Anxiously Awaiting the Liberal Press Release Condemning Obama

Is anyone else anxiously awaiting the Liberal Party of Canada press release condemning Barrack Obama's proposed gasoline rebate of $1000 dollars per family?




I will be out for most of the day, but if anyone happens to see Dion and the Liberals condemnation of this $1000 gasoline rebate that will encourage Americans to consume even more gasoline and produce more CO2, please post a link in the comments.

Thank you in advance.

Al

For your viewing pleasure Paris Hilton proposes her own energy plan.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

That Was Then This is Now.

(cue host) Hello, and welcome once again to That Was Then This is now. The show where we look at the Liberal Party of Canada and their much varied positions over the years.

You may remember past episodes such as our top rated show on the GST.

Then: Abolish "We have put in writing that the GST will not be there and will be replaced by a system that will be a better one." Jean Cretien

Now: Increase "We will consider if in our plan we need to revisit the decision of the government about the GST. We'll consider it." Stephane Dion

Ha, ha, ha, it was one of our favorite shows as well, but tonight this episode will deal with a topic on many of your minds lately; the environment.

Who here can remember back just a short time ago to December 2007 in Bali?

Well, that was..

Then: Liberals of all shapes and sizes as well as various other lefties were screaming at the top of their lungs that Canada's position in Bali, to get China and India to commit to reducing CO2, was wrong & would be hardship on those "developing" countries.

This is Now: Punishing China, India, and all of the other developing countries with a carbon tariff on their goods. "We will build carbon pricing into our strategy for international trade, endeavouring where possible to ensure that goods from countries that are not pricing carbon will face a tariff reflective of carbon content."

I guess that this confirms that Mr.Bairds position, that China and India must be on board for any meaningful reductions to happen, was right from the beginning. I wonder how China now feels after their Bali buddy Dion went out of his way to let them off of the hook of carbon reductions and now sideswipes them with a punishing tariff for not having a plan for those very same reductions. I hope they don't get mad.


Still on the environment we have this little contradiction in logic for you.

Then: Liberals claiming that the conservative $100/month per child universal child care benefit would not do anything to help with childcare and the money would be wasted.

Some quotes: "Don't give people $25 a day to blow on beer and popcorn."

“The Conservative approach is one-dimensional, lacks vision, and fails to address the tax system’s bias against single-earner families with one parent at home,” & "‘little more than a symbolic gesture’ toward stay-at-home parents. Let’s be honest, the Conservative approach is just your basic tax cut in disguise and is one that undermines families who use organized day care for their children.”

Well it certainly uh uh, the approach to child care is just spiteful its its its canceling the supplement for our most vulnerable uh children. There is actually no plan for early learning and childhood education. So its a good job there putting more money for prisons in the budget because we're gonna need them if we don't get this early childhood right.

"My understanding of what he's talking about is a program that will probably give you roughly $25 a week. What are low- and middle-income Canadians going to do for the rest of the week?"

Well right back at ya Liberals because

Now: The Liberal are claiming that the small cheque from Greenshift tax cuts will not only pay for and solve climate change, but cure poverty, provide social justice, and will somehow cover the increased costs on EVERYTHING from Dion's carbon tax.

It seems that the Liberal Party of Canada change their policies and ideas more often than they change their clothes; as is shown in this last example we have for you today.

On a carbon tax.

Then: Against (Dion isn't the only one either) "I've always been against it. I will have other ways to get there." and "A carbon tax is less effective than a carbon market at reducing emissions. Some of my opponents for the Liberal leadership have suggested that a carbon tax would be the most effective measure to curb climate pollution. This is simply bad policy...." More of the same here.

Now: For "More precisely, we will tax fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas, according to the amount of carbon dioxide they emit when they are burned. This carbon tax will be....."



It looks like our time is up for today, but we will be sure to return in the near future with another episode of That Was Then This is Now.

Good night everybody, and a big thank you to our sponsor, the Liberal Party of Canada. Who without their constant changing of positions this show would not be possible. (wave to audience)


(Cue theme music, fade out.)

