Remembrance Day

How to fix the House of Commons

It's rather easy, actually:

Change the Seating Plan

The reason we have the government side separated from the opposition is simply to prevent violence. The sides in the British house are apparently two sword lengths apart for the obvious reason that swords mixed with tempers was considered a bad idea. Today I doubt anyone expects the HoC to devolve into a Taiwanese style brawl. I think that if we want to make the various parties work together in more collegial style then we shouldn't seat by party. I think we should seat the leaders together and then randomly seat everyone else. I think it would be a lot harder to act like an ass, to heckle, or to ask truly stupid questions, when you aren't surrounded by your own partisans.

Kady O'Malley has a drink with Galactus

Kady O'Malley is in a froth because people, shockingly, sign online petitions with false names. How ironic that she herself sat down for a beer with the mighty Galactus, destroyer of petitions! Of course, she probably knows Galactus by his more Earthly name, Michael J. Murphy, sycophant and kiss-ass extraordinaire. Here's his take on their relationship:

Later, I spent a very enjoyable and informative couple of hours drinking alcohol with Macleans Magazine's blogging superstar Kady O'Malley. It will probably take a week to process all the political info I picked up during that time.

As an aside, Ms. O'Malley is ultra-cool, immensely charming, but really, really tiny. Thankfully, I didn't try to hit on her or wear a lampshade or anything stupid like that.

Of course, this is serious business. Falsifying names on an online petition is OK if your alter-ego is some comic book goober and you attack the right people but this is different! This is an American lobby group attempting to influence the decisions of a branch of the Canadian government. You might think that is a bad thing but Ms. O'Malley assures me it is only bad when evil Americans like the NRA do it. At least I think that email was from Kady, but who knows these days? Maybe it was from Galactus' buddy The Silver Surfer...

The Trench Coat Ban

Gun control has been an abject failure as the examples of Kimveer Gill, Valeri Fabrikant, Marc Lepine, Denis Lortie have so aptly shown. Each shooting occurred after Canada introduced some new restrictive Gun controls:
(from Wikipedia)

• Regulation in 1934 required the registration of handguns with records identifying the owner, the owner's address and the firearm
• Automatic weapons were added to the category of firearms that had to be registered in 1951.
• In 1969, Bill C-150 created categories of “non-restricted,” “restricted” and “prohibited” weapons. Police were also given preventive powers of search and seizure by judicial warrant if they had grounds to believe that weapons that belonged to an individual endangered the safety of society
• In 1977, Bill C-51 required Firearms Acquisition Certificates (FACs) for the acquisition (but not possession) of all firearms and introduced controls on the selling of ammunition. FAC applicants were required to pass a basic criminal record check before being issued an FAC. Fully automatic weapons were also prohibited
• In 1991, Bill C-17 tightened up restrictions and established controls on any firearms that had a military or paramilitary appearance. Legislation also made changes to the FAC system. FAC applicants were now required to pass a firearms safety course, pass a more thorough background check, and wait a minimum of 28 days after applying for an FAC before being issued one. Finally in addition to the above changes, laws were put into place that restricted ownership of high capacity magazines, limiting handguns to 10 rounds and most semi-automatic rifles to 5. The restrictions did not cover rimfire rifles or manual (e.g., bolt action rifles). Provinces have the choice to opt-out of this regulation.
• In 1995, Bill C-68 introduced new, stricter, gun control legislation. The current legislation provides harsher penalties for crimes involving firearm use, licences to possess and acquire firearms, and registration of all firearms, including shotguns and rifles.

Controlling guns just isn’t the answer. The issue is the concealment of weapons. The first gun laws restricted pistols because they are too easy to conceal and since then each of the mass shootings in Canada has involved the use of long guns of some sort or another. Today’s gun laws continue the attempt to restrict the use of concealable weapons through the use of barrel length restrictions and over-all-length restrictions. These have made it harder and harder for mass killers to accomplish their goals but further restrictions are likely to impact legitimate gun users without further deterring the mass killer. Still, we must try!

And so I propose the ultimate solution to the concealed weapon dilemma:

The Trench Coat Ban!

Without the long-coat to conceal their weapons of choice mass killers could not carry powerful guns to their targets. And there is simply no need in a modern, Western country for trench coats. After all, we no longer have trenches, and the flimsy excuse that they are dual purpose rain coats cannot be allowed to sway us from the goal of gun safety. Certainly an outright ban may be a bit harsh so I propose, instead, a long-coat registry with strict screening and licensing requirements of long coats in the restricted category, mid-length-type coats (full length coats will be prohibited with no grandfathering). Non-restricted coats must end at the hips thereby denying the ability to conceal long guns. In this way we can continue on the road to safe, secure Canada.

Ps. What is it with all the mass shootings in Quebec?

Anti-Semitism

Richard Warman and Warren Kinsella seem to think Antisemitism, Judenhaas, is eight or nine white supremacists with grade school educations posting shit on the Internet. It's not.

Yesterday I went to the park with my son. He's Chinese. I'm not. Because of that I am mindful of how easy it is to criticize "the Chinese", or more specifically the government of mainland China, and how the word "Chinese" makes it hard to distinguish whether I am talking about a government or all Chinese people. As Kinsella knows it's awfully easy to be offensive when talking about the people, the government, or the food. So I am careful.

Anyway, back to the park. My son was playing on the playground while some older kids, teenagers, were hanging out near the swings. I was shocked to here the oldest of the group give the younger a primer on "the Jews", as he put it. He didn't like Jews because "they think they're better than us". So where does a kid get an idea like that? The answer is rather easy, actually, he gets it from the TV, from his parents, from teachers in school, he gets everywhere that people criticize Israel and make no effort to ensure that they distinguish between the state and the race. The real problem is that most of the criticism of Israel isn't meant to distinguish between them. I believe that the majority of that criticism IS meant to be criticism of Jews in general.

So how did it happen? Where did all the support for the plucky upstarts who held off the combined power of all the Arab nations go? It went away when the PLO and Arabs were able to get positive press coverage, when people began to see Palestinian Arabs as the underdogs. The Israelis had the bad luck to win too much, I guess. We can see it in the press coverage of the "freedom flotilla". Israeli soldiers boarded the ship armed with paintball guns and were met with knives, and metal poles. They were ambushed and they again had the misfortune to win. Their commander was stabbed, tossed over a railing, disemboweled, and then walked down a deck before his captors were shot. None of this has been reported widely. Instead we get useful idiots like Kevin Neish, who saw Israeli soldiers captured and taken below decks and still seems to think he was part of a non-violent protest. We get declarations about piracy and International law from people who don't know the law or are willfully lying, all unchallenged by our media.

I see it in our schools when teachers, mostly leftish leaning as they are, casually trash the US in front of students. Schools are terribly insular environments and it is easy for teachers to think their world view is acceptable because their peers don't challenge them. My brother had to take his teenage daughter aside after she spewed some incredibly anti-American crap and explain to her that her teachers were wrong and that her views were unacceptable.

And that brings me to the real problem with the jihad against neo-Nazis: It's a distraction form the real threat to Jews. No one will ever listen to the rantings of the skinheads but they will listen to the more subtle bigotries of their teacher, their parents, and the media. The left in this country and across the globe has bought into the working class under dog myths built about Palestinian Arabs. The left has become the real threat to Jews worldwide and I can only hope that the outing of people like Helen Thomas and Libby Davies will open some eyes to the damage closet-Judenhaas can do to our children. I only wish I had said something to that kid but I doubt it would have helped.

An update: The children of Germany are as bad. Just go home to Germany says Helen Thomas. Right.