At Home in Hespeler

Cue Patrick Swayze:

Elizabeth May, the lone Green Party MP, is in the last seat of the last row on the opposition side of the Commons right against the curtains. She is jammed in between one of the four Bloc Québécois MPs and the translator’s booth. Justin Trudeau, the Liberal MP from Papineau, has the seat in front of her.

If only Elizabeth May could dance, we could get on with the happy ending. But dancing increases your heart-rate, resulting in faster breathing thus an increase in CO2 exhaled. Result: global warming all around.

Go back to your playpen, Baby.

Elizabeth May Dirty Dancing, Elizabeth May, House of Commons, Patrick Swayze, Seat

I’ve noted before that bad management is the auto industry is real. My out of the house life, like most people, is run by idiots: supreme, extreme idiots. I build cars for a living and yes, that does have a hemi in it.

That said, at least the people who run Chrysler have 1) experience in the industry & 2) a personal stake in the companies success. Unlike, say, Elizabeth May who if given the choice would tell Chrysler from Ottawa what cars they will build:

“Building things is not something Greens are against, it’s just a question of building the right things,” said the 54-year-old American-born May, who noted her party’s policy ideas are often overlooked. “The plants that are building the muscle cars and the trucks should be building small, energy efficient vehicles.”

Yea, yea, yea… and politicians who can’t even get a seat in Parliament should concentrate on getting a seat instead of touring the country FDR style and promoting a competing party. But politics is not my business and while I might offer suggestions to Elizabeth May, et al. I wouldn’t dare tell her how to do her job.

I’ll know it’s time to jump all over those buy-outs when activists/politicians are deciding what cars we should build.

Auto Industry, Elizabeth May

Elizabeth May claims to have never smoked pot. Don’t know, don’t care, what’s obvious is she has never tried to grow it

Canada’s Green Party leader Elizabeth May apologized on Wednesday for never having smoked marijuana, as she unveiled her election plank, which touts legalizing and taxing pot…

May told reporters at a campaign stop in Halifax, televised nationally. “I’ve never used marijuana. I apologize.”…

As well, the party would like to see “small, independent growers” thrive, and the government taxing the weed at the same rate as tobacco, generating an estimated one billion dollars Canadian (931 million US) annually.

I always laugh at this argument. George Carlin called it Toledo window box, implying that you can grow it on a window ledge. I have never grown the stuff myself, but I know of people who have grown it in a planter.

Personally, I grow herbs all summer, and do a few indoor winter herbs. If I was inclined to smoke pot, and it was legal, I would plant it. It’s effortless, and you won’t be paying government rates for it. And if you don’t want to grow it, why wouldn’t someone else grow it in their back yard and sell it to people tax-free?

There are some interesting and compelling arguments for legalizing pot, and the war on drugs has certainly been a massive failure. I’m all for re-thinking it, but the argument that it will be profitable for the government to legalize it just doesn’t wash, and anyone budgeting $1B on a marijuana tax better have a plan B.

Elizabeth May, Silly Politicians

I couldn’t agree more about keeping Elizabeth May out of the leadership debate. She is the leader of a fringe party that has no chance of forming the government, or for that matter becoming the opposition. But under that criteria neither should two other people be at that debate.

Jack Layton heads a perennial 3rd, sometimes 4th place party. But even though Jack Layton thinks he’s running for Stephen Harper’s job, the amount of energy required to keep up that particular delusion would potentially bankrupt the NDP under Stéphane Dion’s green shift (yes, I just wrote that Jack Layton’s ego causes global warming). I myself have decided to “apply for Stephen Harper’s job,” but that doesn’t mean it is close to being so. Same applies to Jack Layton, he can say he’s running for PM, but cannot be reasonably said to be so. So why should he be allowed to impose his smirk in a debate between the two men who are running for the job?

Gilles Duceppe’s party, le Bloc Québécois, is in the running for exactly zero seats in English Canada, so how is it that Duceppe is in the English Language debate? I’ll leave his usefulness in the French debate to French bloggers, but he serves no useful purpose in the English debate. In fact he often plays the part of class clown in the English debate precisely because he has no possible votes to gain or lose. As such, he doesn’t belong in the debate.

