News roundup, 14 July 2025

- Elizabeth May is calling for the federal government to impose a potash embargo on the US. As this would devastate the Canadian potash industry if done in isolation, she is calling for the government to buy the potash that would otherwise have been exported to the States and set it aside as a strategic reserve. She is also calling for them to reinstate the digital services tax, since removing it doesn't seem to have done any good. Seems like a good idea; whether Mark Carney will take the advice remains to be seen however.

- Solar power now has the largest share of Europe's electricity generation, narrowly topping nuclear and far above fossil fuels.

- A farm worker was killed and several hundred were arrested in an ICE raid on a farm in California. The worker had climbed to the roof of a greenhouse in the hope of avoiding the raid and fell to his death.

- A US District Court in California has requested that the LAPD please stop shooting journalists, even if it's just with rubber bullets. 

- Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has acknowledged what many of us already recognize - that Israel actually is guilty of war crimes and that not everyone who points that out is an antisemite.

- The MAGA crowd are losing whatever remained of their minds over the latest Superman movie, calling it "super woke" and accusing it of attempting to indoctrinate viewers. Their concerns centre partly around the fact that Superman/Clark Kent is explicitly called an immigrant.  This is of course true, but then the guy is from another planet, what else are you going to call him? And the pro-Israel crowd is incensed over a plot point in the film - a conflict between two fictional nations, one of which is brutally occupying the other. The countries aren't directly based on Israel and Palestine, of course (the occupier seems to be imagined as a former Soviet republic while the other is some unspecified west Asian one) but it's kind of telling that ultra-Zionists feel threatened by any fictional presentation of a brutal occupation.

- A radio station in Swan River, Manitoba was destroyed by fire on Thursday; investigators have concluded that it was arson. The incident follows a heated discussion on a social media account run by the station owner. Following the death of a passenger in the car that also killed two much loved members of the Winnipeg arts community, a post made reference to the dead passenger's criminal history. Given that he's dead there's not much of a public interest in the details of said history unless it was really weird or interesting (which it isn't), so a lot of people thought that it was needlessly hurtful to his family to dwell on the matter. That said, torching a radio station does seem like an excessive response.

News roundup, 29 April 2025

- Mark Carney has retained power, but appears to have fallen short of the 172 seas needed for a majority; the Liberals show as leading or elected in 168 seats as of this morning. If these numbers hold, that could still give the much diminished NDP caucus the balance of power. With only 7 seats, though, the NDP loses party status; leader Jagmeet Singh has been soundly defeated in his own riding of Burnaby Central and has resigned as leader. As for the Greens, Elizabeth May held onto her seat in Saanich-Gulf Islands, but her colleague Mike Morrice is behind the Cons in Kitchener Centre, though the results aren't final as of this post. On a more positive note, Pierre Poilievre has been defeated in his riding of Carleton. Full country-wide results may be found here.

- Besides the designs Donald Trump has on the Panama Canal, he's also turning his attention to the Suez Canal. He thinks that American and American-registered ships should be exempt from canal tolls, because Americans are special or something.

- A small ferry in Clearwater, Florida was hit by another vessel which then left the scene of the accident. One person on board the ferry died and several more were injured. From the pictures in that article, the ferry is one of those catamaran ones with a tentlike canopy; it looks like it might be the topmost picture on the ferry company's page about their fleet, which seats 42. The AP story states that "police did not immediately provide any information about the boat that fled the scene", but one ferry passenger in this article described it as a "big yacht". What stands out more to me, though, is the statement that the U.S. Coast Guard and Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission will be investigating; isn't that supposed to be the NTSB's job?

- There has been a significant change in opinion among registered Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents as to how the party's leaders should be dealing with the Trump agenda. In 2017, 74% wanted Democrats in Congress to "work with Republicans" to overcome the divisions in society; now, however, 57% want to see congressional Democrats do their utmost to try to stop them. The party's leadership, though, has yet to figure out what to do about the situation.

- An Irish woman who had lived in the US since childhood has been detained at an ICE facility in Tacoma over past criminal convictions. She had been convicted of drug possession more than 20 years ago, but under the understanding that the convictions had been expunged, she had travelled back and forth between the US and Ireland numerous times without trouble - until now.