One thing that all economists can agree on

I keep reading Liberal spin about how some economists are praising Dion's carbon tax proposal, but the numbers are very few and it should be obvious that not all economists out there agree with their colleagues on this question. After all the PM is an economist and he certainly does not think that the plan is a good one, so it goes without saying that there are divisions of opinion among economists about Dion's carbon scheme.

However, I do believe that I have found something that 100% of economists will agree on with regards to Dion's carbon scheme and here it is: Dion's carbon tax will increase the rate of inflation in Canada.

They may differ on just how much it will rise( I bet once the numbers get crunched it may well be double digit inflation), and they differ on just how much this will effect Canada's already fragile economy, but without a doubt they ALL will agree that prices will rise and so will the rate of inflation.

Find one who doesn't, and you have found yourself an incompetent economist or a liar.

Going Green.

A conservative confesses.

Over the last 2 years or so I have slowly but surely been heading towards a greener lifestyle, and although it was not something that had I really set out to do initially; lo and behold this "neocon" has greatly lowered his footprint on mother earth.

So far:

I have replaced my old furnace with a new one which is at least 40% more efficient.


All light bulbs are being changed out as they die with CFL type bulbs.


Edmonton has one of the best recycling programs around, and while I have been using the program since the blue box days, I have become much more aware about what I am throwing away and what I am recycling recently.


New and much more efficient windows have been installed in my home.


As my appliances all seemed to die about the same time, all of them have now been replaced with more energy efficient units.

OK, the new washing machine might eat up a bit more power than the old one, but having a house full of kids with the huge volume of laundry easily justified the much larger capacity machine. I think it may work out in the end though as just by cutting down on the number of total washes with the new machine should make up that difference, and if not, the savings from the new refrigerator and range will easily make the difference.


The car I recently bought is supposed to get 50 miles to the gallon, or use just over 8 litres per 100 kilometers on the highway.

It is too early to tell if the above mileage will be accurate, but compared to the truck I was driving and just using basic 'in my head math', it appears that I have decreased my fuel consumption by over 66%. This is easily an under estimate as I did not include the fact that I am not driving the kilometers that I did even a couple of years ago to come up with the 66% decrease.


There are probably a few more little things that I could list but I think my point has been made.

I have gone greener.




But why you ask?

It sure wasn't any Liberal tax, newly proposed or otherwise, or even some grand vision style lefty policy initiative that did turned this so called"neocon" green. In fact it was the thing that many lefties detest that actually made the difference. It was the free market that did it. Well, as free as it gets in Canada anyways.

Imagine that. The market has seemed to do on it's own, and without any 'help' or manipulation from government, something controlling lefty governments have all failed to do in the past. It has made myself and countless others go greener.

I expect someone to pipe in and say that this is how a carbon tax is supposed to work and why one is still needed. This might be true if nothing was progressing, but the reality is that that we are already seeing positive results* of what is happening because of the market. And all without the help or manipulation of government. I would also add that judging from the long history of government manipulation in the markets, or even looking to just about anything else the government has ever done/planned/or touched as examples; Dion's carbon tax would not only follow along with most other big government visions/plans and not work as intended, it would cost us all way too much in the attempt. Trust me, it's a long list of expensive failures and I doubt that this time it would turn out any different.

Now the political stuff. Take heed Liberals. In my opinion to pile on ANY type of carbon tax now would be political suicide. I feel it would be looked at as another tax grab by your average Canadian; one that would not only hurt Canadians financially but also one that punishes the poor unfairly and will end up creating even more poverty along the way. Like it or not, most Canadians still have to heat their homes in the winter, wash their clothes, buy and cook their food, commute, or even be able to see in the dark in our northern part of the world. These are the facts and adding additional costs to these necessities of life are not going to be looked at kindly by an already cash poor and overtaxed electorate. You will be paying a price at the ballot box if you propose to raise those costs even more for Canadians with a carbon tax.






* This occurred in 2006 under a Harper government. Something that the Liberals cannot claim even though they signed on to Kyoto and had Dion as the "greenest environment minister ever" running the show. Not that you heard much about this reduction in the MSM, but that is another topic.

