school, "debate" meant a discussion of two opposing points of view, with the goal of reconciling them or deciding between one and the other.  The outcome would be the resolution of a difference of opinion. So how can you have a debate when both sides agree?

That's what I heard last night -- the Inevitable Mitt agreeing with President Al O'Bama on every conceivable issue of American foreign and "security" policy. Not once did I hear the challenger say "That's completely wrong. My policy is as different from yours as, errr, white is different from black."

Perhaps because of my endorsement of Ron Paul, I was not asked to help prep Romney for this last debate. I didn't worry about it because I thought surely one of his puppet-masters ["handlers", surely. Ed.] would have coached him to put the Prez on the wrong foot immediately by clarifying what the lamestream press called Mitt's "gaffe" about it taking 14 days for Obama to admit that the 9/11 attack in Libya as an act of terrorism.

That was the point at which "Creepy" Crowley jumped in on Obama's side to make Romney look as if he was wrong. A forceful, word-by-word examination of what Obama said in the Rose Garden the next day would have shown that Romney was quite right. But did Mitt get that out? No.

Rather, Romney started off slow and cautious and then went backwards from there. He quickly and explicitly gave ground on so many issues -- "I agree with the President"; "What the President did was right" -- that he simply didn’t have any wiggle room by the time he got to the debate’s later stages. Romney was getting pummelled so he went into the clinch and held on for dear life.

Even though he decided to give it a miss during his mid-East "apology tour", Obama portrayed himself as Israel's greatest friend in the whole world. So what? Romney let us know that, if he were president, he would be even farther up Netanyahoo's arse. Specifically, he said that if Israel were attacked by Iran or any other anti-Semites, he'd say "We've got your back." And yes, that would include military intervention.

Obama gave the order to take out Osama bin Laden, and it was done even as he commanded. What could Romney say? That he would not have ordered bin Laden killed? All he could say was that he was sorry it wasn't done sooner.

And on and on it went. Romney and Obama agreed that American should have a strong military, with Mitt predictably saying that he was going to build up the military establishment which the Prez was letting run down. Unfortunately for the wannabe, the example he chose was the US Navy, which he said had fewer warships now than at any time since 1917.

Obama countered -- rather meanly, I thought -- that it's not a game of "Battleships" any more. What counts, he said -- rather meanly, I thought -- was not the number of ships you have, but the kind of ships. What a modern navy uses, he explained (as if to a schoolkid), is aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines, not battleships. And, he went on -- rather meanly, I thought -- the army doesn't use horses or bayonets either. Thus ended the lesson.

Walt's verdict: Gotta give this one to Mr. O on points, but the decision wasn't close at all. Romney never laid a glove on him. So for the series, that's one for Romney, one for Obama, and one "no decision". Which leaves the contenders just where the polls say -- pretty much tied. Should be an interesting election.

Footnote: Why oh why did the Republicans not nominate Ron Paul, so Americans would have a clear choice? Congressman Paul was the only candidate with a new and different approach to foreign policy. I defy you to discern any practical difference between Romney and Obama when it comes to Iraq or Afghanistan or Israel or Iran. Ron Paul was the only one to advocate bringing US troops home immediately, and an end to American interference in the Middle East. It's not too late to write him in. Here's how you spell his name: R-O-N  P-A-U-L.  Come on people. You know he's right!

A reading guide to the lamestream newspapers

Regular readers of WWW will know that Walt is... or was... a regular reader of the Globe and Mail, [aka the Groan and Wail. Ed.] which claims to be "Canada's national newspaper". This was so because the Mop and Pail, not being American, usually has a more balanced, middle-of-the-road view of American politics plus international news and analysis. In this respect it is much like the Economist, which is the one medium Walt really trusts. As a plus, the Mope and Flail has Canadian news and some good columnists, like Margaret Wente.

Which is too bad, because the Glom and Maul today inaugurated a paywall. By so doing, editor John Stackhouse evidently intends to stem the tide of red ink which threatens to engulf the publication. Like a Canadian King Canute. Good luck to him. It'll be a frosty Friday in Hades before Walt parts with 20 Canuckbucks [How much is that in real money? Ed.] to read the G&M's daily paean of praise for Steve Harpoon and leftie drivel from the likes of Gerry Caplan.

Hundreds of assiduous readers have posted comments to the same effect on the Globe's website. Among them, I found the following, which I first saw years ago but didn't keep on file.

A Guide to Your Reading

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however like the smog statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave L.A. to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country, and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

And for the Canucks...

9. The Globe & Mail is read by people who aren't sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they agree with all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped, minority, feminist, atheist dwarves, who also happen to be illegal aliens from any country or galaxy as long as they are Conservatives and Harper-Card-Carrying types.

So... which newspaper do you read?

Candy Crowley clone discusses anti-Americanism

Earlier today, when I wrote about Candy Crowley -- winner of Walt's COW award -- I mentioned that Cathy Jones did a devastating impression of the biased and incompetent "moderator" of last night's presidential "debate". And I asked if anyone could give me a source for a video clip.