- A massive power outage affected the entire Iberian peninsula on Monday; Portuguese authorities are blaming the blackout on extreme temperature variations.

- A Northern Irish rap group, Kneecap, has raised eyebrows after footage emerged of a gig a year and a half ago in which one of the members said "The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP".

News roundup, 3 April 2025

- Donald Trump's latest round of tariffs are in place. There are no new ones for Canada, but a 25% levy on vehicles and vehicle parts from this country is still in place. There is a lot of confusion on exactly what is covered, since the tariffs won't apply to parts that comply with the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement - until the regime comes up with a way of applying tariffs to the non-US content of the parts. In response, Chrysler's parent company Stellantis is closing their assembly plant in Windsor for two weeks as of this coming Monday; it's also expected to significantly increase the price of vehicles. Dealerships are reporting a surge in sales as people try to get their purchases under the wire before the tariffs take effect. A complete list of tariffs by country may be seen here; markets are not responding favourably.

- Along with the NDP and the Bloc, the Greens have the potential to suffer from the renewed popularity of the Liberals under Mark Carney. Elizabeth May's riding is now considered a toss-up between her and the Liberal candidate. And in the Winnipeg-area riding of Elmwood-Transcona, the Liberals could actually be the spoiler.

- The conviction of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen on corruption charges and her being barred from political office as a result is causing a predictable stir. This is not limited to far-right leaders; one French political scientist, Ronald Hatto, thinks that the ban may be a mistake and could lead to unrest. While the Guardian's Georgios Samaras does not go that far, he warns that the French left needs to move quickly to keep Le Pen's protégé Jordan Bardella from exploiting the outrage and winning the presidency.

- Hot on the heels of Paul Chiang being forced to drop out of the race over injudicious comments about the suggestion that people collect a bounty from the Chinese state on his Conservative opponent, the Conservative candidate in another GTA riding is having to drop out for similar reasons. Don Patel, who was running in Etobicoke North, had indicated support for a Facebook post that called for certain folks to be sent back to India so that "PM Modi can take care of these non-sense people". Patel is actually the fourth Tory candidate to drop out in recent days.

- Hungary has announced that they're pulling out of the International Criminal Court. And no, they aren't going to hand over Netanyahu first; to the contrary, they're welcoming him to their country for an official visit.

News roundup, 9 Jan 2024

- A middle-aged man died in the emergency waiting room at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre on Tuesday morning; the matter is being investigated as a critical incident. Some, however, are concerned that the role of racism won't be looked at; while the deceased has not been publicly identified and his ethnicity isn't known, many in the indigenous community have their suspicions and are drawing parallels with the case of Brian Sinclair in 2008.

- Wildfires are sweeping through parts of Los Angeles County, including the upscale Palisades neighbourhood. Over 10,000 ha (25,000 ac) have been burned so far; at least two people have died and over 1,000 structures have been burned. Some 70,000 people have evacuated so far. Intense winds of up to 160 km/h (100 mph or 86 kt) aren't making the situation any easier.

- The Heritage Foundation, a rightwing think tank perhaps best known for helping draft the infamous Project 2025, is planning to dox editors at Wikipedia because they voted to label the Anti-Defamation League as an unreliable source of information on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The methods they plan to use to identify the editors, who usually use pseudonyms, include such things as "creating fake Wikipedia user accounts to try to trick editors into identifying themselves by sharing personal information or clicking on malicious tracking links". The latter trick, in particular, sounds illegal, but don't expect anything to happen to the perpetrators.

- Donald Trump has outright said that he wants no wind turbines constructed during his presidency. Stuff like this rightly worries any sensible person, both because climate change is certain to be worse under Trump than it would had Harris won the election, and also because to the extent that we do motor through without the US, we'll be dependent on China for the transition.

- France is calling on the EU to get serious about defending the federation from foreign interference, in particular that coming from Elon Musk. New French legislation regarding such matters could allow assets to be frozen under some circumstances.

- Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc has ruled out a run for the Liberal leadership, saying he wants to focus on his current responsibilities in cabinet. Several other ministers, including Steven MacKinnon, Anita Anand, Jonathan Wilkinson, François-Philippe Champagne, and Karina Gould are still weighing their options.

