Molly

Wow. "Carson is a former lawyer who was disbarred, convicted of theft and sentenced to 18 months in jail in the early 1980s for stealing money from clients of his law firm. But he rebounded from that to work in the offices of three prime ministers - Brian Mulroney, Joe Clark and Harper." Lovely company they keep, there.

Punked... please, please, please, please PLEASE stop spelling riding with a double d. I'm begging you. It ab-so-lutely drives me 'round the twist. I'll live with 'lead' for 'led' and ignore 'loose' for 'lose' wherever those errors appear, but I -just- -cannot- -do- 'ridding' for 'riding'. Please!

Remember the movie 'Being There'? The press is in a bit of a position. Is it a matter of bias to treat (the) Chauncey Gardiner (party) as a wienie if you know the real situation?

That resembles my sense of it as well. We can oppose nukes as virulently as we wish, but the fact is, it's about the only energy source we currently have that will cost-effectively meet out-of-control demands. Love it or hate it, we'll have 'em. The sole good thing about the Japan situation is that it's an object lesson. If it scares the everloving crap out of legislators and designers, administrators and energy-hungry citizens, and thus quells carelessness and overconfidence, then we will be very well served by it. If we take the opposite attitude- that everything is under control and ever-so-safe (after all, it didn't kill us all)- and breezily proceed with such things as operating Chalk River without adequate fail-safes, then we are not just robbing our grandchildren, but murdering them.

Here's one to peruse, but you can search your own info on mid-continent earthquakes/faults. The gist of any of them is the suggestion that the risk of large mid-continent quakes is almost impossible to predict, and that the absence of them in the past is as likely to indicate an enhanced as a reduced probability of one occurring in the future. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41628543/ns/technology_and_science-science/

100-150 earthquakes per year? Oh, yeah. It could be considered active.

That would be this one: http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110316/OTT_Earthquake_110316/20110317/?hub=OttawaHome No need to dredge back a whole year.

I'm not comfortable with that tone either. It's personal rather than directed at the action, and I really don't believe that it's the tone we want.... but neither do I think it's egregious enough to get excited about. He had absolutely nothing to apologize for. That nuance of tone is the sort of thing that jumps out at folks who are entertained by the examination of words. I like young Mr. Trudeau better for his having been sensitive to it. He has more wheels turning than I gave him credit for.

Judge not lest ye be judged.

Sounds bass-ackwards to me. That's barbaric! = I disapprove. That's unacceptable! = That ain't gonna happen on my watch!

Whoa! Chernobyl exists! (Ms. Lohan exists!) You can't accuratelty assess safety without figuring them in. 'Foolproof' must stymie even the most persistent, powerful and ingenious of fools! On that happy note, I'm reminded of the removal of Linda Keene for the shutdown of unsafe units that lacked adequate fail-safe backups. How many demonstrations of high-risk hubris must we witness before we realize that we must plan the 'arrogant jerk' factor into safety equations?

|Are you seriously suggesting that he had any delusions of riding in on a great white stallion, to be instantly adored and annointed? The man is a journalist and an historian!! He's only made a lifelong study of how stuff like that comes off. In fact, that demonstrated grasp is one of the more notable qualifications on his extrordinarily impressive curriculum vitae... and let us never be forgetting that most of the time, he really, really is 'the smartest guy in the room'. Could be he's just a tiny bit less naive about it than that, and was perfectly aware that there was no puppy even if he was offered one.

Too, too, too toomuch credit. The strategy is "Be brazen; talk fast; assume the stupidity of your audience." The liberals and the NDP are quite capable of dividing themselves from one another without any outside help. I would think they should both be a little insulted at being equated and assumed to be halves of the same whole.

If you are, then that's about the only thing you got wrong. Surprise, more like. The high points you touch are unconventional, but spot on. If you look around you might find me commenting on how tough it was to tell the difference between Roy Romanow and Mike Harris.... (Kinda nice to feel like I'm not the only one who sometimes wonders if we slipped into Bizarro World).

Awwww. I feel like just.... applauding.

If it's such a paltry sum then why don't the Conservatives pay for it themselves, instead of sticking me with the bill?

Good grief. Let's see: The major contents of the budget aren't exactly a secret. They are the opposition. It's their job to be a gopvernment in waiting, impatiently. The recent controversies listed are only the very latest in a long, unbroken string. And, it's about bloody time. The PC dirty tricks and disrespect have become more than a habit. Challenging them is wa-ay overdue. No election has yet been triggered, and the Conservatives can readily prevent it if they wish. But they don't wish. They've already been campaigning on the public dime for months and months. Your suspicions (and your pronouncements) are inspired by partisanship, not acumen.

Two different ways to be dumb. The first helps no one but ticks off a lot of people, calls credibility into question; the latter makes less noise but costs real money, and does long term damage.

Dumb. Short-sighted.

This is an interesting site: http://www.understanding-medicaltourism.com/medical-tourism-canada.php

Except... public service spending has been capped, not cut. This is in addition to normal public service spending. Soooo.... it's a way to pretend to be holding the line on costs while doing no such thing. (Not to mention a bunch of the rest of that stuff like stripping employees of job security and not giving a hoot about taxpayers information security and so on.)

I'm far more struck by the evaluation of women solely on a sexual-objective scale. The new twist on the perennial circumstance of powerful men surrounding themselves with bimbos is to now equate qualification as a bimbo to general competence. Well, sometimes beautiful women are also brilliant, and sometimes they are not. Even if those who are sexually attractive to men were always brilliant (they aren't) to ignore brilliance in favor of a cute tush is a terrible waste. I just don't figure that double standards are necessary, even if they are generously intended.

Have another sandwich, Troll.

And many don't. That's quite the one-trick hobby-horse you ride around on.