The debate I want to see, the night I will consider sitting down to watch a debate is when the two men who are running for the job of PM, and only those two men, are debating each other. Harper vs. Dion mano a mano.

And that is why Elizabeth May doesn’t belong in the debate. She is just one more person who has no chance to be PM, and she would just be one more person taking screen time from the two men that we really need to hear from.

Debating with Fools, Elizabeth May

The NDPs job, according to Elizabeth May, is to defeat Stephen Harper – period. Thus, they should join forces with the Greens to eliminate Stephen Harper’s Conservative government:

I have people coming over and saying, ‘I’m going to vote Green because I think the NDP is more interested in eliminating the Liberal party than in restoring to power a government that actually cares about issues I care about.’ My advice to (NDP Leader Jack) Layton which is open and really in the spirit of co-operation — rethink the policy of constantly denigrating the Greens and acting hostile towards us.

Which makes you wonder, what is it about politics that Elizabeth May doesn’t get? Let me guess what this co-operation would look like – the NDP wouldn’t run a candidate in Central Nova, the Green’s don’t run in Toronto-Danforth and maybe Trinity-Spadina. Because the best way to eliminate Stephen Harper is to elect Elizabeth May. (Of course, Toronto-Danforth and Trinity-Spadina are pretty safe NDP seats, so what’s in it for Jack Layton?)

Back when May made her deal with Stephane Dion, I made the following comment:

If Elizabeth May is only interested in knocking off Conservatives, if she doesn’t want to unseat a Liberal or New Democrat, what’s the point of the Green Party? Why doesn’t she just join one of those two parties?

It still stands. It is not the NDP that is in the way of the Greens unseating the Conservatives, and it’s a Jacobian Piece of Impertinence to suggest it is, it is the Greens syphoning votes away from the Liberals and NDP. And don’t tell me, as May suggests, that the Green Party “draws (support) from all the traditional parties.” If you’re reason for being is that “we cannot afford more than one term of this (Stephen Harper’s Conservative) government,” you aren’t going to draw support from the Conservative party.

If defeating Stephen Harper is your only reason for being, Elizabeth May, fold up the Green Party and stop syphoning votes from the parties that could defeat them.

One last thing. May talks about a positive campaign:

I believe that if we have an election that focuses on issues and not spin and attack ads, the voters will exercise their wisdom.

But isn’t the following, by nature, negative?

Not just specific trades in different ridings, but an effort to be more collaborative so that we can figure out — in a first-past-the-post system — can we work together to ensure that (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper enjoys a one-term period as prime minister.

We cannot afford more than one term of this government.

If all you want is to defeat the other guy, that is the very definition of negative campaigning. But that is not really what Elizabeth May wants: Elizabeth May wants a seat for herself, regardless of the costs to everyone else.

Elizabeth May, Jacobian Piece of Impertinence

From the Desk of Farley Mowat
Dear Green Party Friend:

Eighty-six years as participant and observer have convinced me we are facing an ecological and environmental crisis that could precipitate the greatest die-off in the history of our planet.

The current situation is so ominous and the potential for disaster so diverse and imminent as to threaten not just human life but all of animate creation. If this sounds like Chicken Little, it is because this time the sky truly may be falling.

The unwillingness of the powers-that-be to accept the scope and urgency of the threat convinces me that the cement-heads who currently control our destiny are incapable of responding to the approaching tornado. They will remain engrossed in their own self-interests, trusting that a consortium of super-science, technology, and the Entrepreneurial Gods will see them safely into Heaven on Earth.

I don’t believe it will. Which is why I am now giving my support to the Green Party, the only political entity demonstrating a real and potential effective concern for the planet and its myriad inhabitants.

All of its inhabitants!

For it is not just we human beings who are at risk. We are all in the same crucible together – and the temperature is rising rapidly, both figuratively and actually.

The Green Party, led by Elizabeth May, is the one political party clearly committed to averting the catastrophic consequences of our continuing to treat the Earth as mere dirt beneath our feet, so it is imperative that we elect Green Party members to our next parliament. This cannot happen without a lot of help from a lot of us.

