Moonlight Graham

Exactly, although i'm not sure the CO2 effect is moot. Probably both have a factor in the cooling. Particulate matter cooling the planet has been shown before, and on other planets as well. Mars has periodic dust storms that cover the whole planet, which are not causes by volcanoes but by large winds that whip up dust from the planet's surface. Decades ago, when a NASA space probe went through the storm to the surface, the surface temp was much cooler than what scientists anticipated. This also brought more credence to the "nuclear winter" theory that was receiving attention at the time. Mars dust storms

Granola bars?

Putting Kirk Cameron videos on your site isn't going to help your cause. I'm not an atheist, but i think atheism is going to get more and more popular as the decades go by and science explains more of how this universe works and most religions make less logical sense to people.

All drugs are for idiots. That includes alcohol and nicotine.

It should be a human right not to have governments propose stupid ideas like this.

Can somebody please step on the gun registry's neck and shoot it in the face? It just isn't worth the cost or effort.

If this war is going to end favourably on our part, there's eventually going to have to be a deal with the Taliban. As others have said, there's no military-only solution in Afghanistan. Reading the article in OP, it's somewhat positive in that the Taliban says it doesn't want to lead the gov, but not so positive when they say one of their conditions is the return of Sharia law. Not exactly what NATO wants. But i'm hoping this will eventually result in the U.S. admin and the Taliban siting down and having some dialogue.

Radical Islamic fundamentalists want Islam to take over the world, and any non-Muslim to them are "infidels" whom they wage jihad against. Yes, this includes Canada and i'm not dumb enough to think we are immune to attacks and hatred from these wackos. The "Toronto 18" terror plot proves this well. However, the vast majority of Muslims in the ME are not radical fundamentalists waging global jihad. Among these people, they dislike the US more than Canada. That's just a fact. I've never seen any footage of people in the ME or anywhere for that matter burning a Canadian flag. That just comes with the territory with the US being a superpower and Canada doing jack all in the region until recently under Harper. I don't think that Canadian foreign policy is "better" than the US, because maybe our government would be doing very similar things as the US if it were the global hegemonic power and would be resented similarly by certain people in the world. The US is the #1 power, therefore it has a target on its back and would be resented no matter what policies it chose. As smallc said, Harper said that in regards to Canada's economy during this recession. Our economic system is being studied as model for other countries because of its resilience during this recession, i'm not bragging, that's just what people are saying & i'm responding to your quote. Generally, Canada is viewed favourably throughout the world. Thems just the facts too. Like i said, i don't see any people burning Canadian flags.

Yes, but calculated wrongly. The admin vastly underestimated the power of nationalism in Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the strength of the post-invasion insurgency. They thought they would go into Iraq, shock-and-awe them to hell, and proclaim "mission accomplished" and call it a day. I'm quite positive they didn't think the war would last longer than WWII and add all that extra cost. A conservative estimate of the war costing 1 trillion could pay for all U.S. use for the next 250 years if you assume the U.S. continues to use 20 million barrels a year and the cost averages $200 a barrel over that time. These calculations aren't realistic of course, but the point still made: a trillion bucks can buy a lot stuff. Did they factor in loss in global rep the U.S. would incur from their inaccurate claims, human rights abuses against prisoners in Abu Ghraib/Gitmo, & aggressive military use? Did they factor the political losses for their party, both in Congress and the fact that all their actions dealing with Iraq was a significant reason why the Repubs lost the '08 election? Most realists were indeed against the Iraq invasion/war. Here's an op-ed in The New York Times from Sept. 2002 signed by 33 American scholars of international relations against the war, including a who's-who of leading realists such as Kenneth Waltz, John J Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt, and Robert Jervis: WAR WITH IRAQ IS NOT IN AMERICA'S NATIONAL INTEREST. And this was even assuming that Iraq had WMD's and potential to acquire nukes! They also correctly assert/predict: "- Saddam Hussein is a murderous despot, but no one has provided credible evidence that Iraq is cooperating with al Qaeda. - Even if we win easily, we have no plausible exit strategy. Iraq is a deeply divided society that the United States would have to occupy and police for many years to create a viable state. - Al Qaeda poses a greater threat to the U.S. than does Iraq. War with Iraq will jeopardize the campaign against al Qaeda by diverting resources and attention from that campaign and by increasing anti-Americanism around the globe." PWNAGE! Here's a great article by neorealist John J. Mearsheimer on US policy regarding the war: Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq war: realism versus neo-conservatism. Here Morgenthau even asserts that most realists opposed the war: "...On the idealist strand of neo-conservative theory, the argument is even stronger that Morgenthau, like almost all contemporary realists, would have opposed the Iraq war." Iraq was quite well contained pre-invasion. They took a swipe at Bush Sr and disobeyed some UN resolutions, but what security costs did they incur against the US from post-Gulf I to 2003? Ya they provided a threat, but a mostly imagined one not worth the war cost. The real security costs post-Gulf I came from al-Qaeda, and the Iraq War took resources away from Afghanistan & the real threat. Ya, they are friendly with a few Arab middle-eastern governments (but not Persian ones!), but how do the actual citizens feels? No region on earth is the US despised more than in the middle-east (minus Israel!). The US is friendly with the Saudi gov, but one of its citizens leads Al-Qaeda and orchestrated 9/11. 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were also Saudi. The US also has "friendly" relations with the Pakistan gov, yet the ISI provides aid to the Taliban.

