Mid-Week Post

The focal point of week.


Tonight is the first in a set of debates against Republican candidate Mitt Romney and the guy who plays golf Barack Obama. If Romney is bold and points out Obama's numerous inadequacies as a leader and a human being, he will win the debate. The popular press, on the other hand, will declare Obama the winner despite his obvious rhetorical and semantic blunders:

President Obama has a number of "poker tells" which he displays when answering questions. They betray an increasing distance between his reply and the truth.

Talk show hosts love when the president gives one of his very rare press conference or any other occasion when he is off prompter. That is when these "tells" surface, giving all veteran Obama observers the verbal heads-up that the president has entered the land of thinly disguised fantasy or obvious dissembling.

First, the president begins a pattern of "ahs" and "uhmms" which are as embarrassing as they are revealing. The awkward pausing punctuated by these semi-stutters increases in frequency as the president senses his own flailing about.

Next, the president begins filibustering. His average length of answer in every press conference is already epic, but he has been getting worse as the presidency has dragged on. Pressers are not battles between the "reporters" and the president. Very few not named Jake or Ed bother the president with fastballs. The struggle is simply between the president and the effort he has to land the plane anywhere near where it took off, so far does he wander as he rambles through the minutes he is obliged to spend appearing to take questions.

The president will allegedly be subject to time limits on Wednesday night, but his contempt for most such rules almost guarantees he will blow through every limit and dare the moderator or Mitt Romney to challenge him.

If either does, we will be treated to "tell No. 4," the president's feigned outrage that anyone would interrupt or question him. When this happens, his countenance displays a disapproving sneer and his voice clouds with displeasure. It is practiced. It is also profoundly anti-democratic and arrogant, and if he plays this card on this stage, it will backfire.

Watch as well for nonresponsive self-pity, verbal essays on how difficult it was when he took over and how hard he has been working. Self-pity and self-regard are not designed to endear him to the unemployed or even the economically fragile, so he will be coached to try to avoid displaying his sense of outrage at being thought a failure or "in over his head," but the president's sense of his own immensity is so great as to blow past such base political calculations.

Finally, watch for the parade of straw men, the president's favorite rhetorical trick. He will set up arguments that have never been made in the service of Republican goals that have never existed, and then he will denounce both. If the appearance of a straw man serves as a trigger in a drinking game, many bottles will empty by the end of Debate No. 1.

Related: have fun with this debate. It's BINGO time!


(Thumbs up)



Trudeau 2.0: the resurrection of the Liberal Party or its Titanic moment? Discuss.



Related: how pathetic and sheltered the Twitter-nation is.



Things that make sense if you have a thicker skin and penchant for honesty:

We may want to continue with a level of immigration into Canada annually that is about the same as it is at present; i.e. somewhere in the vicinity of 300,000 immigrants, refugee claimants, and students and workers under visa provision entering Canada.

 

We cannot, however, continue with such an in-flow of immigrants under the present arrangement of the official policy of multiculturalism based on the premise all cultures are equal when this is untrue, and that this policy is a severe, perhaps even a lethal, test for a liberal democracy such as ours.

 

This means we cannot simultaneously continue with both, the existing level of immigration and official multiculturalism, as they together endanger greatly our liberal democratic traditions.

 

If we persist we will severely undermine our liberal democracy or what remains of it, compromise the foundation of individual freedom by accommodating group rights, and bequeath to our children and unborn generations a political situation fraught with explosive potential for ethnic violence the sort of which we have seen in Europe as in the riots in the ban lieu or suburbs of Paris and other metropolitan centres.

 

In conclusion, I want to emphasize we need to consider lowering the number of immigrants entering into Canada until we have had a serious debate among Canadians on this matter. We should not allow bureaucratic inertia determining not only the policy, but the existing level of immigrant numbers and source origin that Canada brings in annually. We have the precedent of how we selectively closed immigration from the Soviet bloc countries during the Cold War years, and we need to consider doing the same in terms of immigration from Muslim countries for a period of time given how disruptive the cultural baggage of illiberal values is brought in as a result. We are, in other words, stoking the fuel of much unrest in our country as we have witnessed of late in Europe. And lest any member wants to instruct me that my views are in any way politically incorrect or worse, I would like members to note I come before you as a practicing Muslim who know out of experience from the inside how volatile, how disruptive, how violent, how misogynistic is the culture of Islam today and has been during my lifetime, and how greatly it threatens our liberal democracy that I cherish since I know what is its opposite.

Make no mistake- there are immigrants who WANT to be Canadian citizens, not just IN Canada. That is a crucial distinction. These immigrants learn the language (s), the customs and laws. They call themselves Canadian always. They add professionally, politically and socially to the national fabric. Then are those who, according to the self-loathing multiculturalists, are entitled to be in the country even though they are decidedly unassimiable in every respect. THIS is the discussion we should be having.



She said it:

Julianne Moore nabbed an Emmy for her role as controversial former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, but the politician's daughter, Bristol, doesn't believe Moore's trophy was merited.

"I don't think she's a good interpreter of my mom. I think my mom's way hotter than that,"

We can't all get participation awards for making fun of former Alaska governors.



And now, rescued baby gorillas.



(With thanks)