Walt's agents never shrink from a challenge. Agent 3 has sent us this excellent two-minute piece on anti-Americanism, from CBC TV's This Hour Has 22 Minutes.



Some of you may be asking, is that really supposed to be Candy Crowley? The name "Janet Tucker" is nothing like "Candy Crowley". OK, I'll give you that one. But I ask you, who else could it be?

Jes the fax: what the Prez said about Benghazi

The self-appointed fact-checkers are going nuts over last night's exchange between Obama and Romney and the interjection by COW Candy Crowley, as reported here slightly over an hour ago. AP's Calvin Woodward has transcripts (I guess) and has published these quotes.

Speaking in the Rose Garden, September 12th, the Prez said: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.... [Ellipsis inserted by Woodward.] We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act.”

Last night: “I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this [Walt's emphasis] was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime.”

Woodward's comment: ...others in [Obama's] administration repeated for several days its belief that the violence stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam. It took almost a month before officials acknowledged that those protests never occurred. And Romney is right in arguing that the administration has yet to explain why it took so long for that correction to be made or how it came to believe that the attack evolved from an angry demonstration.

Walt adds: I guess it depends on what you think "this" means. It doesn't appear that Obama referred specifically to the Benghazi attack. Which was Romney's point. So was Obama lying last night? It appears the answer -- like Obama himself -- is neither black nor white.

Further reading: "Did Candy Crowley's moderating go too far?", from today's Globe and Mail.

Who won the Great Debate? Walt makes the call

Walt was over to Fort Mudge last night to watch the presidential debate on the TV in the store window. The whole 100 minutes. Damn near froze, in spite of a little pre-debate fortificatory libation.

Quite a different performance by the Prez from the first one, but the Inevitable Mitt held his own, I thought. Both combatants scored a couple of good points. Obama forced Romney to admit that his (Romney's) pension was bigger than his (Obama's). Imagine that. And Romney got off a good one by telling an African-American that he had every right to be disappointed in the candidate he voted for last time, meaning Obama.

But the biggest play was -- or should have been -- Romeny's calling out Obama when he told an out-and-out lie. Speaking about the killing of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on 9/11,  the Prez stated cited remarks he said he made in the White House Rose Garden the next day, September 12th. He said clearly and unequivocally -- Walt heard him -- that he called the attack a "terrorist act".

That was after Romney said that it took Obama 14 days to call the attack "an act of terror" rather than just an overreaction to a stupid video. Well sir, Romney called the Prez on it, or attempted to. But  no sooner did he begin to say "That's not what you said just a moment ago" when the moderator, CNN's Cathy Crowley weighed in. [That would certainly be the appropriate verb, in her case. Ed.]

The idea of last night's "town hall" format was to allow Obama and Romney to spaker directly to voters, a representative group of same comprising the audience. They weren't supposed to be overtly partisan. Their role was to ask questions, which the Prez and Wannabe Prez would then answer.

The moderator wasn't supposed to be partisan either. She was supposed to be, errr, moderate. Time magazine somehow got a copy of the campaigns’ agreement over the debate’s terms. The deal was that the moderator would not ask follow-up questions. All she was supposed to do was choose which of the audience's questions would be asked, and introduce the voters who would ask their questions.

Did the lovely Cathy rein in her obvious lamestream bias in favour of Obama, the media's darling? Noooooo. When Romney said Obama was speaking with a forked tongue -- OK, not his actual words -- Al told him, "Get the transcript."

Then Cathy opened her large yap to defend her favourite. "He did call it an act of terror," she said.

Speaking on CNN after the debate, Crowley said her comment "was the natural thing that came out of me." Just like shit.

Romney supporters at the debate were irate. "Candy was wrong, and Candy had no business doing that, and Candy didn’t even keep the (candidates’ speaking) time right," said former New Hampshire governor John Sununu.

Added one of Mitt's senior advisors, Ron Kaufman, "At different times tonight, she in fact got into the game, and she wasn’t on the sidelines."

Indeed. In Walt's opinion Cathy played the entire front four for Obama. For her outstandingly partisan performance, second only to that of the NFL's replacement referees, Walt declares Cathy Crowley the winner, and awards her the first ever COW, the latest in a long line of prestigious WWW awards. COW stands for Combative Overweight Woman.

Footnote from Ed.: Cathy Jones of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, used to do a devastatingly accurate impression of the biased and ignorant CNN "personality". I'm looking for a video clip. If you have one, please send it to walt.whiteman@yahoo.com.

Fear-mongering about Islam? Who? Walt?

Sunday's post "'Belgistan' - a vision of our future" brought a scathing comment (via Agent 17) from a gentleman who resides in, errr, Belgium. The CBN video, the gentleman says, is bovine excrement, at least as regards the numbers of Muslims in "Belgistan".

Walt has never found CBN any less accurate than, say, Fox News, so didn't ask Ed. to do a fact check. For the record, what I heard was that Muslims represent about 25% of the population of Brussels, and a smaller minority nation-wide. Whether they are 49%, 4.9% or 0.49% of Belgium's population seems to me beside the point. The point is this. Given that Muslims are breeding like little fez-wearing rabbits, and Christian Belgians aren't managing even the replacement rate, the Muslims will eventually be the majority.