How exactly do you know what parameters Cheney and co. used to calculate the cost/risk of the Iraq invasion? Did someone steal his diary or something? Anyways, Cheney and the bunch aren't exactly deft at correct calculations. They goofed on the # of soldiers required to secure Iraq after invasion. They were clueless about the strength of the insurgency post-invasion (Mission Accomplished!). They had no exit strategy. They even botched the Afghanistan invasion and let many important targets, including Bin Laden, skip town. Even if one tries to look at the invasion from a pure Realist perspective, most Realists were against the invasion and argued it would be detrimental to U.S. power/interests. You also bring up the Japan/Germany comparison with regards to democracy in Iraq. As i've stated before, Iraq (and Afghanistan) are not Japan and Germany. The cultural differences between Muslim and Western countries are much more incompatible that Western vs post-war Germany/Japan. Christianity in Germany and Shinto/Buddhism in Japan vs Islam in Iraq. The Iranian Revolution is an interesting example of what Western regime change in Muslim countries can result in - not exactly hugs n kisses.

That;s not the point though. Vote for who you dislike the least. I`ve never voted for a politician i liked.

Well if they were supporting a candidate i liked, i'd probably hate it because any group called "Americans for X cnadidate" would probably have a negative impact on their campaign rather than positive. I don't think the MLW has enough bandwidth for me to list the number of reasons, so you'll just have to guess.

Hell ya it's happened many times before. But the sheer scale of the # of lies in convincing support for a large-scale war is unprecedented. But i couldn't say Bush & co are the award winners for "war lies", LBJ & co. likely has them beat. His job isn't to convince the nation to go to war based on B.S. evidence. If he wants to go to war, then give his argument based on the real reasons, such as the ones you've mentioned. Saddam is a threat blah blah. Your government lied to you yet again, and you took it up the arse and you don't even seem to care. The reason you don't care is that the means led to an end that you support. i hope the government arse-rape was worth it for ya.

We don't have any "privilage". But we are entitled to our opinion in who we want to be President. I don't really care if you support one Prime Minister candidate over another, you're entitled to your opinion, but the reason why most Americans dont care is that who the PM is hardly affects them or the world. However, a Canadian telling Americans what they "need" (as in the OP)is going over the line, i'll agree on that.

What amount of immigration do you support?

Saddam was a bad dude and his dangerous actions are well-established. Yes he was a security concern no doubt. The Iraq Liberation Act on regime change was by the means of mostly supporting other competing parties in Iraq in taking control of the gov from Saddam. Hell i'm probably in favour of that, Saddam is an idiot. Covert support of competing parties and sending in a few cruise missiles is a lot different than invasion and occupation, however. Sure Clinton wanted the guy gone, but would he have invaded according to Bush Doctrine ideals given the chance after 9/11? I doubt it, but hey who knows. The scary thing is that Bush and co. believed half the garbage they spewing even though the intelligence on it was mostly weak or non-existent. As i keep saying, supporting the war and regime is a whole different issue. The means by which it was sold to Congress, the U.S. public, and the global community, either by lying, skewing the facts, or by sheer blind faith is what disturbs me, as it should everyone. The worst thing about everything that went down is not that it happened, or even that nobody was held accountable, but that there's nothing to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

I think if someone staples some balls onto Obama's pelvis that would be a pretty good choice. I like Ventura, he's an honest guy which is refreshing in politics, and he talks a lot of sense. But he does have a temper. Doesn't matter who we think will win, money and special interests will win as they always do.

