The Sarah Palin Enigma

If there’s one thing that can be said about Sarah Palin, it’s that nobody really knows why she suddenly announced her resignation as Governor of Alaska with a full 18 months left in her first term except for her. Some have said it’s based on her intent to focus on running for the 2012 presidential election, although that seems a little premature. Mitt Romney, for instance, stepped down as governor of Massachusetts in February of 2007 in preparation for his shot at the Presidency. Mike Huckabee stepped down as Governor of Arkansas around the same time. By contrast, the proper time for Sarah Palin to focus on her run for the Presidency would be early 2011, long after her term would have ended in Alaska.

There have been many attributions to the media as being Sarah Palin’s reason for resignation. Conservative faithful say that she was hounded by them, harassed long after she stepped from the presidential spotlight, and made the brunt of constant jokes about her family from liberals. That part is true enough. Even as she announced her withdrawal from Alaskan politics to begin some new, ambiguous journey, her detractors derided her with time-tested jokes about her family.

But people are still clearly confused about why she chose to leave office, except that we know she said she has been motivated by a “higher calling”. In her resignation speech, she said that she didn’t want to spend the last 18 months of her term as a “lame duck” governor, saying that some politicians have a tendency to “milk it”, and that she didn’t want to cost the taxpayers of Alaska unnecessary money and expenses. Not to overstate the obvious, but it doesn’t make any sense to say with nearly half of her term left in office, that she would be merely coasting along as an ineffective leader. Indeed, many conservatives in America widely regarded her position as being one that still gave her the kind of credibility and authority needed to speak to issues of an important nature. Indeed, after watching the press conference, one is left wondering whether this is a Sarah Palin moving on to bigger and better, or preparing to fade to black.

If it is the latter hope, then former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove is perplexed by the move. Calling it “risky”, he said that stepping down from office takes away a platform for controlling the agenda and message.

“The media, if she wants to run for president, is going to be following her for the next 3½ years,” said Rove, who called the move unclear and therefore a potentially harmful strategy for a politician. “Effective strategies in politics are ones that are so clear and obvious that people can grasp. … It’s not clear what she’s doing and why.”

Worse than the uncertainty of the reasons for her decision, it gives her opponents the opportunity to call her a “quitter”. Mike Huckabee also said that her resignation won’t end the media hounding. If the perception is that she was “chased” out of office, it will hurt her credibility for being able to hold on to a higher office. Meanwhile Republican strategist Ed Rollins also agrees that resigning does not automatically mean she’s headed for a 2012 run for office. Citing other governors who have aims at the White House, he said that the “lame duck” excuse doesn’t fly in conservative circles, and will damage her career. “She didn’t finish the job.”

“The new (Alaska) governor, the legislature will move right beyond her,” Rollins asserted, “and I think, to a certain extent, she certainly will have a voice among conservatives, as a viable, political person who’s gonna help the Republican party, (but) I don’t think she can do it as effectively if you’re not a governor.”

[...]

“Every step from here on out has to be one that has a strategy to it,” Rollins said. “This is tactical. She got up (Friday), went out, surprised the political world – which you shouldn’t do – surprised the media world – which you shouldn’t do – and at the end of the day, no one knows why. She’s gotta go answer all the questions and not run away from them: ‘Here’s why I did it, it was for my family, it was for this, and for that reason.’ But the idea, it’s speculation, ‘I’m gonna run for president, I can do it more effectively from outside,’ is not true.”

The fact is that when John McCain picked her for a running mate for 2008, she skyrocketed into the conservative spotlight, but has yet to earn the kind of accolades she’s received from her supporters. That she’s suffered undue scorn and hatred from her opponents, including attacks against her family, is certainly something that must have been difficult on her. The challenge then, is to be able to prove herself as someone able to rise above it all, and come out on top as a champion. Because the fact is that nobody respects a quitter.

Related

Fox News Liz Trotta with some strong words for Palin.

Canada A Compartmentalized Nation

The Toronto Sun has an article today lamenting the flaws in multiculturalism as being one that creates “ethnic ghettos”, instead of the benefits that would come from the mixing of cultures in true “diversity”. “If ever all these ethnic groups mingle into a single entity”, the writer opines, then Canada would have created a “miracle race”. Unfortunately, the scenario in Canada’s big cities appear to show more of a compartmentalized nation, and the rapid ghettoization is clear in large cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. It isn’t real diversity, except perhaps in glowing governmental brochures and high school essays. No, what we are witnessing is the emergence of vast self-contained communities which survive independent from Canadian culture at all. Communities so large that their isolation is self-sustaining because of the relative autonomy they have, represented by their politically elected ethnic leaders, sustained by their ethnic economy servicing others like them, and isolated by a need to keep together in these pockets throughout Canada.

