What Do Elizabeth May and Keith Baldrey Have In Common?
Answer: Nothing, frankly. Except that on Friday Keith Baldrey gave us the kind of spin Gordon Campbell would be proud of and on Saturday Elizabeth May further shamed this country and her party by, once more, exhibiting a bad case of ‘Nazi Fixation Syndrome’.
Firstly, let’s have at Keith Baldrey a tad…
On Friday morning, last, I was in a cab heading to pick up my SUV from having some maintenance work done at the dealer. As it happens CKNW was playing, with the ‘Cutting Edge of the Leg’ segment, guest-hosted by Mike Smyth (for an absent Bill Good). The usual panel, both Vaughn Palmer and Keith Baldrey were on, and guess what the first topic was? Correct, if you guessed Tony Parsons’ departure from Global. Now, for the record, all three of Messers Smyth (The Province), Palmer (The Vancouver Sun) and Baldrey (Global TV) are employed by CanWest.
So, it didn’t take long to see where this story was headed…..
Although, let me say this before I give you the goods on what transpired: I have immense respect for all three of these guys. Each of them has earned their stripes, with Palmer in a class by himself, but excluding Vaughn, in this case, since Keith monopolized the segment on Tony, the bad examples and sanctimonious nonsense about what might happen at Global TV post-Parsons was nothing more than a deference to the mothership that borders on non-stop foot-kissing. Oh, I’m not saying bite the hand that feeds you, but any credible news organization should be able to provide something more than having one of its top local wags proffering textbook spin.
To the program…
In the almost three minute straight diatribe by Keith Baldrey, I couldn’t find one statement that either resembled reality or came close to the facts. I realize he was in a tough spot, but he went comically (or is that tragically?) beyond the perspective listeners deserved.
“It won’t matter that Tony’s gone because it’s a matter of brand”, Baldrey opined.
And long with some additional padding he then dropped a stink-bomb that should have emptied Mike from the booth and the occupants of the entire TD Bank building from their offices. Baldrey actually used the example of Bill Good (perhaps forgetting whose show he was on) and Pamela Martin departing BCTV for CTV.
“…in actual fact, our numbers (at Global) have gone up, way up, since that happened” , exclaimed Baldrey.
Now, I need not explain, except for the uninitiated, that comparing the departure of Tony Parsons from Global with the departure, years earlier, of Bill and Pamela is a kin to comparing the fall of the Berlin Wall, with your Uncle Ned’s athlete’s foot or your Aunt Fanny’s hangnail. Earth to Keith: Bill and Pamela aren’t even in the same league as Parsons’ cuff links (and their departure was without a stitch of acrimony), how in the hell could this have been said with a straight face, never mind any kind of legitimacy? Well, if you were looking for Mike Smyth to ask that, you’d have been disappointed. Instead, Mike, incredibly, added to the acrid smell of old gym shoes choking the studio…
“I seem to recall a guy who left from here (CKNW), what was his name, um, er, Ra..Ray…oh yeah Rafe, Rafe Mair…and that didn’t seem to matter either”, said Smyth.
This, of course, was a reference by Mike Smyth to Rafe Mair being hired by Jim Pattison, after Rafe was fired by CKNW. The tragic nature of this example is multi-fold: Rafe was past his prime; was accused of sexual harassment and received little support for an almost impossible time slot on a very low producing property, where, in a fate crueler than being Pamela Anderson’s therapist, he was bookended by Wayne Newton and Connie Francis. It would have been impossible for anyone to have battled on such uneven ground, much less Rafe, who was mortally wounded before he landed at AM 600. But that didn’t stop the pontificating on Friday morning.
By the time Vaughn Palmer was ready to provide some balance; a commercial break and then a new (and actually quite intelligent and informative) discussion about Manitoba’s refusal to implement an HST.
Then on the weekend, Saturday afternoon to be exact, I was listening to the best radio talk-show host in British Columbia, CKNW’s Sean Leslie (I never miss his show and neither should you), who had the bravery to interview both Vancouver Clowncillor ‘Carbon’ David Cadman and Lizzie May, the leader of the Green (in the gills) Party.
