You can learn a lot about Canadian politics on knitting blogs.
The New Yorker has a giant piece on Naomi Klein.
Brian Schweitzer will head the Democratic Governors Association next year.
Progressive and Hispanic Caucus member Xavier Beccera is likely to be named as U.S. Trade Representative. That will open up another battle for a leadership spot in the House. Will progressive bloggers notice a progressive appointment?
Al Franken claims that he is 22 votes ahead of Norm Coleman.
The U.S. and India seem to agree that the Mumbai murderers were trained in Pakistan. That means trouble.
Watch it here.
And I kind of hate losing Beccera there. He’s a good guy. I’ve seen him speak in LA a number of times.
like a broken CD stuck in this groove — Pakistan is the most dangerous country on planet earth. Not Iran or Afghanistan. We should set up a withdrawal timetable for Afghanistan. It’s not winnable says the British Generals.
Moreover, the Pakistani fuse has been lit and will ignite the world before January 2011.
I agree with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. — World stability hangs by a thread.
Elections in India are coming up. If the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wins, it’ll be the signal to prep a nuclear bunker…abandon work.
When Pakistan blows, the safest place to be will be east Africa, South Brazil and Argentina.
I have to admit I have no idea what the US Trade Representative does. I don’t even know which department the position falls under — Commerce and State seem reasonable, but for I know he reports to the Secretary of Energy. I can add this to a long list of executive positions with functions totally opaque to me.
Is there a glossary or something somewhere?
link
Oooh, neat. Thanks for the link.
“…and I’m proud to be an American™, where at least I know I’m free” …to use cluster bombs.
the gift that keeps on giving: “…98 percent of cluster-bomb victims are civilians, and 27 percent are children…that kills civilians even after the fighting ends,” …
we still haven’t signed the Ottawa Treaty banning land mines either.
what a country, eh.
So if Al Franken is elected, does that mean we will be deprived of six years of jokes?
Voting to elect Franken was not an easy decision. A wrestler we can do without. But a comedian? They are dropping like flies, the last one Carlin, and what we face today without Franken is the possibility of a grimmer future.
It’s amazing how they keep finding caches of undiscovered ballots in Minnesota.
as long as ‘they’ ‘find’ ‘enough’.
Go Brian! The Gov is awesome.
Obama drops idea of oil windfall tax
That’s change alright. A big change from campaign promises.
smell that change, it smells like eating shit.
What’s there to tax? Oil’s down under $50 a barrel last I saw and we’re in the midst of a global recession. They took their profits while the taking was good and one of their guys was there and now there’s no real “windfall” to tax.
I’d imagine if they start getting record profits again we’ll see the windfall tax issue come up again. A windfall tax might be a good environmental policy move, but it’s not going to generate the revenue it would have a year ago. And it’s probably not going to have the popular support it had a year ago either when everyone realizes that a windfall profits tax would raise gas prices again. (That was always what I saw as a downfall of the windfall profits tax idea – it’s not like the oil companies would just eat the tax. They’d collude to pass it on down the chain and when people saw the even higher gas prices, they’d scream bloody murder until the tax got revoked. Taxes are too easy to revoke in this country and too politically difficult to put into place to make for good environmental policy – I’d rather see something less dependent on tax punishments because I have zero faith that they can withstand the whims of the public.)
(And now I click through the link you provided and see it makes the same points I just did, so there you go.)
Funny how the threat of a windfall profits tax brought the price of gas right down…
Total economic collapse has a way of cutting the price of oil. Seriously – it’s not the threat of taxes that brought the price per barrel down (they would just raise prices to compensate and then shrug and say “complain to your Congressman” when people bitched), it’s the fact that growth in China, India, the US and the entire rest of the world slowed all at once. That cut the immediate demand (for lots of things that need oil – not just energy but plastics) AND sent the speculators scurrying off to safer investments AND caused changes in behavior among consumers where it could be changed. All of that works together to drive the price per barrel down.
The prices will rise again once there are growing economies that need energy to keep their growth going. But if countries like China, India and the US can get some good alternatives in place before the world starts humming again, the price may not grow that much. But there’s no need for a conspiracy to drive the price of oil or gasoline down to where it is – it’s where it is because the economy sucks. (And if OPEC gets its act together, we may see the price rise again before the world’s economies start humming again. I tend to doubt it – most of those governments have a strong incentive to get as much money as possible, and there’s a nice little “prisoner’s dilemma” problem wrapped around fixing oil prices on the world market. They can do it when times are good, but when times are tough I suspect it will be every man for himself.)
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Trained in the Northwest frontier by forner Pakistan Army officers, center for recruitment is city of Peshawar, one or more of the Pakistanis taking part in the Mumbai attacks may have had British identification cards, stayed in the targeted hotels as guests, during attacks the terrorists were provided tactical information bij phone from Peshawar, 90% of the Indian protesters want to go to war with Pakistan, who the hell is Rice?
The Indian government believes that a terrorist group from Pakistan, possibly affiliated with Pakistani militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, both of which have ties to Al Qaeda, may be responsible.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I’ve got a giant piece for..
nah.
forget it.
Stephanie, aka The Yarn Harlot, rocks! She explains Canadian politics as well as she does how to turn the heel of a sock. Long live knitters!!
I was totally impressed with her explanation. Who knew Canadian politics could be so fascinating? 🙂
(ps, I think I should bring back the knit-a-palooza diaries now that it’s winter, don’t you? I’m one attached i-cord away from being able to model my completed purple sweater…)
Yes, please! I’ve missed the Knit-a-palooza diaries. They’re a nice stress reliever in the midst of all the politics and financial news.
Al Queda? ISI? or either one with CIA backing?