Was this piece written by a white Canadian of European ancestry lamenting the gradual shift to a mosaic of cultures too different from his own to understand? An intolerant bigot, to be written off as nobody more than another standing in the way of the inevitable changes of our demography?

It would be too easy if it were so. But unfortunately for those kind of critics, the article was written by Gurmukh Singh, a person belonging to one of the ethnic groups he speaks about in his article. The problem, he says, is the lack of interaction between cultures, not just between immigrant clusters and Canadians, but between each cluster:

The Chinese of Markham have little interaction with the Indians of Brampton or the Pakistanis of Mississauga or the Sri Lankans of Scarborough or the Somalis of Islington.

Forget about the mainstream white society. These ethnic groups have little to do with them.

As mentioned earlier, there are no compulsions for people in these ethnic enclaves to leave their comfort zones. In addition, the Canadian government has given them enough incentives to stay in their ghettos with a beautiful thing called multiculturalism.

This well-meaning policy may have been aimed at helping newcomers preserve their language, religious traditions and culture, but it seems to have served the opposite purpose.

Basically this policy says: Be the way you are, and stay in your ghetto. Bluntly speaking, it breeds isolation.

Gurmukh Singh goes on to lament that this isolation is propped up by politicians who understand that they can target an entire voting bloc by pandering to isolationist policies. These liberal-style ethnic donations aren’t just reserved for the Chretien-Martin years, but have infiltrated the Conservative stratagem. And the main argument for immigrant communities, that their children will eventually integrate and the problem will be solved, is a fallacy in the face of the fact that Canada’s record immigration numbers, accomplished under a Conservative banner, replenish the numbers of immigrants leaving the ghettos with new ones. Meaning that there is a permanent state of ghettos in Canada that are completely isolated from everybody else.

Not only does isolation create a problem within Canadian cohesiveness, but as Mr.Singh explains in his article, Toronto winds up becoming the battlegrounds for battles best left on the shores of the countries they abandoned. The Tamil Tiger demonstrations in Ottawa and Toronto this spring are a perfect example of it.

This realization of the failings of Canada’s multiculturalism and immigration comes at a time when a Canadian think-tank has said that immigration is not the answer to our future problems. In short, Canadians need to start having children, not outsourcing our population growth to new immigrants who will merely fill ethnic communities. A study by the C.D. Howe Institute found that even vast increases of immigrants has little effect on the age dilemma facing Canadians from the baby boomer generation retirement as our demographics shift to an aged nation. What this ultimately means is that the more we outsource our population growth, the less sustainable our social security will be in the future. A change in our thinking about immigration could be necessary in a very short time.

Which Obama Do You Prefer?

Mark Fiore, an American liberal cartoonist who gave the Bush administration a pretty hard time with his cutesy-wutesy cartoons featuring:

Buster Bunker The Friendly Nuclear Bomb
Knuckles The Executioner
Flamey McGassy
Ouchie the talking bandaid
Captain Killmore
Snuggly the Security Teddy Bear
Right-wing Ralphie
and Buzzie the Fly

… has paid homage to Barack Obama’s flippity-flops with a caterpillar [Fuzzie the conciliation caterpillar] in an extra cutesy voiceover:

Helping The Children Of Canada’s Fallen Soldiers

Perhaps the attrition rate in the Armed Forces would drop if there was a greater appreciation for their sacrifices, and they knew their families would be well taken care of in the worst case scenario. One such idea to help families of soldiers is being launched this September after Kevin Reed, a Toronto-area businessman who came up with the idea of getting Universities in Canada to offer free tuition to the children of fallen soldiers soldiers. So far four Universities are offering to cover the cost of tuition for the children of soldiers killed in service under “Project Hero”. They will be be available at Memorial University in Newfoundland, the University of Ottawa, the University of Windsor and the University of Calgary, and will cover four years:

“It’s the least we can do to express our respect and gratitude to members of our armed services who put their lives on the line for Canada everyday,” Allan Rock, the president of the University of Ottawa, told CTV News Channel Tuesday.

“At the university we feel this is a very tangible way to say to the families of the people that are serving for Canada, that we value their contribution and we want to do something to demonstrate that gratitude.”

He said that first-year residence fees would also be waived for those eligible.

“Hopefully it will take some pressure off families and reduce pressure,” he said.

The scholarships were launched by retired general Rick Hiller, who is now serving as chancellor of Memorial University in his native Newfoundland.

Well, they did say that Rick Hillier is a soldier’s soldier.