- In response to Donald Trump's musings about annexing Canada, Green Party leader Elizabeth May has suggested that we should instead allow Washington, Oregon, and California to join Canada. Of course, she was probably being facetious; there is little or no chance of this actually happening, and moreover it might not be as great an idea as it seems on the surface - in particular, importing all those techbros from the Bay Area could be problematic for our politics, and importing all those guns wouldn't be so great either.

- Turns out the guy who blew up his rented Cybertruck and himself in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas was actually a Trump supporter; he left behind letters calling on Americans to rally behind Trump and Musk.

News roundup, 14 June 2024

- Benjamin Netanyahu is not sufficiently hardline for Benny Gantz, who resigned from Netanyahu's cabinet on Sunday accusing Netanyahu of failing to come up with a plan for victory. The thing is, Gantz and Netanyahu may have a different idea of what constitutes "victory"; for Gantz it would be the elimination of Hamas at a minimum, but for Netanyahu it would be staying prime minister and thus staying out of jail, so perhaps it's in his interest to drag the war out for as long as possible.

- While Elizabeth May says the intelligence report on foreign interference in Canadian politics left her "vastly relieved" and that she saw no any evidence that any MP was intentionally disloyal to Canada, Jagmeet Singh says he is "more alarmed than ever", which is understandable given that he was apparently targeted by unspecified foreign agents. As for Pierre Poilievre, he is unwilling to get the necessary security clearance to read the full report; Singh thinks that both Poilievre and Trudeau are, in their own ways, putting loyalty to their party over their country.

- Shannon Phillips, the Alberta NDP MLA and former environment minister who was put under intensive and probably illegal surveillance by Lethbridge police, has announced her resignation. As reasons, she cited the viciousness aimed at politicians, especially if they are leftwing and/or female (and it's a safe bet that she doesn't trust the police to have her back). The Tyee notes that Phillips is significantly to the left of the provincial NDP as a whole, which likely didn't make her decision any more difficult.

- Even if Joe Biden prevails in November, the Democrats are unlikely to retain control of the Senate, and it could be many years before they have a realistic chance of regaining it. For this reason, some are calling for Sonia Sotomayor (69) and Elena Kagan (64) to take one for the team and step down to allow Biden to appoint two younger liberal-minded judges, on the grounds that there is a very significant chance that they will die before it's possible to appoint another liberal, and this make the rightwing stranglehold on the court that much more dire. Some disability advocates are vehemently opposed to this kind of talk about Sotomayor in particular, saying that it's ableist due to her diabetes (though the Vox article above makes no mention of it), but perhaps they should look at the bigger picture, such as what might happen to the Americans with Disabilities Act if a court thoroughly stacked with Trump appointees decides it violates some rich person's property rights.

- Hunter Biden has been found guilty on federal firearm charges. In stark contrast to Trump and his supporters, Joe Biden says that he accepts the court's decision.

- Ukraine is following Russia's example in recruiting soldiers from its prisons, though they say that they aren't using coercion in the way Russia is. One of their new recruits was seven years into a ten year sentence for murdering his boss in a pay dispute; if nothing else, at least they can count on him not being too squeamish to kill people.

- Axon, the parent company of Taser, has announced an AI product that can supposedly generate police reports from body cam footage. This does not sit well with people who know anything about the reliability of AI, not least because the data the bots are trained on often has its own biases that too few cops would question.

- Winnipeg Humane Society staff arriving at work last Saturday found no less than 10 animals dropped off in front of their building, including a dog, 3 cats, and 6 rats. The notes left by the owners are rather sad (the rats' owner in particular was clearly in a bad way). It's a lot harder to sympathize, on the other hand, with puppy mill operators that abandon dogs that are no longer useful to them.

- An attempted carjacking in downtown Winnipeg failed because the carjacker didn't know how to drive a standard. To add to his misfortune, the victim was an off-duty cop, which doubtless made the police response time a little faster than usual.

Elizabeth May shut out of TV debates

I wondered if this was going to happen:

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is once again getting shut out of the televised debates, but she is already rallying her troops for a fight and finding some unlikely allies.