Just by coincidence, the same point was made at the Vatican on Saturday, when Peter Cardinal Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, showed the Synod of Bishops a video that Vatican Radio described as a "fear-mongering presentation of statistics attempting to show how Islam is conquering Europe and the rest of the world".

The video emphasized the high birth rates among Muslims in Europe, in contrast with the falling fertility of native Europeans, and concluded that the continent would soon be predominantly Islamic. Was it the same video as the one referred to here? As the Synod meets in camera, we don't know. Was the point the same? Definitely!

Catholic World News quotes Vatican Radio as saying, "Why one of the Curial cardinals chose to show this piece of anti-Islamic propaganda is quite unclear." But, it said, the dramatic presentation did give rise to some energetic discussions, with some bishops criticizing the video while others chose to emphasize the need for more effective evangelization among the people of formerly Christian Europe.

Footnote: Cardinal Turkson is Ghanaian, so let's hold fire, please, on the usual charges of Catholic European racism.

Lamestream media discover Obama lied about Libya attack

In "It's not 'the film', stupid! It's just anti-Americanism, is all", Walt explained, for the benefit of those who have trouble understanding Middle Eastern politics, that last month's near-riots in the streets of cities throughout the Muslim world were not against "Innocence of the Muslims" so much as against America itself.

The Muslims hate America, I said. That has been the case for decades, I said, long before American soldiers burnt copies of the Qu'ran, long before they pissed on dead Afghan prisoners and long before this stupid little film appeared on YouTube. "Innocence of Muslims", I said, was just a catalyst for a deep and longlasting hatred of America's culture, America's religion and America's version of democracy.

But that wasn't the Democratic Party line. Oh no! Rex Murphy, writes in today's National Post of the spin put on the story by the Obama administration. Here's an excerpt:

More telling than their zeal in denouncing "Innocence of Muslims" was their suggestion that it was this video, and the “spontaneous” protest the video generated — not anti-Americanism, nor some other hatred — that was the precipitating agent. They hung a huge tragic event on a slender thread.

But a month later, very few are talking about the video anymore. A series of revelations about such matters as inadequate security at the compound, denied requests for greater security and a much more detailed account of actual events that night, raise serious questions that the Obama administration has yet fully to acknowledge, let alone answered.

But why? Rex hears us ask, and obligingly provides the answer.

An administration bragging that bin Laden is dead, and that his surviving al-Qaeda lieutenants are quivering in fear, doesn’t want a successful attack on one of its diplomatic compounds to be attributed to the very terrorist group it claims to have tamed — not two months before an election, certainly.

The furious spin of the first few days, and in particular the absolutely empty claims put forward so vigorously, and without qualification, by Ambassador Rice, might constitute more than an error. They may prove to be deliberate efforts to smother what really happened in a cloud of misinformation. There is an air of subterfuge on this story. And as is well known since the days of Richard Nixon: It’s not the crime — it’s the cover-up.

The most valued personal quality in a presidential candidate is the ability to inspire and hold trust on matters large and small. As the administration’s Benghazi storyline unravels, as parts of it prove to be demonstrably false, the Obama campaign may be set for a larger panic than that stirred by the President’s curiously apathetic performance in last week’s debate against Mitt Romney.

To give Rex credit, it only took him three weeks or so to figure this out. Obviously he hasn't been reading WWW! Sadly, many political pundits have not yet caught up with Rex, let alone Walt. Will American voters be fooled? We'll know in just over three weeks.

"Belgistan" - a vision of our future

Look around you. See a few women in burqas? Some more wearing the hijab? But they're still a minority...right? In your city, at least. But not in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Now the Muslims are the majority in that major European city, and are already subjecting it to Islamization and Sharia law. Some British cities -- Leeds and Bradford, for example -- are much the same.

For Europe, it's already too late. What about North America? Americans! Canadians! Wake up! If you continue electing politicians who bend over for the immigrant vote, and refuse to slam the doors on all the Muslim "refugees" from the Middle East, here's what's in store for you. Don't say Walt didn't warn you.



Footnote: The lead story in the online edition of today's Toronto Sun is "Polygamists seek Canadian home". Warning! Reading it may cause hyperventilation and/or vomiting.

Further reading from WWW: "How can we be silent in the face of Islamization of our country?", Walt's most-read post on the subject.

A new word to describe American politics

The ever-reliable Agent 6 [You're making him sound like a flashlight battery! Ed.] passes along the following item, which he thinks is worth sharing. Walt agrees.

This would probably be funny if it were NOT true. At last we have a new (and appropriate) word to describe the political situation which obtains in the US of A today. Couldn't find it in my old Webster's dictionary so I Googled it and discovered it is a recently "coined" new word, found on T-shirts on eBay.

Read this over slowly and absorb the facts that are within this definition! I love this word and believe that it will become a recognized English word after the 2012 elections.