The Harper Conservatives boast of their war chest of $15 million, and their War Room from which they will send out their Attack Ads and fire their Media Barrages. The Green Party and its leader, Elizabeth May, have only the Green Hope Chest, which at the moment is virtually empty. Nevertheless, they are promising a peaceable campaign focused on the survival of a peaceable kingdom.

I very much want them to succeed and I hope you do too, so I invite you to join me in making it financially possible for the Greens to vanquish the vandals and thereby help re-establish a viable future for life on Earth.

Farley Mowat

To all those people who think Green is a good alternative place to put your vote: do you really still think so?

Crossposted from Let Freedom Reign

Celebrities, Elizabeth May, Global Warming, Going... Going... Gone Nuts For The Environment

Elizabeth May thinks you would. I wonder. Hasn’t the price of gas gone up more than 12c a litre this year? What has it stopped you from doing?

And since there’s all the caterwauling about gas-gouging, ask yourself this. In the current pricing scheme, does demand and supply meet? That is, is there excess of either? And if Elizabeth May’s scheme works, and it’s true that the oil companies are gouging, or taking excess profits, then what’s to stop them absorbing the tax increase? According to lefty think tax Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the oil companies are taking 15c a litre excess profit. If a 12c tax hurts demand, then they could afford to drop prices back until demand returns. Not only could they, it would be good business to do so.

Then what? 25c a litre? 50c? 60c? Gee, I wonder who said that?

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Sixty cents a litre is the starting point for serious reduction. This is just a smooth trick to get carbon taxes in play, they’ll adjust accordingly later. And we all know how hard it is to get governments to adjust down.

Update: As Gerry Nicholls wonders, is this part of the Liberals plan as well. May is, after all, a defacto Liberal candidate.

Updateier: Steve Janke has a post on this. As you can see in the comments, Richard passes on his gas expenses to customers. I pass it on to retailers in the form of non-buying. Janke makes much the same point.

Carbon Tax, Elizabeth May, Going... Going... Gone Nuts For The Environment, Kyoto, pimply minions of bureaucracy

Who said the following?

“[It is] useful to know the laws of nature – for that enables us to obey them. To act otherwise would be to rise in revolt against heaven.”

Give you a hint: It is related to this:

“We have a moral obligation to our Lord and Father to ensure we don’t destroy the creation that was given to us.”

The second of course is Elizabeth May, but the first? They seem a lot alike, certainly both could come from the same speech. But they don’t. Here’s another hint: The next quote is what relates the two:

Stephen Harper’s stance on climate change is “a grievance worse than Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Nazis.”

Again, Elizabeth May. And the first, if you haven’t guessed is Adolph Hitler. A few other quotes from real Nazis:

“At the end of the last century the progress of science and technique led liberalism astray into proclaiming man’s mastery of nature, and announcing he would soon have dominion over space … In any case, we shall learn to become familiar with the laws by which life is governed, and acquaintance with the laws of nature will guide us on the path of progress.” — Adolf Hitler, 11 July 1941.

Laws of nature will guide us on the path of progress? In a test, I would have said Stephan Dion.

“From now on, one may consider that there is no gap between the organic and inorganic worlds.” — Adolf Hitler, 24 October 1941.

“Man is not above nature, but in nature.” — Ernst Haeckel, Father of German Ecology.

“Man must not fall into the error of thinking that he was ever meant to become lord and master of Nature.” Hitler again.

We National Socialists demand of ourselves that we live as naturally as possible, that is to say in accord with the laws of life. The more precisely we understand and observe the laws of nature and of life and the more we keep to them, the more we correspond to the will of this omnipotent force.” — Martin Bormann, NSDAP Party Secretary.

I by no means wish to call Elizabeth May or Stephan Dion a Nazi. Merely to point out that Elizabeth May should be very careful who she calls what. Quick comparisons with Neville Chamberlain are easy, but cheap. Worse comparisons come easy as well, and there are worse things to be than a Nazi appeaser.

All National Socialist quotes from NAZI GERMANY AND THE ENVIRONMENT.

Elizabeth May, Global Warming, Who You Calling a Nazi?