From the Star. Interesting to see who some of these allies are:

New Democrat Leader Jack Layton — who had threatened to boycott if she took part last time — expressed dissatisfaction with the way the decision was made.

“If certain leaders are not invited to participate, I think it is reasonable for them to know why,” Layton said in a statement.

“We’re fine with her in the debate,” he added.

***

Bryon Wilfert, the Liberal incumbent for Richmond Hill and a close confidant of Dion, denounced the decision, although made it clear he was not speaking on behalf of his party.

“I think the networks are wrong,” said Wilfert, who considers May a friend and thought she contributed much to the debate last time.

It's very much to Layton's credit (and Wilfert's, but then he wouldn't have to face her in the debate) to take this stance, especially since he initially opposed her inclusion in the previous debate. The fact is, she did contribute a lot to the debate last time. Now technically, she was on much stronger ground in 2008, thanks to Blair Wilson's having crossed the floor to join her party. Technically, of course, the networks would be consistent with their previous policy if they didn't let her in, since the Greens no longer have a sitting MP, but surely having participated previously should count for something, no? It's worth remembering that the PCs came within two seats of being eliminated in 1993, and it's a safe bet that if Jean Charest and Elsie Wayne hadn't managed to cling to their seats, the PCs would still have been allowed into the debate in 1997.

You might not like Obama's promises

Many Canadians were very pleased to see Barack Obama win the presidential election. I was among them, but only in a relative sense. You see, the US political scene is quite some distance to the right of its Canadian counterpart, and Obama is no exception, sadly:

He supports the death penalty for heinous crimes, while acknowledging that capital punishment is likely not a deterrent.

He is opposed to same-sex marriage, though noting that time may prove he's on the wrong side of history on this issue.

He wants more combat troops in Afghanistan, while vowing to take American soldiers out of Iraq within 16 months of assuming office.

He had himself baptized as a Christian in adulthood.

Barack Obama is not the Canadian version of a liberal politician, even while occupying the far left – as a United States senator – of the political spectrum. In Canadian terms, he'd barely qualify as a Red Tory.

From the Toronto Star. I'd still take Obama over Harper (or McCain or Palin, obviously), but in my mind Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe, Elizabeth May, and even Stephane Dion are far more progressive than he is. Although, if Obama were running in Canada instead of the US he might have adjusted his platform to suit the electorate. Certainly I have little doubt that if Harper were running in the US he'd be taking clear and strident positions against same sex marriage, and possibly abortion as well, and endorse the death penalty.

On a completely unrelated note, this story caught my attention:

The main drag looked like a scene from a horror flick last night after a leaky truck spilled 4.5 metric tonnes of chicken blood down Queen Street.

The tanker truck, headed from Schneider’s poultry plant in St. Marys to Kitchener, was headed west down Queens Street at about 11:30 p.m. when a valve broke off.

“We got the call first from a citizen who said there was a liquid on the road,” said Const. Glen Childerly of the Perth County Ontario Provincial Police.

“When we went there, we discovered it was blood. . . . There was blood everywhere and in spots it was three inches thick.”

The blood trail spanned more than five kilometers through the centre of town.

And I thought Halloween was last week...

Well, it's over...

... and surprisingly little has changed as far as the big picture goes. The Liberals got another shitkicking, yet the Tories remain scary to enough people (fortunately) that they weren't able to capitalize on it as much as they'd hoped. Some highlights:

Jack Harris took St. John's East with almost 75% of the vote! I suspect he's going to be a prominent figure in the party for some time to come. Especially nice given that Newfoundland has not traditionally been fertile ground for the NDP.

Elizabeth May failed to take Central Nova (or any other seat, for that matter). Whether she will live to fight again remains to be seen, but I suspect she will.

Once again, it took the Bloc Quebecois to save Canada from destruction. Happily, Thomas Mulcair held on to Outrement, which I believe makes him the first New Democrat to win a seat in Quebec in a general election. Contrary to what was said at a rally last week, though, he is not the first to win a seat in the province; Phil Edmonston did it in 1990. Unfortunately we didn't pick up any other seats in the province, though.

Disappointingly, Gerard Kennedy made one of the few Liberal gains this time round, at the expense of Peggy Nash. I suspect when the knives come out for Dion, one of them will be wielded by him.