As for appreciating our soldier’s, you’ve heard of the Victoria Cross, given for valour in combat and named after the Queen of England. The VC was first introduced on in 1856 by Queen Victoria to reward acts of valour during the Crimean War, and is the highest military honour possible. There have only been 17 VC medals awarded since the Second World War.

Now Great Britain is launching a new medal, this time from Queen Elizabeth II, and will be called the Elizabeth Cross. It will be available to the relatives of all those killed in conflicts since the end of World War II. Canada has it’s own version of the Victoria Cross. Perhaps it would be a good idea to offer the Elizabeth Cross in Canada in keeping with our commonwealth traditions and our sovereign.

Friday Photography

This is a segment I began last November, and you can view 31 previous weeks of incredible images by clicking on the wordpress tag. Each week I seek out 8 images of beauty, mainly of the natural world, to post them up for your enjoyment. The main thing I enjoy about Friday Photography isn’t necessarily the photographs themselves, but the journey to a new and strange place, to visit and see things that my own eyes will probably never experience. To have the visual stimulant of colour, hue, and light for the eyes. Whether the images are manipulated is less important to me than how they make me feel.

Location: Na Pali Coast, Kauai, Hawaii. Photographer: Markus Schippel

Location: Lime Tree Avenue, Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire, Great Britain. Photographer: Graham Melbourne

Location: Lyato, Bulgaria. Photographer: Joro Boev

Location: Italian Alps

Location: Laurel Mountain by Convict Lake, High Sierras, California. Photographer: Bill Wight

Location: Richmond, British Columbia. Photographer: Erich J. Harvey

The Dehumanizing Medium Of The Internet

It seems rather counter-intuitive to the modern concept that the wired world connects more people than ever before, that it could also be one of the most disconnecting links to our humanity. As written by Jason Calacanis in his article, The End of Empathy, the emotional cues of face-to-face interaction are lost on the internet, leading to what he calls “Internet Asperger’s Syndrome (IAS)”. In this syndrome, people on the internet stop perceiving the basic human goodness in people, and what develops is a decline of empathy, followed ultimately by the worst aspects of humanity: hatred, envy, and greed. Since individuals are representative only by the non-emotive expressions of words and avatars, people on the internet are reduced to nothing more than objects. The pursuit of attention on the internet becomes of foremost concern that is fed by the human desire for higher visitor stats, more Twitter followers, more Facebook friends. While social networking is considered one of the greatest tools of business for the modern e-commerce age, it has also reduced human interactivity to that of short exchanges of meaningless banter.

In truth, the anonymity of the internet has enabled people to abandon the individualistic life they lead in the “real world”, and pursue the various personas, and ideas that they can’t, or perhaps won’t, try outside the wired world. Although anonymity can be a means of shielding the public from dehumanizing the individual, it is not an end to the random attacks that constitute the hedonistic internet. I write a blog mainly for my own enjoyment, and receiving comments and feedback from it is a part of that enjoyment. Still, there have been times when I’ve found it necessary to withdraw, because of being emotionally hurt by the words of seemingly emotionless entities.

At times my writing has been described as “pedestrian”, weak, unimaginative, lacking in both formal structure and style. Criticizing my writing is perhaps the easiest way to hurt me, and a thousand comments of praise from individuals who visit here often can be overruled by one insensitive remark from somebody I’ve never heard of. Known as “drivebys”, these anonymous entities often visit a blog and write nothing more than a vicious insult, or a take a threatening tone. A sudden visit by one of these people can leave one feeling cold, shocked, disconnected from the enjoyment that is participating in the interactivity with other people.

As Jason Calacanis describes in his article, this small act can be one that destroys the very will to continue on:

As you know, I moved to this email newsletter to get away from the IAS factor on blogs. It worked for the first four months, but last month, someone flamed me, calling me an idiot and my missive “garbage.” It was the first time any one of the 12,000 or so people on the list ever flamed me.

Now, I consider myself a fairly thick-skinned, tough person, but I realized that I had not emailed you in a month, and that it was probably because of that short email. The 12k suffered due to a three sentence flame by just one person, probably suffering from IAS.

Perhaps the worst-kept secret I have is that my writing name isn’t my first name. I chose my middle name specifically because of a historically relevant interaction I had with a deranged individual on the internet. While I’ve been mocked by many for this, having my name “scare-quoted” by detractors, there is a very real and pragmatic reason for using my middle name. A few years ago when I was writing opinion pieces on the internet under my given name, without any shielding whatsoever from the entities that ebb and flow in the internet stream, I received some interest from a particular individual who shared my opinions on immigration. What began as a commonality in one political position led to his wanting me to read “the truth” about the holocaust and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Realizing I was dealing with a neo-Nazi, I began to put some distance between myself and this person, but I rather unwisely publicly rebuked him in a forum. The next thing I knew, he was calling my house.