Or maybe it was the fact that it was not publicly known pre-invasion that much that was in the NIE or what the admin was saying was inaccurate or plain fabrication? Do you think support for the war would have been the same in Congress or with the general population if they knew there were no links between Saddam and al-Qaeda, Iraq had no nuclear program, no chem/bio weapons etc.? So basically your argument is that governments have always lied and its a fact of politics so you're ok with that, no matter how big the lie? Ok then. Broken election promises are one thing, but when hundreds of thousands of people start dying as a result of some lies then it crosses the line. Yeah not like a didn't howl like mad over the Sponsorship Scandal, or some of Harper's recent idiocy. However, its all a matter of proportionality. Bush etc. lying to me and my government about WMD's and the like for the purposes of starting a war where 100,000+ civilians are dead and wanting Canada to join in deserve a little bit more of my time and energy.

As i mentioned in my post, yes the affect of cosmic ray flux alone happens over tens of millions of years. However, the theory that increased solar flares from our sun and block some of the flux from reaching earth is claimed to correspond with the solar cycles, which are much shorter in timescale. The Schwabe cycle is about 11 years long, the Gleissberg cycle is 75-90 years long etc. This is true on the frequency of supernovae in our galaxy. They say one every 30 years on average. Unfortunately i don't know how scientists working on this theory explain this then. However, i can see how being within spriral arms (thus closer to more stars) could affect cosmic ray flux on the earth over long time periods (tens of millions of years). What i do know is that scientists have measured the amount of cosmic ray flux through the last 500 million years via proxies.

Ya duh. Who do you think requested the 2002 NIE on Iraq? Congress. .So you're cool with your government lying to you or making inaccurate claims based on knowingly garbage intelligence in order to start a war? They pulled the wool over your eyes so do you even care? Does that not bother the heck out of you?? I just don't understand how anyone who believes in government accountability and not being drilled in the ears with lies by gov can be even remotely ok with what happened during the run-up. Even if you support the war that's fine i'm not talking about that, but the means by which it was started was dishonest and corrupt based on well-established evidence. Like i said, invite Clinton to the party also, i'm sure much of what he said was b.s. too Whether the war and regime change was right or wrong is subjective. The crap that the Bush admin (and possibly Clinton) spewed pre-invasion was wrong, period. And no i don't like it, and anyone with a soul and some knowledge shouldn't either.

She beats Elizabeth may

The executive and legislature are hardly separate at all. Our PM is part of the legislature, and is the most powerful player in the legislature at that. The cabinet is also in the legislature. The Crown is also involved with the legislature since the GG must give Royal Assent to any potential legislation.

Guergis's troubles are a shame because she's the hottest female Canadian politican i remember ever seeing, and it was enjoyable watching her sit behind Harper during Question Period. Farewell hottie

lol, touche. My apologies to dissing the American national anthem, not cool.

Here's a very interesting article about possible celestial drivers on long-term climate change (argued as the driver of the switch between Cold House and Warm House periods, and also acts with sunspots to decrease/increase cloud cover). It's a peer-reviewed article from the journal "Geoscience Canada": http://www.whitemoose.com/climate/GACV32No1Veizer.pdf Basically, the theory is that as our solar system (and therefore earth) moves between the galactic arms of the milky way (over very long periods of tens of millions of years), the galactic cosmic rays (containing high-energy particles, such as pieces of atoms, neutons/protons) given off my supernovae that are concentrated within the galactic arms react in our atmosphere when as they bombard earth and create more low-lying cloud cover. Low-lying clouds have a net cooling affect on the earth, therefore when we are within a galactic arm (as we are now, in the Orion Spur) the earth cools since cosmic ray flux increases. Clouds form more readily when tiny particles in our atmosphere, known as aerosols, pick up electric charges and so act as more effective nuclei for the collection of water droplets. Recent theoretical and experimental studies demonstrate that galactic cosmic rays are one of the sources that act to charge aerosols and thereby create more low-lying clouds. This cloud-producing effect has actually been reproduced in labs. There is a very good correlation between long-term global temperatures (the last 500 million years) and cosmic ray flux, as seen in one of the graphs in the article. Variability of the output of our sun also is theorized to react with cosmic ray flux to affect short-term temperature (as low as 11-year cycles). Increased solar output blocks some of the galactic cosmic rays from reaching earth, therefore decreasing low-lying cloud cover and warming the earth.