AND -- this just occurred to me -- the Democrats and lamestream media are making a lot of noise about Romney's wealth, but I don't recall such bluster and hand-wringing over the Kennedy fortune. Or John Kerry's wealth. Nor do they mention that John Kerry gave virtually nothing to charity while Romney gave something on the order of $4 million, in addition to his entire inheritance from his father, which even Jojo the Laughing Boy acknowledged in last night's debate.

Also, Romney worked for his money. Kennedy inherited his. And Kerry married it.

Oh... Wait... I just remembered. Romney is Republican. Kerry and the Kennedys are Democrats! Apparently, I'm supposed to be more angry about what Mitt Romney does with his money than what Barack Obama does with MINE!

Murdering my mom doesn't mean my father's a bad man, Muslim girl tells Toronto trial

Agent 3 updates us on the murder trial of Afghan Muslim immigrant Peer Khairi, first reported on WWW in "The terrible trials of Muslims facing Western justice". The Crown's case, in an Islamic nutshell, is that Khairi murdered his wife in a fit of rage because she wasn't raising their daughters to be good Muslim girls. In particular the Crown alleges, he was angry that the wife supported the decision of their daughter, Giti, to marry a man of whom the father disapproved, thus bringing dishonour on the family.

Unfortunately for Her Majesty's counsel, Giti's verion of the events in their Toronto home four years ago didn't exactly follow the prosecution's outline. In her testimony yesterday, she told the court it was her mother, not her father, who wore the pants in the family. [Figuratively speaking, of course. Ed.]

Sure, her parents fought a lot, and no longer slept together, but it was all about money, or lack thereof, not about keeping their Muslim faith and old-country customs... and honour, of course. It was really all the fault of the Canadian government. The couple were on disability, you see -- both of them -- and those cheap Canucks weren't giving them enough "social assistance" to take care of the household expenses.

Walt wonders how, if both of them were disabled, they managed to immigrate. Aren't prospective immigrants supposed to pass some kind of medical examination? Or is that requirement waived for "refugees"?

Asked about her impending marriage, Giti told the crown attorney, “I talked to [my father] and everything was OK." But, she admitted, at first "he was a little bit concerned. Usually in our culture we get married to our cousins. He wanted me to get married to my cousin because if it’s a cousin, he’s trusted more."

So, if you were wondering what's wrong with Afghans, maybe that's the explanation, right there. Inbreeding. Kind of a Middle Eastern version of those weird folks in Deliverance.

The fighting got more intense, it seems, when Giti started spending weekends at her fiancé's home. "[My father] was a little bit concerned in the beginning," she testified. "He said, ‘I want to make sure he will not use you and leave you on the side of the road." But eventually he came around, she told the jury.

When Giti took the stand, she was wearing the hijab, the head-covering worn by all good Muslim girls. Did her father force her to wear that, she was asked. No, she said. Although she had refused to wear it while she lived with her parents, it was a decision she made on her own after her marriage to the guy who wasn't her cousin. "I never wore hijab," she said. "My parents never forced us to follow the religion. My parents never forced us to wear hijab. After I got married I started praying and God worked in my heart."

The Crown then asked if she discussed these religious issues with her father. Giti said she shared everything with her father, just as she did with her mother before she "passed away". The relationship was more or less the same. That's what widower's daughter said. Then she buried her face in her hands and began to sob.

Update: Court was adjourned on Thursday following Giti's breakdown. The jury was sent home and told they'd hear more from Giti the next day. Wrong! When court reconvened this morning, the daughter failed to appear. To spare her "further emotional upset", the crown and defence attornies agreed to read into the record her statement given at the preliminary hearing.

Then -- roughly a year after her mother was killed -- Giti painted a much different picture of an immigrant family of eight crammed into a cockroach-infested apartment in Toronto's west end. Read the gory details as recounted by the Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno in "Crown’s portrait of Khairi clan unraveled by slain woman’s daughter".

Couldn't resist

Agent 36 couldn't resist passing this along...

"They're savages here, one and all"

That's what Peachy said about the inhabitants of Kafiristan, just before Danny's wedding, in the movie version of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. 

Some may think that Kafiristan is a fictional place, that no people in this day and age (or Kipling's 19th century Raj) could be so backward and barbaric. They would be wrong. A Google search for "Kafiristan" - try "Waziristan" too - will reveal that it's an area straddling the northern part of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The people there are pretty much as pictured. Only the rifles disclose that this is a fairly modern picture. The people are as they were in Kipling's day, and for centuries before. Always have been and always will be, the benificences of the Western invaders and foreign aiders notwithstanding. Here's a story from the Swat Valley -- same region -- as found on AP today.

Earlier today, a Taliban gunman walked up to a bus taking children home from school and shot and wounded Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old activist well known for championing the education of girls and publicizing atrocities committed by the Taliban. For her work in promoting the schooling of girls -- one of the things we're fighting for in Afghanistan, right? -- Malala was nominated last year for the International Children's Peace Prize.