I don’t know if you’ve ever known the fear of having the shroud of your virtual world torn from your eyes, only to realize there are real-life implications to your words. The man on the phone with me was threatening, hostile, frightening. The mention of a gun was used, and the suggestion that my home really wasn’t that far from his.

Shortly after I stopped writing. I stopped participating in the internet medium while I sought to absorb the consequences of interacting with these faceless denizens of the world wide web. Because I enjoy writing, I returned, but only under a new shield of protection. I now began to choose my words carefully, my associations even more so. I sought to engage in “friendly” exchanges and a debate of ideas with people, but never to expose myself to a point where I would put myself or my family in danger. Even so, I’ve been caught up in pointless arguments and countless encounters with people who take the electronic manifestation of my intellectual presence in this universe, and wrap it neatly into a condescending and belittling remark that seeks to destroy my emotional confidence. In internet parlance, it’s called having a “thick-skin”.

Jason Calacanis describes the encounters he often has with those who have made disparaging remarks about him in the wired world, back in the world of flesh and blood:

I’ve had a couple of folks introduce themselves to me in the past couple of years and say something to the effect of “Oh, I wrote this horrible thing about you but I didn’t really mean it. I really respect your work.” They are normally very uncomfortable when this happens. Sometimes, they are even shaking and stuttering. I typically pretend I don’t know what they’re talking about and tell them it doesn’t matter–a complete lie. Typically, I know exactly what they said, because you remember when folks say something nasty. I’ve come to the conclusion that all I can do is forgive them and move on.

The problem with the dehumanizing aspect of IAS is that people tend to forget there is a real, thinking, caring human being behind the pixels. While it may seem entertaining to refer to people in derogatory terms, with invective and pejoratives that are laced with cruelty, such words rarely fail to infect the psyche of the person inflicting them. Since people are objectified on the internet, it somehow seems valid to attack the object of scorn with ridicule. But by turning people into neat categorically-incompatible objects that are to be treated with contempt, we’re subconsciously teaching ourselves that it’s okay to identify as aggressive, psychologically violent behaviours. Behaviours which, logically, will manifest themselves in the real world, just as it did during the objectification of women in the past.

I believe that this is partly what separates political blogs into the echo chambers in which they generally reside. The resultant exchanges of counter-partisan debate inevitably devolves into a complete lack of empathy for the opponent. As humanity is lost, that connection in the physical world that makes us more than just a sentient species, the breakdown of communication is based upon inflicting psychological warfare. In this war, as in others in the real world, one cannot escape without casualties. The engagement of psychological warfare cannot be waged without damage to one’s, for lack of a better term, soul.

An Unfortunate Linguistic Concern

Russian Energy giant Gazprom is starting a $2.5 billion international venture in Nigeria, after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Nigerian counterpart Umaru Yar’Adua agreed to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Africa. The amalgamation of the name of the country and the company, however, has raised some eyebrows. The brand name for this venture is the concatenation of the first two letters in “Nigeria” and the first three letters in the Russian company “Gazprom”. The pronunciation is “Nye-gaz”, but any phonetic reading of the following word would likely create a different sound: Nigaz.

As amusing as this might be to English readers, the mistake is a genuine one. The term is a slang word in the American black lexicon, and is actually a synonym for a “friend”, despite the etymological origins of the racist term. Usually spelled with a double-g, “Niggaz” is a popular rap and hip hop word used exclusively by black artists; white rappers like Eminem won’t use it. It has, nevertheless, been mocked and spoofed, most memorably by Howard Stern, because of the transference of the term into the mainstream popular culture vernacular. These days the usage is probably most common, ironically, by white suburban adolescents as the term loses avant guard appeal in the hip hop genre.

Brand blunders, says Allen Adamson, managing director of brand consulting firm Landor Associates in New York, is more common in the wired world, “where news travels like lightning across the Web, when you stub your toe, everyone knows about it. Nothing travels faster than when a big company does something silly or inappropriate. People love to share those types of stories.” This raises the question of whether brands should be screened both culturally and linguistically to avoid any confusion. Nevertheless, not many Russians or Nigerians really care much whether the name is synonymous with a black gangster rapper:

One Nigerian in Lagos said: “White people are making too much of this.

“As long as the Russians pay us, they can call it what they like.”