Waterloo Region has turned solidly blue! This is a bit of a shock; although some had suggested that Karen Redman might be in trouble in Kitchener Centre, few could have predicted Andrew Telegdi's defeat in Kitchener-Waterloo. I'm happy to see Telegdi go, by the way, but not happy to see who has beaten him. And I would love to have seen his concession speech; I imagine him being bitter and angry.

The orange wave has swept northern Ontario, except for Kenora. This is not a surprise; the biggest surprise is that it hasn't happened for so long.

Shelly Glover slapped the cuffs on Ray Simard in St. Boniface. Niki Ashton has picked up Churchill, and can probably look forward to carrying her family dynasty for some time to come. She's one of those people who remind you of how little you have achieved (unless, of course, you were an MP by the age of 26).

Nettie Wiebe didn't quite make it in Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar. A pity; she'd have made a fine MP (and agriculture critic!) Better luck next time. Things turned out a lot better in Edmonton-Strathcona; let's hope that Linda Duncan represents the start of a trend rather than a fluke.

Turncoat Ujjal Dosanjh held onto his seat in Vancouver South. He bleated to the media about how evil the NDP is for actually daring to contest an election, and blames us for the Tories forming another government. Gee, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that his party sucks, could it? The turnout was low across the country (below 60%); many pundits are saying this is the result of prospective Liberal voters staying home. Maybe next time they'll actually find someone else to vote for? Like, say, the NDP?

So what does the future hold? Well, as hinted at above, I suspect that Dion is finished. I predict that by this time in 2011, Michael Ignatieff will be prime minister. You heard it here first.

The great debate

Well, where to begin. The format was quite well set up, with questions sent in by members of the public (selected in advance by the consortium of broadcasters), on the economy, the environment, health, the arts, Afghanistan, the issue of trust in general, and the first issue that each would tackle as PM. (On the last point, Duceppe said something to the effect of "Well, I know I'm not going to be Prime Minister, and three of you won't either. Some of you know it.")

So how did they do? Well, nobody actually crashed and burned. Harper, though, came across as sickeningly smug, with a vile grin on his face of the type that makes you want to rub his face in the cat box. Harper also had this infuriating way of talking about almost everything in terms of marketing, as if good marketing is the solution to everything. He also seemed out of touch when he said "Canadians aren't worried about losing there homes and jobs, they're worried about their portfolios". Well, Steve, maybe that's true of the people you know...

Dion? Well, he exceeded my expectations. However, I don't really have much to compare with, not being a regular watcher of TV news. I read about him on the net and hear about him on the radio a lot, but I haven't watched enough footage of him to know if (a) he's improved the way he carries himself dramatically, (b) he never was too bad, but the media just got off on portraying him that way, or (c) he's still awful, but I'm too alienated from my fellow human citizens to see how poorly his style would go over on them. He would not commit to never running a deficit, whereas most of the others did.

Layton was extremely good at explaining his ideas in a clear fashion. He seemed to interrupt the others a bit more than most, though all of them did it occasionally. He was the first of the leaders to raise the impact of the FTA and NAFTA, and advocated immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, then getting the UN in there in place of NATO. He was not explicit, however, on whether or not Canada should be involved in the UN mission that follows. He also did a good job of pointing out the main drawbacks of the Conservatives' approach to helping business and the arts using non-refundable tax credits, namely that they have to be redeemable in order to help those who most need them (who, after all, are below the threshold for paying income taxes, and would thus not benefit from non-refundable credits). He also pointed out the folly of Harper's cherished "intensity based" emissions targets (for instance, you could produce more oil from the tar sands as long as your emissions per barrel were lower, with the result that your overall emissions could, and probably would, continue to increase). He was not as explicit as he could have been in discussing the relative merits of cap and trade over a carbon tax. On the other hand, he pointed out one of the elephants in the room, namely the fact that the Conservatives have not yet released their platform. He said that an NDP government would not run a deficit, pointing out the fact that NDP provincial governments, contrary to stereotypes, have generally been good fiscal managers (and threw in the fact that the obvious exception, Bob Rae, is now a Liberal, for good measure).

