A Brave New Blog

Hello world, and thanks for stopping by. This is my first post to this brand spanking new blog. My first attempt to go boldly where, frankly, many many others have gone before.

But what a day to inaugurate Red Canuck!

A few interesting happenings in recent days:

1. Big John Baird unveiled the Tory "Green Plan". It falls short of Kyoto targets, and as expected focuses on emission intensity rather than hard levels. I guess its a start for a group of people who only recently came to accept the issue in the first place. But details aside, isn't it curious that after all of the hulaballoo about revising the Clean Air Act and months of tripartite negotiations, the Tories have essentially scuttled a plan that was voted on in committee in favour of this watered down option.

2. Did anyone else happen to catch Conservative MP Mark Warawa on Politics today? It was almost physically painful to watch him try to evade saying on national tv that the Cons have no intention of putting their new enviro-plan to a vote in the House of Commons. On a separate note, am I the only one who thinks that Susan Bonner is a better host than Don Newman?

3. Why oh why did the NDP vote against the Liberal motion to end our Afghanistan commitment in 2009? They claim to have done so because they want our troops back sooner than 2009. Nothing short of an NDP majority government <raucous laughter> could make that happen, so the question remains: what was to be gained by propping up the Conservatives in that vote??

4. Finally, south of the border, the senate passed a bill setting a strict timeline for withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq. Dubbya has promised to veto it, saying that timelines for withdrawal "embolden the enemy". Anyone listening closely may have heard a similar refrain coming from the Conservatives regarding our mission in Afghanistan. This type of talk should make us all nervous, especially our brave troops who continue to give their lives without the full support of our NATO allies.

Well, thats it for today. Feel free to leave comments and suggestions, regardless of your political stripe - after all, dissent is the greatest form of patriotism. Cheers!