Having it both ways.

How is it possible, as Dion says, to have Canada make mega tonnes of money and not harm our economy while we reduce our CO2 emissions, while at the same time accepting the argument from China and India that they must be allowed special circumstances because it will harm their respective 'developing' economies?

So which one is it Stephane? If you believe in one, you can't believe in the other.


Or maybe you can if you just make stuff up to suit your needs.

Making stuff up; Dion Style

I just finished watching Stephane Dion doing the year end interview thing with Graham Richardson for CTV's Mike Duffy Live.

What a revealing interview it turned out to be.

It would seem that Dion, the self proclaimed hero and environmental champion, either has no clue about CO2 and Norway, or he does know and just decided to lie to the nation and hope nobody was paying attention. It is really too bad for old Stephane that some people were.
HT CBL

In a nutshell Dion stated that achieving the now impossible to achieve Kyoto targets would not be a burden on the economy but rather a boom for it, sort of rephrasing his earlier mega tonnes of money BS. When asked to give an example of another resource based (oil) economy the intellectual named Norway, a country that has increased it's emissions by 25% since 1990 and is now over it's goals by more than 30%.

How could Dion, a so called academic be this wrong with the facts on an issue that he claims is so important to him?

He didn't know and made it up or he did know and just lied about it. Either way he looks like a fool. Are you Liberals really sure that this is the guy you want to go to the polls with whenever the Liberals stop "postponing" the election? Because if what he said during the interview is any indication of what he is going to say during an election campaign, you had better start looking for a good venue for the next LPC leadership convention soon.


While we are on the topic of making stuff up, I see Dion again tried to smear the PM with a quote taken completely out of context, the 'so called greenhouse gases' quote. This originally came about when PM Harper was asked about how the governments environment plan differed from the Liberals plan: . "As we implement our clean-air agenda, the focus is a little different than the other parties. They focus only on so-called greenhouse gases and ignored smog entirely." He was speaking about smog and air pollution being included in the CPC plan, not about whether or not GHG were real or not. BTW these 4 words are very often used by many others as well.


So either Dion was listening to the likes of Cherniak who tried to run with the smear and does not know the true nature of the quote(that might explain the need for a new communications director for the LPC) or he does know and chose to use it anyway in an effort to deceive for political gain. Again, either way it does not look good on Dion with his promise to run a clean campaign.

Not that you can ever believe any Liberal promise, campaign or otherwise, but this stuff is ridiculous.


I also wanted to get into how the Liberals can possibly reconcile their ideas that reducing CO2 will benefit the economy, while at the same time not wanting to put the 'economic burden' of reducing CO2 on 'so called' developing countries such as China and India, but my time is short. Though somehow I am sure there will be more than a few opportunities to do so in the next few months as Liberals never seem to think anybody notices these contradictions in their policies.

Update from the comments: Norway's emissions raise more than 80% not 30%.
In graphic form at CBL

And now in video, also courtesy of Canadian Blue Lemons



.

Dion's best line of the week.

"It was an attempt of sabotage," Dion said. "Fortunately, nobody in the world knew who was Jack Layton."

This from a speech to a gathering of LPC Riding Presidents in Montreal on the weekend as Dion expressed distaste for the partisan conduct of NDP Leader Jack Layton, who showed up at a Montreal climate change conference chaired by Dion in 2005 and predicted the conference would fail due to Canada's lack of credibility on the issue.

Funny coming from a man who is going to Bali, uninvited to scream @ anyone who will listen to him about Canada's 'lack of credibility' on the issue. Fortunately for us, few will know who he is, but somehow I do expect Dion will get much more press in Bali than old Jack did when the conference was held in Canada. Why is that?

Kevin Rudd's position on a post Kyoto agreement

Australian Labor Party leader and newly elected PM Kevin Rudd: "I have made absolutely clear that we would need to see clear-cut commitments from the major emitters from the developing world for us to become party to that agreement" Source

Sounds an awful lot like the position of PM Harper doesn't it?