The Taliban take a different view. Their spokesthingy, Ahsanullah Ahsan said, “This was a new chapter of obscenity, and we have to finish this chapter.  [That's why] we have carried out this attack.”

Meanwhile (Sherin Zada writes) the problems of young women in Pakistan are the focus of a case before the high court, which ordered a probe into an alleged barter of seven girls to settle a blood feud in the remote Dera Bugti district of Baluchistan province.

The district deputy commissioner told the court that a council of the Bugti tribe, one of the more prominent tribes in the province, ordered the barter in early September to settle a feud between two sub-tribes. He did not know the girls' ages but local media reported they were between 4 and 13 years old.

The tradition of families exchanging unmarried girls to settle feuds is supposedly banned under Pakistani law but still practised in the country's more remote tribal areas, where Sharia law and a militant form of Islam still hold sway. Apparently the denigration and abuse of women and girls is OK, according to "the religion of peace".

Negotiations between Rome and the SSPX: Abp. Muller slams the door

The new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- the old Holy Office -- Archbishop Gerhard Muller, should have been a politician. Last week he demonstrated a remarkable gift for saying different things in different languages to different audience.

Katholisches: Magazin für Kirche und Kultur reports on two interviews given by the prelate on the topic of his main challenge, the "negotiations" between the Society of St. Pius X and the Vatican over the readmission of the former to the mainstream modernist Catholic Church.

Speaking in German to Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Muller took a very hard line, saying (not quite in so many words) that the negotiations are at an end. But talking with the (US) National Catholic Register in English, he was all hopeful and prayerful that a "spirit of unity" would prevail... provided of course that the SSPX bends its collective knee to the will of the Holy Father to break with the Traditional Faith once and for all.

Here's what Abp. Muller said in German. (Please don't be nitpicky about the translation. Neither Walt nor Ed. reads/writes German, so we've had to rely on others.)


"Bruderschaft ist für uns kein Verhandlungspartner, weil es über den Glauben keine Verhandlungen gibt." This Society [the SSPX] is for us not a negotiation-partner because there is no negotiation over the Faith.

"Es gibt keine Ermäßigungen was den katholischen Glauben angeht, gerade wie er auch vom Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil gültig formuliert worden ist." No reduction that can be tolerated to the Catholic Faith, exactly as it has been formulated by the Second Vatican Council. [Rather a revealing statement, that last part, since the Council itself never specifically said that its pronouncements were to have the authority of defined dogma.]

"Es gibt jetzt keine neuen Gespräche mehr." There is no more negotiation. [That's what the man said. If the translation is incorrect, please could someone supply the correct interpretation.]

Muller's position sounds pretty clear to me. He has stated once again the Vatican's hard-line policy that the Society of St. Pius X must do two things:
(1) accept the documents of Vatican II as doctrine, with no further debate over their errors and heresies;
(2) accept as valid the Novus Ordo mass, which the Pope now calls the "Ordinary Rite", to distinguish it from the centuries-old Tridentine Mass which we are now told is "Extraordinary".

The truth that Bishop Bernard Fellay, the leader of the SSPX, refuses to recognize is that these two conditions have never been, in the Pope's mind, negotiable. We can see this now through the revelations of the Vatileaks documents, for the release of which the Pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele, was this week found guilty.

In trying to reach an accommodation of any sort with Rome, Fellay and his followers -- perhaps a minority within the SSPX -- have been wasting their time. It's not going to happen! As the Society's founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, might have said: no matter how long your spoon, you cannot sup with the Devil!

The terrible trials of Muslims facing Western justice

Last summer (2011) we had a series of reports, courtesy of Agent 3, on the topic of  so-called "honour killings" in the Sikh and Muslim immigrant communities in central Canada. The worst of these were the Shafia family murders. As reported here in "What's wrong with Afghans?", an Afghan immigrant and his second wife and one of his sons were convicted of killing his first wife and three of his daughters (with wife no. 2) to preserve the family honour which had been sullied by the girls' behaving like typical Western teens.

I thought back then that I wouldn't likely be devoting any more space to the subject, which seemed to have become commonplace, therefore uninteresting. There would be more honour killings, more hand-wringing about women's rights, respecting diversity, and the difficulty of expecting immigrants to abide by the values of the country they choose to live in. And that's just what happened. (Lifetime pct .991)

However, this week there are not one but two (2) criminal cases on the go -- one murder, one attempted murder. Muslim immigrants seem unable or unwilling to learn that their barbaric customs and beliefs won't be tolerated on this side of the world, so perhaps a little more publicity is warranted. Call these cautionary tales.

From Montréal we hear the testimony of Ebrahim Ebrahimi, speaking up for his wife, Johra Kaleki, who is charged with the attempted murder of their 19-year-old daughter, Bahar. "She’s a very lovely woman,” he said of his wife. “She’s a good wife. She’s a good mother. She loves her children."

Montreal police have described the attack as an honour crime, based in large part on a four-hour statement Ms Kaleki gave the night she was arrested. Shen her statement, Ms. Kaleki described the strict rules she and her husband, immigrants from Afghanistan, enforced in their household. Ms. Ebrahimi and her sisters were forbidden from drinking, smoking, staying out late and having boyfriends, she said.