May also significantly exceeded expectations. She handled herself competently and confidently, in stark contrast to the train wreck that one is led to expect when most of one's information comes from babble. She handled economic issues well; she mentioned that Canada is in danger of experiencing "Dutch disease", though it would have helped if she'd explained what it was rather than expecting the average viewer to look it up (pity you can't put hyperlinks in speeches). She was also the only one of the leaders to mention electoral reform among the first priorities she would address as PM. As many babblers predicted, though, I can't recall seeing her attack Dion once (though it's possible that I missed something, since I had a number of interruptions while watching the broadcast).

Duceppe was very good as well. In terms of presentation, he was perhaps the best of the five. I liked the way he remarked on the irony that he was the first to advocate a "buy Canadian" policy in the course of the debate. He was also the first to bring up First Nations issues, in the context of health policy. However, health was otherwise one of his weaknesses in terms of actual policy, given that he is a big-time decentralist, to the point of objecting to federal regulation of such things as privatization of health services (he says he doesn't advocate this, but it should be up to "Quebec and the provinces" to decide these matters). Similarly, he objects to national securities laws; he thinks that this should remain a provincial matter. These are understantable in the context of a Quebec nationalist, of course, but probably bad for much of Canada.

All in all, I'm happy I watched this rather than the Biden-Palin debate. I'm sure that anything really juicy that came from that debate will show up on YouTube anyway.

Elizabeth May on the Afghan mission

This is a bit of a surprise:

Thanks to Spaceman Spiff at babble for drawing my attention to this. In fairness, it's actually worth watching the entire interview, since most of what she said is quite reasonable. Ultimately, though, it's pretty clear that she favours keeping a military presence in Afghanistan, which to me seems like a fatally flawed proposition. Certainly there is a significant need for peacekeepers in that country, but I don't think we should be doing it -- after all, why the hell should they trust us? We invaded their country for fuck's sake. We helped create the need for peacekeeping in the first place. I'm not sure who should be doing the peacekeeping there, but whoever it is should be someone who didn't participate in the invasion -- maybe Indonesia, South Africa, and Sweden could do it.

Will May regret entering the debate?

If she says things like what's attributed to her here, she might. I had previously posted the YouTube video (still reachable at Buckdog's blog as linked here) but there's some dispute over whether the audio clip properly illustrates what she said, so in the name of fairness I refer readers to that blog (before I'm slapped with a cease and desist order).

May to participate in leaders debates

She's in:

Green Leader Elizabeth May will get a chance to debate her fellow party leaders after all.

The broadcasters consortium has invited Ms. May to the Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 debates, and received assurances from the other four party leaders that they will attend if Ms. May is invited, spokesman Jason MacDonald confirmed to The Globe and Mail.

The broadcasters made the change after Prime Minister Stephen Harper and NDP Leader Jack Layton both backed down from their opposition to Ms. May's involvement.

Ms. May shouted with joy in her New Glasgow, N.S. campaign office as she watched a television report that the Conservatives had backed down from their threat to boycott the debates if the Green leader was invited.

The Conservative announcement came just minutes after NDP leader Jack Layton came to the same decision.

This is a good development, and it probably won't seriously hurt the NDP either. If May performs well, she'll likely pull votes from across the spectrum, (and perhaps some who wouldn't otherwise have voted), and if she performs badly, she might drive some people who'd parked their votes with the Greens to the NDP (since their core supporters, historically, have tended to be left wing). Not to mention, it will make the debate a lot more interesting.

More politics, north and south of the 49h

As readers of this blog will know, I'm not particularly enamoured of the Green Party of Canada. Nevertheless, now that they have an MP in the House of Commons, I think it's only fair to let Elizabeth May participate in the TV debates. Whether she will be allowed to is still an open question; the party is threatening to go to court if necessary, which leads me to think that they are concerned.

The only possible basis for excluding them would be that Blair Wilson was not elected as a Green. That argument might have some substance, except for one inconvenient fact:

When questioned about the legitimacy of Wilson's seat as a Green, given he was elected as a Liberal, May countered that the Bloc Québécois was included in the national debates prior to 1993 federal election, despite none of the candidates being elected as Bloc members.

Whatever you think of the Greens, or of floor-crossers, it would be hard to justify excluding May from the debate.

