Elizabeth May in six words: CUT… POWER… SHIFT… TO… STONE… AGE

Lizzy May did nothing for her campaign today other than having yet another press conference about the debate, saying that Democracy has prevailed. Fine. I actually welcome her to the debate, the country needs to hear what a crackpot she really is. This woman only has crackpot ideological ideas with no tangible plan to implement them. In a radio interview earlier this year she proclaimed to be against coal power and nuclear power and would shut them all down. When questioned on where we are supposed to get our power from, she answered: “we’ll find something, I’m sure”. That is the extent of her plan: “We’ll find something”. 

Jacky was standing side by side with union boss Buzz Hargrove, no surprise there, at the Oshawa GM plant, talking about how the Harper Government did nothing while jobs were disappearing there. He announced a plan to funnel cash from corporate tax breaks into “green collar jobs”… that is, more money to GM. GM already received hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money last year alone to keep the plant open, and yet GM decided to close that plant four weeks ago. Someone ought to tell GM that Pick-up Trucks and SUVs don’t sell anymore. You know, high gas prices and all that… We saw this comming, oh say, three years ago. For some reason, GM doesn’t know this, and is happily churning out truck after truck, parking them on the GM lot, where they will remain until the gas price will be below $1.00/litre. That’s not bad governing, that’s bad market research.

Gilles was in Quebec (where else?) arguing with the Head Provincial, sorry National, Separatist about not being Separatist enough. This bickering amongst Separatists is always entertaining.

Sweater Boy Dion went to the third safe riding in as many days. First he was in Ottawa South, David McGuinty’s riding which is as safe as you can get on Day 1, then he proceeded to go to HIS OWN RIDING in Montreal on day 2. Today he was in a high school in Walkerton talking about food safety. He likened the recent listeriosis outbreak to the Walkerton E. coli outbreak and how the provincial Tories were responsible for that fiasco. The Tories quickly pointed out that most of the provincial cuts were done under the previous NDP government headed by now Liberal star Bob Rae, while Layton insists that the food inspection agency was severely cut back under the Chretien government. In other words, not a good subject to bring up for the Liberals. At least they weren’t waiving their arms around talking about CUT… INCOME… TAXES… SHIFT… TO… POLLUTION…

Sweater-vest Harper announced the Afghan mission would end in 2011. Even though, as any military strategist will tell you, it is not good to set an end-date to any mission (the Taliban now just have to ‘hang on’ until then, and they’re safe), unfortunately, it is what the vast majority of Canadians want (I believe it is over 66%). And in order to get elected you have to make concessions. He wasn’t asked today what kind of animal or tree he would be. Bummer.

Here’s hoping Hypocrisy 1 will start up tomorrow so Dion can start flying. This bussing around a 200 km radius of Ottawa is getting embarrassing.

The Adventures of Sweater-Vest and Sweater Boy

Dion’s new campaign promise is that he’ll raise the yearly $1200 child benefit, one he fought so hard against last election, by 350 dollars a year. Apparently, the current $100/month wasn’t enough to buy both beer AND popcorn. He also called the Conservatives liars, a term usually reserved for the later stages of a campaign, but what the heck.  Dion said he can be distilled down to six words: CUT… INCOME…TAXES…SHIFT…TO…POLLUTION. Whatever. I dearly hope someone will have a clue what this guy is talking about before the end of this election. read more…

Elizabeth May Not

The big news today was that the leader of the Green Party will be excluded from the national debate again this time around. Three out of four leaders voted against her inclusion. In a news conferance she blamed it on discrimination (being the only woman being excluded by an all men panel, oh please) and called it undemocratic. If any group of people hold a vote and the majorioty wins, how is that undemocratic? That is the essence of democracy. The reason she’s excluded is twofold: she has no elected MPs, and she is colluding with the Liberal party in her Central Nova riding, where she made a deal with Dion not to run a Liberal candidate against her. Having her at the debate would have been like having two Libral speakers there. read more…

Canadian Shield covered in moss on the Beaver Trail in Ottawa’s west end

So I did it. I boycotted the so called “Live Earth” concert extravaganza. I doubt it made a difference. I doubt it made a dent in the huge profit mr. Gore stands to make from this whole endeavor, but at least I can sleep at night. I hope Al can, too. Quick calculations peg the profit of this feast to be in excess of 100 million dollars, excluding CD / DVD sales which will undoubtedly follow shortly. A number of hypocritical artists flying in on private jets, telling us to use less energy, and putting out music of questionable morality and quality, all organized by a man who owns four mansion-style houses with power bills so high, you and I would have to remortgage our house to pay them off. All watched by and listened to by a reported 2 billion people. Most of them genuinely believe that the human race is putting out too much CO2 and is destroying our climate. Eventhough ice-core records show that CO2 levels rise AFTER the temperature on earth goes up, it is, therefore, a RESULT of temperature change, not a cause. And the sad thing is, when temperatures beging to cool down soon (and they will, for the Sun has ended its current high activity cycle, and will head towards a cooler cycle), all Global Warming proponants will say “See? We started to curb our emissions and now we’re getting cooler!”. If the cooling will take a bit longer to set on, they will say “See? We were right, we’re warming up!” So whatever happens to the climate in the future, the Global Warming Fear Mongers will always be right: they have found the perfect climate loophole. It is the perfect business opportunity: you make money regardless of which of the two possible scenarios happen. Al Gore has clued in. I take it back: Al’s not the idiot, we are. For following him.

From www.friendsofscience.org comes this section:

MYTH 1:  Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

FACT:  Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8C over the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas (“heat islands”), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas (“land use effects”).

There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.

MYTH 2:  The “hockey stick” graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature increase for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.

FACT:  Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17^th Century the “average global temperature” has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare.

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