Bahar had been rebelling against her parents and their Muslim faith, and on the weekend she was attacked, she stayed out past dawn two nights in a row. "I felt like she would never be fixed," her mother said. So badly did Ms Kaleki want to give her daughter "the peace that she needed" that she stabbed her repeatedly, yet somehow failed to send her to heaven.

Bahar's father told Mr. Justice Yves Paradis that he and his wife were "relaxed parents... [Our four daughters] make some mistakes. They are kids. There was no punishment. There was no violence. We never raised a hand against them."

Bahar herself gave testimony at the preliminary enquiry in January, supporting the defence's contention that Ms Kaleki became temporarily deranged during confrontation, and somehow got hold of a meat cleaver which had somehow been left in the basement... under a mattress. The accused has testified that she blacked out and has no memory of the attack or of speaking to police for four hours afterwards.

The trial resumes in January, at which time Mr Ebrahimi will have a further chance to get his story straight.

Meanwhile... a Toronto jury heard yesterday how a Muslim wife and mother of six wound up at the pointy end of the knife. The Crown  Attorney said Randjida Khairi "paid the ultimate price" for standing up to her Afghan Muslim husband and letting their children live as Westerners. Her husband, Peer Khairi, slashed her throat right to the spine, the Crown alleges, causing the poor woman to suffocate in her own blood.

"She was in the process of separating her finances and moving out of the family home," the prosecutor said. "There had been fights between the couple about how permissive she was in raising their children, how she allowed them to dress and socialize as they liked, rather than asserting more control over their behaviour so that they kept the culture and rules of their [Afghan] birthplace."

Since Khairi has admitted he did the deed, the jury may well ask, what was he thinking?! That's the issue. Expect to hear the word "honour" hundreds of times before this is over. But don't expect to hear any suggestion that there must be something wrong with a "religion of peace" which encourages or at least tolerates the "honour killings" of wives and daughters. Lifetime pct (still) .991.

The evolution of mathematics teaching

Agent 3 was born too early to be victimized by modern edukashun. He learned math in the 1950s. Today he sends us a dismaying example of what happened after that.

The evolution of mathematics teaching

1950
A logger sells a truckload of timber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 the sale price. What is his profit?

1960
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 the sale price or $80. What is his profit?

1970
A logger exchanges a set "L" of timber for a set "M" of money. The cardinality of set "M" is 100. Each element is worth $1. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set "M". The set "C", the cost of production, contains 20 fewer elements than set "M". Represent the set "C" as a subset of set "M" and answer the following question: what is the cardinality of the set "P" of profits?

1980
A logger sells a truckload of timber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: underline the number 20.

1990
By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class discussion: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees?

2000
A logger sells a truckload of timber for $100. His cost of production is $120. How does KPMG determine that the profit margin is $60?

BC man has bad day... REALLY bad

Second bizarre story from Canada within the last 24 hours.

Canadian Press reports that on the outskirts of Kamloops -- gotta love that name; sounds like a breakfast cereal -- British Columbia, a man was lying in the grass behind his home, having a smoke. Drink having perhaps been taken he fell asleep.

Awoken by the searing pain of the flames from the grassfire caused by his cigarette, the man woke up. Rather than calling 911, he jumped on a bicycle and fled the scene as fast as two wheels would carry him.

Perhaps because he was on fire, the man didn't pay too much attention to the direction in which he was pedalling. But paying attention is something you should definitely do when you're approaching train tracks. Sure enough, along came a CPR freight, right on time.

Recovering from burns and a head wound in the local hospital, the hapless Canuck was confronted by Sergeant Renfrew of the Mounted, investigating the theft of the bicycle. Charges are pending.

"Police intelligence" in Canada's wild west

"Whatcha got growin' in your garden, there, pardner?" That's what the cops on the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team ("ALERT" -- geddit?) asked Ryan Thomas Rockman back in July, before digging up more than 1,600 plants, shown in this picture taken by CP's Ian Martens at a press conference called by the cops to announce the detection and destruction of a huge marijuana grow-up, namely Rockman's garden. [Was it by any chance a rock garden? Ed.]

The Rock Man would be facing serious charges when he goes to court tomorrow except for a small weakness in the Crown's case, namely that the plants are not maryjane after all, but Montauk daisies, a fall-blooming perennial that the accused has been growing for ten years.

The red-faced ALERT have dropped the charge of producing a controlled substance, but are pushing on with a potful of other charges, because, as we all know, if the police arrest someone, he must be guilty of something!

Rockman told the Lethbridge Herald, "It made me look like a villain and it made them look silly.... It baffles me, to be honest. At the same time, I don’t want to try to point the finger of blame at them either because they’re still just trying to do their mandate and make it home every day."
How Canadian is that?! An American would have sued the bastards, right sharpish.

