Rudy Giuliani is a true American hero, and we know this because he does all the things we expect of heroes these days -- like make $16 million a year, and lobby for Hugo Chávez and Rupert Murdoch, and promote wars without ever having served in the military, and hire a lawyer to call his second wife a "stuck pig," and organize absurd, grandstanding pogroms against minor foreign artists, and generally drift through life being a shameless opportunist with an outsize ego who doesn't even bother to conceal the fact that he's had a hard-on for the presidency since he was in diapers. In the media age, we can't have a hero humble enough to actually be one; what is needed is a tireless scoundrel, a cad willing to pose all day long for photos, who'll accept $100,000 to talk about heroism for an hour, who has the balls to take a $2.7 million advance to write a book about himself called Leadership. That's Rudy Giuliani. Our hero. And a perfect choice to uphold the legacy of George W. Bush.
If you define "win" as "gets the most delegates for the convention" - which is the point after all - then you have an interesting situation:
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama each won nine delegates in New Hampshire's Democratic primary, followed by former Sen. John Edwards with 4 delegates, an AP analysis of primary results shows. All 22 of New Hampshire's delegates to the national convention this summer have been allocated.
Clinton and Obama won the same number of delegates, even though Clinton edged Obama in votes, because New Hampshire awards delegates proportionally, and the vote was relatively close.
So by my count that is 1.5 for Obama and .5 for Clinton.
So the federal Conservatives are rejecting the recommendation for a carbon tax:
The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, a panel of Canadian experts from environmental groups and the business world, concluded that Canada could achieve a 65% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by acting as soon as possible with measures that would put a price on activities that result in the release of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. ... Although the Harper government asked the round table for its advice in 2006, Environment Minister John Baird quickly dismissed the carbon tax proposal as a "Liberal idea," explaining that he had already addressed the concerns raised in the report by introducing a new federal green plan that sets a price on carbon emissions.
They (the cons) are now proposing a Cap and Trade system:
Baird has rejected all criticism of his government's plan from independent research groups, economists and environmentalists, insisting he would stick with a plan to limit the growth of pollution from large industries instead of forcing them to make absolute reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions. ... The government has not finalized regulations for industry, but it has pledged to deliver them in 2008 to start up a new domestic cap and trade system, along with a technology fund.
I actually don't think the NDP should be critical of this, I think they should be supportive. After all, it is what they have called for:
Give fair notice to large emitters that, starting in 2008, permissible emissions will be capped and the cap will be annually reduced with an eventual goal of a 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030.
Introduce a market-based auction for available emission credits in 2009, with credits divided among sectors. At the outset, the auction will cover less than 10 per cent of available credits, with a goal of all emission credits sold by auction by 2030. Proceeds from the sale of emission credits will go to sustainability projects.
Note the date of June 20th, 2006. The NDP was ahead of this bandwagon and should be congratulating the conservatives on having seen the light and having come on side.
BTW, I happen to think a cap and trade system makes a lot of sense, both environmentaly and economically, So do the union of concerned scientists, read more here.
For decades, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been reading effortlessly ultra sensitive messages intercepted from all parts of the world. This extraordinary feat was not the consequence of the work of some genius cyber mathematician. Nor was it the result of the agency dominance in the field of super computers, which allegedly have outpaced their most direct rivals by orders of magnitude. The truth is far simpler and quite troubling. The game was rigged.
This is a classic example of why single-source encryption should not be trusted:
A decade after the end of WWII, the NSA, also known as No Such Agency, had rigged the Crypto AG machines in various ways according to the targeted countries. It is probably no exaggeration to state that this 20th century version of the "Trojan horse" is quite likely the greatest sting in modern history.
Early December, Late December, Early January, it's all the same, right?
meh.
I did a lot of blogging during the provincial election and then I needed a break. But I am back now and will be making my 2-3 posts a week regular schedule.