Allowing for Mr. Cadman’s baritone buffonery (‘Drill-baby’ Dave was apparently live from Copenhagen, where he was stationed as Bloviator-In-Chief for some obscure group of global warming alarmist dimbells)……it was Elizabeth May that really got me steamed.
How can this woman possible pretend she is qualified for anything other than emptying ashtrays outside a shopping mall or digging at dried gum under seats at the Cineplex?
This shrill harridan, this uncontainable shrew, this media wench, proceeded not just to lie and embarrass herself, but too, BROUGHT FORTH YET ANOTHER NAZI ANALOGY!!!
Read on… (although you can read an exceptional, more specific detailing of her exact comments, here, from our friend Robert at Pelalusa)
In no particular order, Thick Lizzie claimed:
1) The science around climate change is not debatable.
2) A 20% reduction in C02 in 2020 (from Kyoto standards) are the only way to “save the planet from total destruction”
3) That every year we delay in committing to her impossible, Draconian fantasies “the world economy loses $500,000,000,000″
4) That the “Canadian Govt was the worst of the worst in the room (at Copenhagen)” …apparently she missed the presence of both Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Notwithstanding that both Mugabe and Chavez are murderous thugs, there were no less than a dozen totalitarian regimes represented, but not a word of criticism from Thick Lizzie, who somehow must believe that human rights violations, gay-bashings and the mutilation of young girls doesn’t qualify as being in the “worst” category.
5) That the Harper Govt shut down the ‘Tar Sands’ and heed her warning about C02 levels otherwise, “sea levels will rise 9 metres and we’ll lose both Victoria and Vancouver”
And…..(drum roll, please) the pièce de résistance of Ms. May’s complete insanity, and clear proof that her doctor should double her meds…
6) THAT CLIMATE CATASTROPHE SKEPTICS (SHE ACTUALLY USED THE OFFENSIVE TERM ‘DENIERS’) ARE DOING NO DIFFERENTLY THAN THOSE WHO REFUSED TO STOP FASCISM IN EUROPE (READ: THE NAZIS) IN THE 1930s and 40s.
But this isn’t the first time this incredible, farcical dunce of a woman has offended Jews and level-headed Canadians everywhere. Remember when in 2007 she said that the Canadian Govt’s position on climate change was…
“A grievance worse than Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Nazis”? – Elizabeth May, 2007
Elizabeth May is no ordinary sicko. She has some sort of Nazi fixation, and I just can’t even go there to dissect it for you in detail. My mother’s neighbors were burned in the Nazi death camps for nothing more than being sympathetic to the Jews in the neighborhood, while my mother, a little girl then, and her family were lucky to survive and eventually leave for Canada. Now, think about how anyone that had relatives with a number tattooed to the inside of their arm feels after listening to Ms. May, ONCE AGAIN, raise the ugly spectre of Nazi-sympathy in comparison to the principled questioning of global warming hysteria.
Elizabeth May is not only a disgrace to this country, she is a disgrace to humanity. She should resign immediately as leader of the Green Party. This isn’t her first time at speaking such atrocious words.
To refer to Elizabeth May as mentally ill, is to insult all those brave souls battling with mental illness. Her viral stupidity on the (inter)national stage is nothing less than utterly sickening. She is a permanent black-eye to decency and humanity in Canada.
Her resignation from any position of responsibility where the flailing Green Party is concerned is long-overdue and her existence in any dialogue about the future of this country, a painful national calamity.
Alex, you’ve provided an excellent dissection of Lizzie May’s psychosis (or would that be “psychoses”?). For your readers who are not very familiar with her, this video should be enlightening. It was taken at the recent Munk Debates in Toronto.
I have it on authority from a very reliable source who was there that this was the moment when a number of people in the audience switched over to being skeptical of AGW. However, the fact that the ENTIRE audience wasn’t dismayed & disgusted by her performance is a clear indicator of a lack of critical thinking amongst all too many Canadians.
Finally, an obvious question arises from all of this: If none of the aforementioned recent events have shamed Ms. May into admitting she’s a scoundrel (I’m being kind) and resigning, then I wonder what sort of scandal would she need to get embroiled in to actually quit?
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Another masperpiece “slap-down” Alex. What a way to put “Maggie May” in her place! I love it!
