The clock is ticking for Stéphane

It seems to be just a matter of time now before the Grits turf their hapless leader.

A movement to dump Stéphane Dion immediately has mushroomed within Liberal ranks, with former deputy prime minister John Manley calling for him to resign, and Grits from nearly every faction of the party exploring ways to pressure him to leave as early as next week.

Meanwhile, Michael Ignatieff, the front-runner to replace Mr. Dion, said the party is exploring ways to accelerate the choice of a new leader.

In an opinion piece published in The Globe and Mail Saturday, Mr. Manley calls for Mr. Dion to resign immediately so that a new leader can be chosen before Christmas.

Mr. Manley dumps cold water on the idea of a coalition with the NDP, arguing the Liberals must instead offer to co-operate with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to cope with the economic crisis, and prepare for an election in case he doesn't.

Manley also said that the "notion that the public would accept Stéphane Dion as prime minister, after having resoundingly rejected that possibility a few weeks earlier, was delusional at best" and...

Liberal MP Michael Ignatieff, a candidate to replace Stéphane Dion, says the party may decide to select a new leader much sooner than the scheduled May convention.

"I have been informed that discussions are ongoing," he told the Toronto Star when asked about expectations that Dion, the caretaker leader, might step down imminently.

We can expect Dion to be ousted as early as next week and an interim leader appointed by the Liberal caucus. An accelerated leadership convention could be held and a new leader in place by the time Parliament resumes on January 26th.

This should be the final nail in the coffin of Dion's ill advised coalition with the socialist and the bloc-head, Jack and Gilles.

Justice

Nevada style.... Video here.

Dion's days are numbered

As much as Conservatives would like to see the inept Stéphane Dion stay on as Liberal leader, it appears that his bumbling has led key Liberals to thinking it would be best for the party if M. Dion departed sooner rather than later.

Enter John Manley in this special comment in Saturday's Globe and Mail:

As a Liberal, I believe the first step for my party is to replace Stéphane Dion as leader with someone whose first job is to rebuild the Liberal Party, rather than leading a coalition with the NDP.

It seems clear that M. Dion is about to become the latest victim in this blood sport called politics. His desperation move to form a "coalition of the absurd" with his new best friends socialist Jack and Bloc-head Gilles and to then attempt to stage Canada's first ever coup d'etat has done far more damage to the Liberal Party brand than Liberals had anticipated. On the heels of their worst ever showing in the Oct 14th election under Dion's "leadership", the Liberals have now sunk even further in the polls.

As with the stock market, fearful Grits must be asking, "where's the bottom?"

Liberals don't like being on the outside looking in when it comes to government. They need to have their hands on the reigns. But Dion's latest shenanigans have done serious damage to the possibility of anything like that happening soon.

Liberals such as Manley know that their party needs to renew itself, to distance itself from both the socialist NDP and the separatist Bloc Quebecois. They know that the party needs to move itself back to the center. And they know it will be a process that will take some time.

And that process cannot begin until they rid themselves of their major problem.

2008 coldest year of the decade

But of course, it's no proof that global warming is over according to the Guardian.

This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.

Fred

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Jack and Gilles... and Dion

Jack and Gilles went up the Hill
To plot a scheme of takeover... (audio)


Little ditty about Jack and Dion,
2 Canadian kids growing up in fantasy land,
Jacky's gonna be a political star,
Dion a debutante back seat of Jacky's car.

With apologies to John Mellencamp.



Stephane Dion. Still not a leader.

EU Leadership: Vaclav Klaus

There may still be hope for the European Union.

Leadership: Far from an effete welfare statist, the EU's next president is a bold free-market advocate who suffers neither fools nor the usual Euro-nonsense. In short, just what the doctored ordered for a sclerotic continent.

...Klaus, a student of the great F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, is exactly the sort of leader that Europe has to have. The liberty-minded defender of free markets has the opportunity to rock the continent out of its self-inflicted economic malaise.

(...)

Unlike his critics, Klaus has some experience in reviving a mundane economy. After helping the former Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993 while serving as prime minister, he took the Republic from the depths of a former Soviet economy to where, according to the CIA, it is now considered "one of the most stable and prosperous of the post-Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe."

The Czech Republic's healthy per capita GDP of $24,500 far outpaces that of Ukraine, which has moved in almost the exact opposite direction.