While I am on the subject, how is it that liberals and other assorted lefties are so adamant that Canada, even if other countries like China and India do not do their fair share, must shoulder the burden on climate change no matter what the consequences?

Compare that to Afghanistan where liberal logic dictates that we must abandon our task because we are doing more than other countries? Confused? I think the left are as well, but that has never stopped them before.

Environmental Sustainability and Me.

Yesterday over at Exactly Right, I read that Ontario is going to ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs by the year 2012 in an effort to help save energy, and today I see that the feds have announced a similar plan.

With all the environmental talk that has been coming at me from all sides and sources as of late, and perhaps being a wee bit inspired by Stephane Dion's much repeated words about how money can be made off of a green environment; reading the above stories about the proposed ban has caused a light bulb to go on in my head.

Effective 2012, I am going into the incandescent light bulb black market. It will be a few years before it really gets going but like the shrewd capitalist I am, I will start marketing immediately.

----

Do you have a chandelier?

A flood light in your yard, or even a flashlight?

Have you been losing sleep about how Kim Mitchell will light his patio lanterns after the ban?

Well worry no more good people of Canada, because the Ardvark will soon be able to help you deal with this draconian ban on Thomas Edison's greatest gift to all humanity. We care not for authority or rules, we just want the good people of this country to be able to bask in the glow that is incandescent light. Coming soon to a back alley or parking lot near you!!

Watch this space for details.



Ardvark
Environmental and economic sustainability are not just slogans of the Liberals, they are what I am all about and I have the record to prove it.

Act now and Ill throw in some social justice for no charge.

From the Anthill : February 18th, 2007

Time for a catch up post on recent events.

Why all the fuss about Liberal appointed CDS General Hillier bringing up the "decade of darkness" again?

This is not the first time he has used that line in a speech, it is the truth (Liberals all failed history), and just a few months ago PM Harper was being accused of muzzling Gen. Hillier and now when the General speaks out, it becomes another Liberal created imaginary crisis which they would solve if only they were back in power. For heavens sake, please think of Susan Delacourt and her laying awake at nights thinking about those soldiers with guns in our streets, and have some compassion.

Thanks Denis Coderre; you have brought forward a quote by the general that would have otherwise gone unnoticed and not only exposed your partys, as well as your own weaknesses on this issue, but have given the Conservatives a big boost in one of their bread and butter issues. Some free advice for the Liberals:All the spin in the world won't ever make the Liberals look like they are friends of the Canadian Military, that horse left the barn long ago.

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Speaking of Denis Coderre; he is but one Liberal who sits on the HUMA Committee, which is dealing with the Bloc Quebecois sponsored Bill C-257. This nightmare of a bill has a chance of passing if enough Liberals support it. I would normally not be worried about such a flawed piece of legislation passing because the Liberals have twice voted down similar legislation in the past, but watching Dion flip flop from old Liberal positions and ideas to those of the far left, I am beginning to become a bit more concerned.

My original post on 257.

The NCC has some good stuff up as well.

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Dion looks to be flip flopping on the Liberals own anti terror legislation, which is causing some degree of problems among the few Liberals left who are not totally Left. I don't agree with Anne McLellan often, but in this case I agree that she is correct when she said this:
"After 9/11, we did not actually believe we were going to have to deal with homegrown terrorists." "The situation today is, if anything, more dangerous and more complex and the powers have never been abused, so why would you take these tools away from law enforcement?"

Do not forget that Dion himself voted for this legislation in 2001. Leadership at work, Dion style.

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Opposition parties pushed through legislation on Wednesday that requires the Conservative government to respect Canada's commitments under the Kyoto accord. There is just so much wrong with this legislation that I am astounded that Dion could think that Canadians stupid enough to buy into this cheap political trick.