Insp. Dan Konowalchuk [How Albertan is that? Ed.], head of the combined forces special regional enforcement units, defended the officers’ actions when interviewed by the Toronto Star.
"I don’t think there is anything at this point for the guys to apologize for. They acted on what they believed to be the best information they had at the time.... We don’t know for sure they’re daisies," he said, even though test results, which came back this week, clearly prove the seized plants weren’t marijuana.

The plants were only about half as high as one would expect, and of course they were in Rockman's garden, not a clearing in a cornfield. But, Konowalchuk said, it might have been some "sub-strain" of marijuana, perhaps a dwarf variety. "There are some similarities to the (marijuana) plant when you look directly at the plant," he told the Star. "But are they identical? No, they’re not. (Even so) the guys thought they we dealing with a large grow operation and they responded accordingly."

Walt's question of the day: What are the chances of Mr. Rockman being found not guilty of anything at all in the courts of Canada's redneckiest province? Answer: The accused has two chances -- slim and none. Start building the scaffold.

Presidential debates as reality shows

Did you watch the Great Debate last night? Why??!! Did you expect to learn something about economics? Were you genuinely unsure who to vote for and thought the debate would help you make up your mind? Or did you tune in just for the entertainment value?

Entertainment value is important in the Excited States of America nowadays. Last weekend, as poll after poll showed that Mitt was not inevitable after all, the pundits were saying that the lamestream media would have to start hyping Romney to give at least the appearance of a horserace, for the sake of ratings over the next five weeks. Who wants to watch a contest where the result is already known?

Walt suspects that the majority of those who tuned in did so with minds already made up, cheering either for the candidate sitting in the red corner or the one in the blue corner. And what they wanted to see was a good scrap during which one or the other would get knocked down for the count, or slip and fall out of the ring, or commit some horrible gaffe which would lead to effective disqualification.

I think I've pushed the metaphor far enough. My point, if you missed it, is that the debates have become just another TV reality show. Perhaps they have been so ever since the sweat dripped off Nixon's face and caused 1000s of grossed-out voters to pull the lever for the dry and clean-shaven JFK. The crook who said he was not a crook thus became the first contestant to be voted off!

The first show in the 2012 series of Big Big Brother was not on a par with Superbowl or a WWF cage match. There was no knockout or even a TKO, but in Walt's estimation you had to give the match to Mitt on points. It wasn't so much that Mitt was hot but that the Prez was not so hot.

Obama talked about policy in more detail than an insurance salesman, but pulled his punches on Romney’s business experience and the spycam "47% video". One correspondent called Obama's attack, or lack thereof, "muted and strangely reticent".

Rudy Giuliani was quoted as saying Obama’s unease showed. "This is the first time in four years, since he debated Hillary Clinton, that anyone has really challenged this man, and he fell apart," said the wily pol, describing Obama at times as "totally befuddled".

To put it another way, it was not so much a debate as much as Mitt taking a drive in the country with Obama tied to the fender.

Does this mean we should rush to the bookmaker's and get our bets down before the odds change? Is it, as Republican Senator John Thune said, "a whole new ball game"? Hardly! Mitt picked up a first down last night, but the goal is still a good 60 yards down the field and the media wind is against him.

Note from Ed.: I have extracted from Walt a promise signed in blood that he will ease up on the sports analogies. What with the NHL season looking likely to be cancelled in its entirety, I think he is suffering from withdrawal.

Who's pulling Justin Trudeau's strings?

No, It's not Bobby Ewing. It's Justin Trudeau, Son of Himself, the Good Guy in the White Hat who yesterday stepped up the plate to save the Liberal Party of Canada from oblivion.

M. Trudeau is 41, white, straight, and married with two kids. He worked for a couple of years as a high school teacher (teaching drama) before being elected Member of Parliament for the Montréal riding of Papineau. He has more charisma in his little finger than the incumbent Prime Minister, "Call me Steve" Harper has in his whole cold body.

Other than that, however, young Trudeau doesn't have a very lengthy résumé. Not much to recommend him for the job of Supreme Leader of the Great White North. He is not given to making weighty pronouncements, either oral or written, about the issues of the day or what he would do to make Canada a better place.

Indeed, Justin Trudeau has been accused (already) of being nothing more than a pretty face framed in curly hair, the political equivalent of the other Justin, aka the Beaver. [It appears you're not really in tune with pop culture. Ed.] Questions arise. Who is the power behind the throne? Who is pulling the strings that animate the adorable puppet?

Agent 3 was a card-carrying Liberal for decades. He was present in 1968 when Trudeau Père (Himself) was chosen to reinvent the Liberal Party, the "Natural Governing Party" which had fallen into something of a rut under the bland and ineffectual leadership of Lester "Mike" Pearson.

Pearson's nickname -- "Mike" -- tells a story. Although the moniker had been hung on Pearson years before, it was seized on by one Keith Davey as a means of brightening Pearson's dull and stodgy image, making him seem more the sort of dynamic, straight-up guy that the voters of the 60s wanted to lead them. Not quite JFK, to be sure, but not Dwight Eisenhower or Louis St-Laurent either. So "Mike" it was, and Pearson finally managed to beat the old dinosaur, John Diefenbaker.