(...)

Under Klaus' guidance, the Czech Republic became the first post-communist nation to be given an investment-grade credit rating by international credit institutions. Unemployment has been kept low and productivity is running high. This, from a state-owned economy in which the private sector produced a mere 3% of the national income in 1989.

Vaclav Klaus is just what Europe needs if there is any hope of the EU pulling itself out of its drift towards socialism. Klaus is right on track on another important front too.

More recently, Klaus has turned his attention to global warming, believing the environmental movement has become an assault on freedom, and to regulation, too much of which, he says, caused today's financial crisis.

Bravo Mr Klaus.

Blowing in the wind

Via the Telegraph:

The UK is at "real risk" of imminent power shortages as a result of attempts to shift to more environmentally friendly methods of electrictity production, a report has warned.

(...)

The shortage has been caused by the increase in the level of demand for energy combined with a growing tendency to build wind turbines, at the expense of other, more reliable, electricity sources, it says.

The report estimates that around one quarter of the UK's energy plant capacity will close by 2015 as the country struggles to balance its carbon emissions targets with production of new energy sources.

Moon Report: Repeal Section 13

Richard Moon was commissioned by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) to review its conduct. Today Moon released his report and recommendations.

1. The first recommendation is that section 13 of the CHRA be repealed, so that the CHRC and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) no longer deal with hate speech, and in particular hate speech on the Internet. Hate speech should continue to be prohibited under the Criminal Code2 but this prohibition should be confined to expression that advocates, justifies or threatens violence.

Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act has been used with much controversy by the CHRC to suppress "hate speech". The CRHC has been accused of acting like a Kangaroo Court and restricting free speech with its Section 13 rulings.

More on the significance of this ruling from Ezra Levant, who knows all too well what it's like to be accused under Section 13 of the CHRA. Levant also has a column in tomorrow's National Post. And he explains how the CHRC has set out to bury the Moon report.

Despite the contractual obligations on Moon to have his report cleared (twice) by Lynch, he apparently stuck to his guns.

There remain other flaws with this report, and I’ll discuss them later. But that’s not important right now. What’s important is that Richard Moon, Jennifer Lynch’s hand-picked white-washer, didn’t do what he was expected to do (expected to do by me or by Lynch!)

Will Lynch and her fellow bullies now concede defeat? Are you kidding? And admit that they’ve been conducting themselves inappropriately for thirty years? And admit that they are violators of human rights, not protectors of them? And lose all that power over people – the power to destroy and humiliate? And lose staff and budgets?

If so, then you don’t understand that being a bully is in the DNA of human rights thugs.

Lynch is already trying to throw Moon under the bus.

In her press release announcing his report, which you can see here, you’ll notice something is missing: Moon’s recommendation to repeal section 13. He uses the phrase repeal again and again in his report – but you won’t find it in Lynch’s revisionist press release.

I'll skip the obvious puns here about how the CHRC got "mooned" by its own expert. Or how the CHRC's chief commissar (Jennifer Lynch) is responding with a "Lynch mob".

There's more from Mark Steyn who is moonstruck.

Recently, at the Conservative party’s national policy convention delegates voted to repeal Section 13. And Liberal MP Keith Martin has re-introduced a private member's motion to repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

More at Five Feet of Fury.

Inhofe: Global Warming Theory has ‘failed consistently and dramatically’

From Marc Morano on Senator Jim Inhofe's EPW Press blog: Part TWO: ‘Planet Has Cooled Since Bush Took Office’ – Scientists Continue Dissenting – Gore Admits 'I've failed badly' - Global Sea Ice GROWS!

Washington DC - The bad news for global warming alarmists just keeps rolling in. Below is a very small sampling of very inconvenient developments for Gore, the United Nations, and the mainstream media. Peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and prominent scientists continue to speak out to refute climate fears. The majority of data presented below is from just the past few weeks. Also see: U.S. Senate Minority Report: “Over 400 Prominent Scientists (and rapidly growing) Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007” & ‘Consensus’ On Man-Made Global Warming Collapses in 2008 - July 18, 2008 & An August 2007 report detailed how proponents of man-made global warming fears enjoy a monumental funding advantage over skeptical scientists. LINK

Senator Inhofe has a lot more goodies for your reading pleasure here and here.