As a side note, which party do you think would have the greatest interest in keeping May out? The NDP? Bloc? Liberals? Think again:

Harris's remarks come as the federal Conservatives are seeking to block May from the debates, citing a deal struck by May and Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion where they agreed not to run candidates against each other in their respective ridings.

"You can't have one leader onstage that has already endorsed the candidacy of another and signed an electoral co-operation agreement," Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas said.

The thing is, while widely perceived as left of centre (and some of their policies do fit that description), the Greens have a significant following among the dissatisfied right as well (don't forget that both May and her predecessor, Jim Harris, have had ties to the PCs in the past). As well, a lot of their supporters may be people who wouldn't otherwise vote. So if May makes a good impression on those folks, she could do harm to the Tories. Alternatively, if she makes a bad impression on left-leaning voters, or even fails to differentiate the Greens from the other parties on environmental issues (quite possible, since the parties' policies are pretty similar in that regard) those folks might be less likely to vote Green, and more likely to vote NDP, Bloc, or (ugh) Liberal, than they would if she wasn't in the debate.

Turning to that benighted country to our south, no doubt you've all heard by now that John McCain has selected Sarah Palin as his running mate, and that she hasn't exactly received the kind of media coverage that the Republicans might like. It's unfortunate that a disproportionate amount of the attention has been on her daughter's pregnancy, but I guess that's the part of the story that makes good copy (as compared with, say, the fact that she supports teaching creationism in schools, that she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and stuff like that). I guess it does help to highlight her stridently anti-abortion views, not to mention that she reportedly advocates abstinence-only sex ed. Still, I think those could have been pointed out without dragging her daughter into the mess. Incidentally, on this issue, wisdom sometimes comes from an unlikely source:

I've been watching the news all morning, like everyone else - and i keep hearing about the issues related to 'teen pregnancy'- It's all related to Sarah Palin and her 17 year old unmarried pregnant daughter. Well, I think the real problem comes from the fact that we are taking the focus off of getting to know Sarah Palin and her political views, and what she can do to make our country a less destructive place. Its distracting from the real issues, the real everyday problems that this country experiences.

I am concerned with the fact that Sarah Palin brought the attention to her daughter's pregnancy, rather than all world issues and what she believes she could possibly do to change them-if elected. I get Sarah Palin's views against abortion, but i would much prefer to hear more about what she can do for our country rather than how her daughter is going to have a child no matter what.

Maybe focus on delivering some words and policy with stronger impact like Joe Biden.

Thanks to writer in this babble thread for the link (come on now, you didn't think I've been lurking at Hollywood stars' blogs looking for tidbits like this, did you?)

Elizabeth May goofs in Guelph

Well okay, nobody's perfect, but the federal Green leader seems to have overlooked something in the NDP's policies on asbestos. In a letter to the Guelph Mercury, May says:

To this day, the Green party is the only party prepared to call for an end to asbestos mining and exports.

All very well, except for this:

In light of the World Health Organization’s conclusion that “there is no evidence for a threshold for the carcinogenic effect of asbestos” and that “the most efficient way to eliminate asbestos-related diseases is to stop the use of all types of asbestos,” the government should apply the precautionary principle and proceed to a ban on asbestos through phasing out the use and export of asbestos.

Oh well, she's almost right. The Green party is the only party except for the NDP prepared to call for an end to asbestos mining and exports.

A pithy comment about the Green Party of Canada

I feel a bit bad for finding this so amusing. I have a lot of friends who are Green Party supporters. Hell, in the past I voted Green a couple of times. But I couldn't help snickering at this:

You don’t own the environmental issue; the NDP has owned that for decades. You don’t own the tax issue; the Conservative Party has owned that for decades. You don’t even own the idea of stealing other parties’ ideas; the Liberal Party has owned that for decades.

The thing is, I do think there's a legitimate place for the Green Party in the Canadian political landscape. There are plenty of people who are politically around where the Liberals or the old PCs would be, except that they recognize that some environmental issues absolutely must be dealt with to avoid an enormous disaster (how enormous is debatable, but it certainly won't be a good scene if global warming advances too far, for instance). So if a sizeable number of those people find a political home there, that's fine. Myself, I'm sticking with the NDP.