Keith doesn’t realize that the sinking Canwest ship will put him on the lifeboat with no fanfare at all – that is if there’s room. His presence at the Legislature is getting stale with time to the point Gordie might name him a deputy minister of something -
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According to David Bodanis, the author of “E=mc2″, the planet’s total destruction will happen in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years from now with or without our intervention. Elizabeth May’s suggesting that a “20% reduction in CO2 in 2020 (from koyoto…) [is] the only way to save our planet from total destruction,” is simply untrue.
David writes,”Even though the sun is vast, it can’t keep on burning forever. Heating the entire solar system takes immense amounts of fuel, even for a furnace that pumps material directly across the equals sign of E=mc2. The sun’s mass is now 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, but it consumes about 700 billion tons of its own bulk as hydrogen fuel to keep the multimegaton blasts going each day. In a further 5 billion years, the most easily available portions of that fuel will be gone…Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
What will happen to Earth is actually both. Any beings left alive on the surface of the Earth in the year A.D. 5 billion will see the sun get larger and larger until it fills about half the daytime sky. The oceans will boil away and surface rocks will melt. Possibly life could migrate to other planets, or survive in deep tunnels, using technology unimagined now; possibly our planet will have long been barren when the emptying sun fills up the sky. The sun will hold at that great size for about another billion years, as the helium mask left inside takes over the main burining; still seeming to pump mass out of existence; still producing fiery glowing energy in its glowing energy become too weak. In time so much fuel will have been emptied out of the sun that the burning will no longer be steady.
This is what will bring in the ice . As fuel pockets inside run low, the sun’s surface will sink inward; shortly after, as other dispersed fuel sources get tapped, the energy output will roar higher again, and the surface of the sun will whip upward. Sonic booms are produced each time, but these are nothing like the brief crack of a single plane passing the sound barrier. At this stage, six billion years into our future, it’s the final boom of the Titans.
Enough mass is blown away at each bounce upward, that within just a few hundred thousand years, there will be much less of our sun than before. What’s left will be too weak to possess the same gravitational field it had before. If the Earth hasn’t already been absorbed by the expanding sun, then–after 11 billion years of steady orbit–the sun’s grip will let the planets go. The solar system breaks up, and Earth flies away…
Six billion years from now, if Earth is flung loose from the fuel-emptied sun, any survivors or sensing devices left on our planet’s surface will see a horizon darker than today’s night sky. For the stars themselves will have used up their fuel and be dying out: the most fiery ones first,then the rest.
Earth’s flight won’t be stable through this darker expanse. Our Milky Way is already on track to collide with the Andromeda galaxy, and in several billion years, about the time of Earth’s escape or immolation in the solar system, the great collision should finally happen. The spaces between stars are so great that most of the dimmed suns will just slowly pass between each other, without direct impact, but the turbulence will be enough to shift an escaped Earth’s trajectory once more.
If Earth slingshots inward, then in a few tens of millions of years we will be within range to be absorbed by the giant black hole at the galaxy’s center. If we get slingshot outward, however,the end will simply be delayed. [In] 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 years from now, all galaxies are liable to have emptied out because of such collisions. The black holes in the centers of the galaxies will slowly travel on their own, sucking mass and energy from the universe where ever they contact other objects. If it’s another black hole that they randomly impact, then they simply merg, to become the even larger devourer. A few hours after coming within range of one of these, Earth and any distant descendants on it will be taken out of existence…
By 1,000000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years into the future, protons might have begun to decay, and gradually very little of ordinary matter will be left. The universe will be composed of a greatly reduced category of things. There will be electrons of the sort we’re used to, with a negative electric charge, and there will be curious antimatter versions of electrons, with a positive charge, and along with neutrinos and gravitons there will be the swollen black holes, and even a cooled remnant of photons left over from the first seconds of creation, still travelling at their eternal 670 million mph speed after all these ages.
It doesn’t end there, for given enough time even black holes can evaporate. Everything they engulfed will be released back–not in any recognizabel form, but as an equivalent amount of radiation.