Iran Spins Murder Of Neda Soltan

The murderous regime that took the life of Neda Soltan, a young woman who has become the symbol for the movement to force a fair and open reelection, has developed an interesting way to deal with the backlash. “We didn’t do it.” I said it was interesting. I didn’t say it was original:

But, according to Iran’s Press TV, police chief Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqadam declared Wednesday that the shooting was a “prearranged scenario” — a “premeditated act of murder” that could not have been committed by Iranian police.

The White House called that allegation part of Iran’s “ongoing campaign of misinformation” about the country’s widely-disputed June 12 presidential elections, which returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office and sent hundreds of thousands into the streets in fury over what they claim was a stolen election.

“I think the notion that the death of an innocent woman would be staged is — even with them — it’s shocking,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.

[...]

“They cannot deny [Soltan's killing] anymore, so they are trying to fabricate a scenario in which they are not accountable and Ahmadinejad now becomes someone who is seeking the truth,” said Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Yes, the inquisitive Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched an investigation into the “suspicious” nature of the shooting, saying that anti-government elements were behind the murder. He’s suggested that the uprising is mainly based on the meddling of spies and foreigners. And now the government is, pathetically, saying that Neda was killed by her own people for propaganda purposes. The irony would be amusing, if it weren’t so staggeringly tragic.

The victims have been painted as the victimizers. And vice versa.

Required reading: A three-part series from Terry Glavin. The uprising changes everything.

Obama Forces Collectivism Down The American Gullet

In Barack Obama’s short seven months in power, he has rocked the United States with a series of very radical changes. The massive stimulus plan of over three quarters of a trillion dollars; the Waxman-Markey energy bill [read: carbon market/tax]; and now forced health care. Under one of the most sinister plans to be yet proposed by a government, Senate Democrats would fine Americans who refuse to buy medical coverage with penalties of up to $1,000. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that these fines would raise $36 billion in revenue over the next decade. Individuals who refuse, or can’t afford coverage, would be slapped with the penalty, with harsher ones for families who refuse.

The change is a marked one from the campaign trail that Barack Obama travelled down as Senator. During his battle against Hillary Clinton’s proposal to resort to penalties in order to achieve universal health care, he attacked his opponent:

“You can mandate it but there will still be people who can’t afford it. And if they can’t afford it, what are you going to fine them? Are you going to garnish their wages?” And in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Mrs. Clinton conceded that “we will have an enforcement mechanism” that might include “you know, going after people’s wages.”

In this new era of health care, Americans would be as much required to get coverage as they are to pay for auto insurance. While the Obama government has promised to subsidize lower-income families, it still sounds like being on the wrong end of the gun. Driving an automobile is ultimately a choice, and users are forced to buy insurance as a result of that choice. Imposing mandatory health care is akin to making financial decisions on behalf of the citizen. It’s a fundamental collectivist precept, that demands that all people pay for the welfare of all, rather than the individualistic policies that the nation has been known for.

That’s why they’re called “shared responsibility payments”, the notion being to move Americans into a style more like ours in Canada, where health care coverage is not an option that can be balanced in the fiscal household budget. President Obama claims that the move is based on reform that keep private insurance companies from refusing coverage for people with health issues, arguing a state-run insurance plan would help workers and families.

Challenging this notion is the state of U.S. Medicare, which has been a costly drain on the country. While the administration of public insurance health care in the U.S. is lower than private insurance, it doesn’t make public insurance the better option. Private coverage operates in the free market where rates are determined by the dynamics of supply, demand, and advertising. Medicare doesn’t require advertising, since it’s a solitary governmental insurance agency. But where public insurance fails is in the primary procurement of operating profits, a necessary incentive in any market-driven enterprise. Medicare doesn’t generate profits, yet it bears the financial risk for operating a program prone to great economic costs, which are then reflected in the burgeoning costs of the federal government. Universal health care is similarly bankrupting the government in Canada, with recent estimates placing the burden at $4,867 per person in 2007.

The greatest fear among those living in the U.S. who favour the free market is that it is yet another government program that will lead to a government monopoly. Universal health care carries the entire burden of risk, meaning that no matter what happens, nobody goes uncovered [a source of pride for Canadians]. But this guarantee artificially lower’s the plan’s capital reserve requirements, which would give an edge over private plans that no company could compete with. Beginning down this road really means the collectivization of health care into the universalist doctrine that is so limiting, and ultimately unaffordable, here in Canada.

Scratch An Arab Federation Vice President…

Tarek Fatah has the whole disgusting episode, complete with screen captures, while Barbara Kay vindicates Jason Kenney’s decision to cut these people off the public trough.

It would be nice to just chalk this up to the kind of insanity typical of the CAF, but then you get one of their sympathetic enablers in the very first comment on Tarek’s site: