There are Liberals in Calgary. Without Ralph, it's looking like some Alberta PC support is slipping away. While I'm sure more people are focusing on the Quebec situation, or more likely, the Sens, it's going to be interesting to watch to see if the Liberals can break through in the by-elections coming up in Calgary.
So, what the hell is going on with Lost? Whose coffin was it? What's going on with everyone? What the hell are they going to do for the next 3 seasons.
Plus, Hurley is the man. Absolutely incredible thing there. Followed by Sayid's move? Something that I thought we only saw on 24.
Reading an article in the Star today, I feel compelled to answer to it. The basic premise is that the author of the article seems to find fault with Ontario letting some of its citizens draft a proposal for electoral reform. To me, this view seems wrong.
Now, from what I gather, the basic premise of the article is PR is bad, and therefore we should not even bother spending any time to consider anything to do with it. I know Greg would find an incredibly large amount of wrong with that statement, and I think the main premise that Mr. Gwyn goes on is faulty.
Now, this isn't a post in support or opposition of any form of PR, but in the need to discuss the issue. And I do firmly believe that we need to discuss the issue. Even if the main conclusions to be drawn from this would be that our current system was the best that we could ever get, it's worth talking about it. You may not like what the assembly put forth, but that shouldn't take away from the fact that they are actually looking at issues and debating on the merits of it.
He does bring some good points that we need to reform maybe not the electoral system itself, but the culture of parliamentarians. Seriously, that deserves a look as well. The whole citizen's assembly may have wasted time and money and we may end up with nothing at the end, but for me, it's a small price to pay on the chance that we could have gotten a serious re-vamp of how elections work, and the chance at something more than we have now.
Well, we're off into the summer break, and apart from some infighting over the Sens, I'm not sure if we'll see too much controversy this summer. We'll have to wait and see how much dirt we're going to get over the summer. With the Conservatives faltering near the end, it should be interesting to see if people will forget about this, or whether these will trail behind them all summer.
Well, apparently Antarctica is melting. Cue someone speaking out that this is simply a natural cycle than Antarctica goes through in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ...
Well, now that the Liberal party seems to be doing well in the polls, and that the Conservatives are rife with scandal, the Liberal party has decided that it's time to turn against the Leader. Yup, sounds like some great intuitive logic there, at least if you're a reader of the National Post. While obviously not everybody is 100% happy with Dion (you can never really be), it seems odd that people would be doing this much overt planning to get ahead. My guess is that in all these cases noted here, you simply have an organization of folks who want their candidate in. Not every contested nomination battle is a fight between leadership camps that has been directed by on high.
First off, some nice crazy storms out there earlier tonight. Coming home, there was a section of the street where cars were in up to the top of their wheels in water. Some days I'm glad I don't need to drive around.
Secondly, everyone seems to be jumping for joy over Falwell meeting his maker today. He definitely isn't a man that commands lots of respect and that we should all be terribly upset about, but I don't think it's the time to rejoice. Let's hope that this will temper the religious right, but it does seem a bit wrong to be cheering for his death.
Well, I didn't post yesterday about Duceppe declaring his intentions for leadership of the PQ, partly because I was busy, and partly since I figured I'd have some time to analyze the situation and what it would mean for everybody involved, but no sooner than it started did it end. I mean, you would think he would at least stay in the race for a little bit, but basically, the PQ has said that Marois will be their next leader. Now the question remains whether we will see whether Marois will face a Sheila Copps to go against her, or whether she will actually be able to run unopposed.
Well, by now everyone's well aware of the most recent step in the Tories' new accountability program. I really don't know why they keep failing in this. I mean, is it just incompetence, or are they actually explicitly going out and defying the rules? Do they feel that they can get away with it, since our past deeds are still a little fresh and they know we can't play the "accountability" card without looking bad ourselves?
I mean, I know we're limited, since just saying "look at the Conservatives! They're as bad as WE were when they're in power! And they've only been there a year!" definitely isn't a very good election strategy.
I would normally just chalk it up to some problems learning the actual accountability rules, but it seems to be more than just random chance, and a few mis-declared meals or trips here and there. At this pace, they have to be really stupid for these to be all accidents.
And if they really are trying to subvert the rules, you think they would at least wait a bit, until they got a majority. I mean, it seems insane that they would actually be trying to skirt the rules when they've got such a tenuous hold on power.
So which is it? Are they trying to subvert the rules, or are they just incompetent?
I would at least have thought he would wait until the party kicked him out at a Leadership review vote in September, but it seems that Boisclair is stepping down. Now we just have to wait and see if Duceppe will take the bait and move provincial, or if he'll stick it federally and we'll see someone else take over the sinking ship that is the PQ.