I may be wrong, but I have not seen 1 single MSM organization that supported this move by Dion, as the reality of the situation makes the legislation all but impossible to accomplish (something which Dion HAS admitted himself in the past). This is but one example from the Toronto Star, which judging from the negative stories they have been writing about Mr.Dion lately, that I am beginning to get them confused with the Toronto Sun.
"There is a widespread consensus – stretching way beyond Conservative ranks – that Canada cannot even come close to meeting its Kyoto greenhouse emission reduction objectives in time for the 2012 deadline without launching a major offensive against the energy industries of provinces such as Alberta, and/or inflicting a crippling hit to the already flagging auto industry in Ontario, and/or diverting a debilitating amount of federal resources to a single cause."

Dion puts another nail in his political coffin and Iggy, Rae, Manley and perhaps a few others are probably out buying new black suits in anticipation of the funeral.

Kyoto compliance and how I now get a good nights sleep.

Bumped up to the top so others can be as green as me; with an update at the bottom on how we can do this together.

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I am proud to announce to the world that I am now in 100% compliance with the Kyoto Accords. Ok, I haven't walked down to the corner to finish off my plan just yet, because it is currently too cold outside, but it is the first thing that I plan to do in the morning after breakfast.

It took a many days of hard work and the use of some very complicated graphs, charts and formulae to arrive at my solution, but let me tell you that the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders and all the difficult work as been worth it as I have been able to reach the summit of Kyoto compliance. This is big. This is something that none of the party leaders, including Stephane Dion has been able to do, and I doubt even 1% of the Canadian population can make claim to being my partner in compliance. This is going to allow me to get a good nights sleep, while the rest of you suckers bicker amongst yourselves over who is more green. This will allow myself to declare that I am more green than you!

I can hear everybody out there asking as they read this; "How did you do it Ardvark?" and "How can we do the same thing, and be in compliance with Kyoto?"

I will let you all in on it in a minute, but before I do I have to again state that the tough decisions that will be required of you to meet what is spelled out in Kyoto are not going to be easy, but in the end it will all be worth the effort. The environment is worth it, and Kyoto can help you to meet your international obligations.

Here is how I did it in easy to follow point form.

1. I took an exhaustive look at everything I was doing that was producing green house gases and made a list of everything involved. eg. Furnace, Car, Breathing, Electrical use (sub divided by device), etc.

2. I looked at the list and prioritized the importance of each item and evaluated their need in my life. eg. Breathing = good #1, ... , 2000 watt Gas powered generator to power patio lanterns while camping = bad # 2845, etc

3. I eliminated what I really did not need from the list, and took a hard look at what I did need.

4. I realized that there is no way in hell that I could continue to live in Edmonton with it's climate or continue to make a living to provide for my family and reach the goals that the Liberals signed us up for with Kyoto.

5. I Grabbed an envelope, addressed it to V. Putin, and stuffed in a nice fat cheque.

6. And finally I cracked open a beer and was able to relax knowing that I had done my part to save the world through Kyoto for only a small amount of cash.

There you have it; I had achieved compliance with the Kyoto Accord!

I feel so good right now that I think I will crank up the furnace a degree or 2 and perhaps tomorrow I will drive to the corner to mail off that envelope to Russia instead of walking. What a wonderful world we live in when the worlds major environmental action plan allows you to buy your way out guilt free without actually doing anything for the environment.

I will definitely sleep easier knowing I have done my part.


Al

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Update: Since I have made my conversion to Kyoto I have been racking my brain as to how I can help others to achieve ultimate greenness, and I think I have come up with an idea.

In the spirit of all the great UN programs, like oil for food, I propose that you send your Kyoto compliance payments to myself * and I will make sure that I get them to the right place using the greenest ways possible.

Address for payments to follow.

Thank you for being green.


* Disclaimer: Subject to a liberal handling fee that will guarantee I really will sleep better at night. Most forms of payment, including Paypal, accepted. Bags of cash will be accepted as long as it is in small bills. Livestock may be considered in lieu of cash but please, no goats. Limited time offer, see your dealer for details. Not responsible if Russia uses the money to build weapons systems to sell to Iran. Caution Kyoto is larger than it appears in your rear view mirror. People named Brent need not apply. Offer void where prohibited by law and in Quebec ( they never get to do anything fun). Please allow 30 days for delivery, and if it doesn't arrive.....blame the goat.