The universe will have ended up in a state curiously transposed from what it was at the start. For in the very first moments of creation, long before the sun was formed, the universe was immensely dense, immensely “concentrated.” That great density meant that large amounts of radiation were “pushed” along E=mc2, from the “E” side to the “m” side. The ordinary matter we’re familiar with took shape out of pure energy, ultimately creating the stars and planets and life forms we know. But now, near the end of time, over 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years into the future it’s different. Everything is far more dispersed, far more diffuse.
What will exist then will be spread over distances we cannot imagine. The rush of activity of early epochs will be over. That was just an interlude in the final history of the universe. Now mass and energy only very rarely transform into each other. There is a great stillness. The work of Einstein’s equation is done.”
In conclusion, a “20% reduction in CO2″ will not “save our planet from total destruction.”
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Holy smokes! A celestial collision!? I’ll have to ponder a dimmed sun over some dim sum…
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I retrieved this information from your latest article, after clicking on the “Suzuki interview”…
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by ZaphodBeblbrx
Dec 17 2009
4:12 PMI have always found Dr. Suzuki to be off base on real science issues. As a chemical engineer I decided to calculate the heating effect of burning the fossil fuels. It turns out that if anyone including Dr. Suzuki has done some basic chemistry, they would have concluded that there is no greenhouse effect and it is simply the use of energy, no matter what form. The atmosphere doesn;t care whether you use oil, coal, natural gas, hydroelectricity, or nuclear power , solar or wind to heat your water and cook your food, make ice cubes or heat and cool your house. It all gets dumped into the air. A quick calculation of using 5 X 10 exp 20 joules per year divided by the 5 X 10 exp 18 kgs of the atmosphere is 100 J per kg per year. This is enough to heat the atmosphere by 10 deg C in 100 years, all this without invoking this magical Greenhouse effect, if it exists…”
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Yes Olga, I saw this. He raises a very good point, one which I am sure would be lost on Dr. Suzuki.
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It’s sad to see people Like Elizabeth May making complete fools of themselves. For some reason, many of those who enter politics lose sight of their morale conscious and GREED takes over. They love the attention and look forward to all the perks. They’ll do almost anything to get there. what a shame.
As for Keith Baldrey, both my wife & I can see right through this guy. My wife often say’s ” I wonder if he carries a picture of the Premier in his wallet”.
Love your stuff Alex… Keep it up.
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Yes, I agree! And thank you for your kind words. Much appreciation. Glad you’re enjoying the blog.
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Hi Alex, not unexpectedly the AGW defenders are more and more often, trying to defend their unsustainable theory without evaluating how idiotic they “May” sound. I heard that an IPCC scientist, just denounced them as frauds and that even on “Wikipedia”, there was something “fishy” going on.
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It is inevitable that people like May will implode from their own predictable shrilling. To get the attention of anybody, the level of hypocrisy and sheer inanity keeps rising because reasoned debate is not in their vocabulary. I believe she is squarely in the camp of the lunatic fringe.
I certainly hope she reads your column. Fine piece of literary eloquence. Although she may have some difficulty in understanding it.
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Thank you comrade…
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Too funny! I’m laughing so hard it’s difficult to comment, besides seeing Liz in living colour via Robert W’s video is worth a thousand words, though Alex always seems to find even more apt ones.
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Oddly Lizzie May is really working to elect Stephen Harper.
She must know that so can’t be all that concerned about global warming.
She’s against nuclear power as well which really is the only answer to the global warming.
Frankly I think Harpo is a Warmist but loves the idea. I’m guessing he believes in the Tim LaHaye scenario where Global warming/Peak oil hastens the Apocalypse making any effort to reduce GHG’s a very bad thing.
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If I was a federal Green Party member, I would be pushing for a leadership race immediately. Elizabeth May’s diatribe on the Sean Leslie show was embarassing. If I was onside with the CO2 alarmists, her performance alone would have turned me into a “denier”.
Keith Baldry’s self-serving dismissal of Tony Parsons’ departure from Global TV as being inconsequential was pretty hard to stomach, and Mike Smyth’s comparing that to Rafe Mair’s situation was not his finest moment. Vaughn Palmer tried to weigh in on the subject, but was talked over by the other two which was very inconsiderate by both of them.