Well, as everyone knows by know, Sarkozy has won the French Election by a margin of 53-47. It seems that Sarkozy and Royal split the centrist party's votes to edge out his socialist opponent.
Now, one thing I will comment on is the double ballot. It's a very interesting way to conduct an election, to force everyone to vote twice, and I'm a bit surprised that the turnout was actually so high both times. I know there was a lot on the line, but it seems weird that they still managed 85% of the vote on the second go-around. Canadians seem to hate voting once, never mind what would happen if we were asked to vote twice. Good on the French to come out in forces to vote. One only wonders what would happen in Canada if we managed 85% turnout in an election.
Well, I'm not a usual commentator about the Alberta PC party's proceedings, but I found this article talking about how they're considering looking into nuclear power to help power the oilsands, and it got me thinking a bit more about nuclear.
From what I've seen, it seems that lots of people are divided about the power of nuclear. Many see it as a nice, emissions-free power source, that seems to be a logical step to move us away from coal and gas fired plants. Others see it as a major problem source, which is unsafe and causes waste which we cannot dispose of. Now, as with any issue, the answer is in the middle, but I'm surprised in most of the talk about reaching our carbon goals, the matter hasn't been brought up further.
Personally, I think we should be investigating the issue more. I don't think I'm ready to switch over fully to nuclear, but I definitely do see that there's lots of potential there. If the global warming alarmists are right, then the excess CO2 in the air will be even more damaging than whatever waste that nuclear produces, and as we explore more about nuclear, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to find more and safer ways to store the spent fuel.
And contrary to what many people believe, it is relatively safe. I mean, apart from 3 mile island and Chernobyl, there haven't been any big problems with nuclear. As a nuclear lobbyist I heard talk this winter say, the fact that we still hear about the big problems is a good sign that it's safe. I mean, we don't really hear too much about accidents and problems in other power plants, since they happen often. Just like many people are surprised to hear that planes are the safest mode of travel even when we hear about plane accidents around the world every few weeks or months.
Now, I still know that nuclear isn't perfect, and before we were to commit a significant amount of resources in building more plants, we need to make sure that storage is improved, but it is something that I feel we shouldn't be as scared about. For once, I agree with something the PCs are proposing, and I do hope that they vote to investigate its uses even more.
I know he may have made a bad comment 2 years ago, and I'm a bit late in commenting on it now, but does anyone really care about this? Parliament has tons of stupid things that they investigate and do, and the waste plenty of time on it all the time. Just like the bigfoot petition, there's plenty of wasted goings-on that we just have to deal with. You know it's a slow news week when these type of stories make news for more than 5 minutes.
So what do we have to talk about? Oh, just a few stories about Afghanistan, and some polls that are showing the Liberals bouncing back. The Afghanistan story is an interesting one, since the government still doesn't quite know its own story on what is going on. Sometime, I'd love to see a government just admit that they were wrong, or didn't know all the details. I think it would be great for us if we had that sort of honesty from our officials, but I know that's probably a pipe dream.
And about these polls showing some stuff, I maintain my dislike for this excessive polling. Sure, we're up this week, but I'll bet that next week the Conservatives will pull back to being 3-4 points ahead, and everyone will be claiming it's all because people love their policy on bigfoot or whatever else, even when the actual numbers really haven't changed.
So what have I really said here? Nothing really, but it sure does seem we're getting into our summer lull. Barring something crazy like the Conservatives bringing their environmental plan to a vote, it's looking like we're in for about 4 months of nothingness before we start talking heavy about the Ontario election in the fall.
Well, unfortunately I haven't had a chance to write too much the last few days, as I've just gotten back into town and haven't had an internet connection at home.
So, to catch up:
-Congrats Justin on the nomination. He's got the organization, and even some grudging respect from Antonio, so looks good so far. He may just be more than a pretty face, but we still need to see more from him.
-EcoFraud! Beautiful!
-Afghanistan: Conservatives seem to be changing their mind constantly, and are rightly being taken to task over it. There's nothing that they can do to really defend this without a complete about-face, so they're pretty screwed by it. And while it would be nice to take them to an election over this, my next point will stop us.
-Ouch. I know many Liberals are tapped-out from Leadership, but we still have been low on donations for years, since the new rules have come in. We have close to if not the largest voter base, more than twice the number of voters as the NDP, and many of our supporters are middle-class citizens, and we need to figure out how to adequately raise money. It's hard getting people to give, but if we can't figure it out, no matter how good our policies and ideas are, we won't be able to get out and reach people with the message.