Keith Davey became known as "the Rainmaker", a reference to his alleged prowess in manipulating the electorate. He guided Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau (all the same person, and father of Justin) to smashing electoral triumphs, overcoming the enmity of the majority of westerners and  WASPy bigots east of the Manitoba border. No book on Canadian politics in the 20th century would be complete without a lengthy chapter on Senator Davey, as he eventually became.

Davey was inevitably surrounded by a number of acolytes and hangers-on, among them two young fogeys who would in due course be elevated the hog heaven, Senators Jerry Grafstein and David Smith. Both Grafstein and Smith are Toronto boys, whose view of Canada extends about as far as you can see from the top of the CBC building on a clear day. Neither of them was able to get elected to the Commons, yet they were powers in the smoke-filled back rooms. And so they remain.

To come to the point [at last! Ed.], if the likes of Senators Grafstein and Smith are the ones who really run the Liberal Party today, Canadians would do well to reject the attractions of their latest front man, young Justin. It was not his father, but a clique of Toronto and Montréal academics, intellectuals and media types -- John Ibbotson calls them "the Laurential elites" -- who devised the disastrous policies for which Trudeau the father is reviled even today.

One example would be the National Energy Policy, designed to ensure cheap power and gasoline for the cities of the east, at the expense of the Canadian west. Why? Because the majority of voters lived in the east. Carry Toronto and Montréal and you carried Ontario and Québec. Carry Ontario and Québec and you carried Canada. And so it came to pass.

One more example -- the opening of the floodgates to immigration from the Third World. Canadians of the 60s were hardly clamouring for hordes of brown and black people to move into their neighbourhoods. But the Laurentian elites -- "Volvo liberals" is what I call them -- felt the power of white liberal guilt for all the evils of the colonial era, and thought it would be an act of contrition to invite the Pakistanis, Jamaicans, Indians etc etc to bring their cultures and their appetites to Canada. Besides, in a few years after arrival, those wretched huddled masses would be voters... grateful voters! And so it came to pass.

In its never-ending and insatiable quest for perpetual power, the Liberal Party of Canada forgot that power comes from the people. Not just the immigrants and urban elites of Canada's two largest cities, but the real people who live out in the boondocks -- the "905" region of Ontario and the vast white-bread tracts beyond. John Ibbotson describes the result in "If Trudeau leads, will Liberals follow?"

The Liberal Party, Ibbotson writes, "no longer understands Canada: the dynamism of the West; the beleaguered, defiant French in Québec; and especially the many millions who live in the suburban cities that dominate Southern Ontario.

"Those millions...mostly belong to a middle class that is suspicious of governments that promise to help them with health care, education and other needs, but that seem careless about protecting and promoting the businesses that make those services possible. Stephen Harper has made it his life’s mission to connect with them, to understand them, to talk to them in their language. But this is now a second language for Liberals, and they are far from fluent."

Last night, Justin Trudeau launched his campaign for the Liberal crown in Montréal, naturally enough. He mouthed the inevitable platitudes about working harder, building a newer and better Canada, yada yada yada. But he has yet to convince Agent 3 and other ex-Liberals that he is speaking for himself, and not for the Laurentian elite which still seeks to impose its outdated and exclusionary brand of liberalism on a disenchanted and disaffected party and country.

Suggested reading: "If Justin Trudeau listens to the old guard, he'll lead the Liberal Party to its doom", by John Ibbotson, in today's Globe and Mail.

Ukrainians set to ban promotion of homosexuality

Ukrainians have always struck Walt as generally sensible and solid people. So it comes as no surprise to learn from Reuters that the parliament of the Ukraine today gave first reading to a bill making the promotion of homosexuality a criminal offence punishable by a term as guests of the state, i.e. in prison.

Imagine that! Can it really be that a national legislature will summon up the courage to follow the wishes of a majority of the country's people and proscribe something which is objectively disordered according to the laws of the Church, and clearly contrary to the laws of God and nature?

Perhaps it's only a coincidence that elections to the Ukrainian parliament are coming up on October 28th. A poll conducted last year by a local think tank showed that 78% of Ukrainians took a dim view of homosexuality, so Ukey politicos are rushing to jump on the heterosexual bandwagon.

The promotion of homosexuality, the sponsors say, is a threat to national security. Accordingly, anyone who imports, produces or spreads “works that promote homosexuality” will face up to five years in the slammer. Perhaps their prison experience will change their convictions (geddit?) about homosexual behaviour.

Walt wonders what it would take to convince Western politicians that the majority of their constituents share the Ukrainians' negative feelings about homosexuality, and resent having the LGBT agenda shoved down their throats [Watch it! Ed.] by the lamestream media day in and day out.

Would a poll do it? Would such a poll even be allowed in today's politically correct climate? I doubt it. And I say that with a straight face.

Note from Ed.: Walt is being truthful when he speaks of being struck by Ukrainians... or at least one Ukrainian, who remains an Agent to this day.