I think that Keith Baldry’s “best before date” expired many years ago. His appearances on TV, radio or in print tend to appear more like auditions for the public affairs bureau instead of investigative reporting. I can’t remember the last time that I have seen him interviewing anyone from government. It’s as if he gets a memo from the PAB, sits in front of the camera and regurgitates the information verbatim. You can call me crazy, but his views on how things may unfold after Tony goes to CHEK are nothing more than self-serving or maybe, wishful thinking. Only time will tell how the broadcasting universe will unfold.
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Couldn’t agree more.
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Hey Alex I am sure Sean Leslie is a nice guy but I find his show usually unbalanced where he appears to many times present one side of the argument. Unfortunately for him usually the perception is that it also is his point of view.
He also injects little snippets of his point of view along the way which is no problem since it is his show but where I find it hypocritical is that his show is presented as a journalistic endeavor that is balanced (which it definitely is not).
In other words if you have an opinion and want to base your show around that make that your hallmark.
Probably what separates the good talk show hosts for the also rans and as far as I am concerned he needs some work in that department before he moves up to the next level.
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Two points:
Palmer and Baldrey lost ALL credibility with me when in last May, while everyone was still reeling from the pathetic turnout, those two goofs admitted on-air to NOT VOTING.
I don’t care HOW you vote — SPOIL IT if you want — but NOT VOTING is absolutely terrible. NOT VOTING while being political commentators is EVEN WORSE. Those two seem to believe that their opinion is so important and their opinions matter so much to the public that they can’t vote otherwise they might influence the election and possibly make audiences think that they are not objective observers.
First off, no one cares how you vote, it only matters that you vote. Politicians always say to get out and vote, and many even add “even if its not for me”. Secondly, Palmer and Baldrey pretend to be objective, but listening to them a few weeks in a row you can tell which way they’d vote if they did.
As for May, she makes environmentalists look bad. All extremists do, which is a crying shame because they’re the ones that get the spotlight.
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I’m going through each and every bit of my garbage this morning–Everything including ALL hard/soft PLASTICS and so on are being washed in hot soapy water and rinsed. Since there is no recycle bin for soft plastics I have no choice but to fill up the recycle bin that is designated for hard plastics only. What would you do in this case?
In an effort to teach myself to be more environmentally friendly/ green, I noticed these words at the bottom of my IGA shopping bag “100% DEGRADABLE. The plastic used in this bag will convert to water, carbon dioxide and biomass in the presence of soil,heat, moisture and oxygen. Like a fallen leaf, it will disappear over time.” Great news! If these bags are biodegradable, why is it such a crime to be seen carrying one’s groceries home in such a bag or to use such a bag for garbage? Is it the stinky stuff I/we fill them up with? If that’s the case then what I/we need to do is wash every piece of garbage before it makes its way to their respective garbage/recycle bins right?
What should I do with broken glass? My recycle bin says “no broken glass”.
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Great questions…I do not rinse out our plastic but simply sort them and they go out to recycling, mind you, we use glass jars for pasta, cashews, etc. As for glass, I call a fellow locally and he comes a takes it away. Mind, we don’t have too many breakages. The kids are extremely careful.
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Thank you for taking the time during your Christmas break to answer my questions–much appreciated.
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I’ve just finished washing all my garbage. Yuk.
Regarding the plastic bag issues: London Drugs and IGA are the only 100% degradable bags. SAFEWAY is the only bag NOT DEGRADABLE–we will definitely need to bring our cloth bags when shopping at Safeway, of course, we should be bringing our cloth bags where ever go. I know. We’re working on it. (Still, I’m left to wonder why Safeway hasn’t taken the initiative to provided it’s shoppers globally with environmentally friendly–green–degradable bags like some of the other big chain stores mentioned above.)
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The thing about enviro’s is that their “end” always justifies the “means” they employ, regardless of how deceitful. Their purposes are always of a holy nature, no pun intended, so lying, cheating, exploiting scare tactics are all just fine thanks. Similarly with trade union intimidation tactics, enviro’s don’t miss a beat in using gestapo, mafia tactics to get what they want. Sadly, most politicians and most of the media today are sucked in by these liars, including the premier of BC.
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Full agreement.
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