canada's muslim and arab population dwarfs it's jewish population by several orders of magnitude, is more inclined towards conservative value systems than north american jews (who tend to lean left...) are and is likely not statistically less wealthy (although it may have less ultra-wealthy people). canada is better than the united states in limiting campaign donations. from a domestic political perspective, it is entirely irrational for the conservatives to blindly support israel at the expense of alienating a larger arab vote that's more inclined towards it's policies.

i think the truth is that harper is an evangelical christian of a particularly fundamentalist type. i think it's a personal conviction, brought out by a complex interaction between his religious beliefs and being raised in an environment where the second world war never really ended. i think, in his mind, nato is still fighting to save the world from evil, and supporting israel falls into that narrative for whatever reason.

you have to understand that it's widely recognized in canada that stephen harper is not mentally well - he is at the least a clinical psychopath, and has shown multiple symptoms of various personality disorders. it's not always wise to try and understand him using the "rational thought" model. he is constantly behaving erratically.

that was a long time ago, now.

it's interesting to wonder how much of an effect that this fiasco had on the collapse of the bloc. the bloc was created to represent quebec's interests; at the time of this mess, they hadn't been actively campaigning for sovereignty in quite some time, and had instead coalesced into a regional block. harper has never been anything but reviled in quebec - and this is a political fact, not a cultural one. had all those seats been liberal or ndp, there's a chance that dion & layton may have formed a government in the first place. the clearest consequence of this mess was consequently that the existence of the bloc was acting against the interests of quebec.

harper's point seems valid if you're flying on the seat of your pants through this, but anybody with an understanding of electoral politics realizes he's not making any sense. we don't vote for a prime minister. we vote for members of parliament. the members of parliament then choose the prime minister. that's not an opinion, it's the way our government works. if mr. harper wants to take the unprecedented step of declaring himself president...

the fallout of this was very negative for the liberals. i've long believed that dion was sabotaged on the inside by ignatieff, who strikes me as a kind of a machiavellian bastard. and, in the long run they might not recover.

but, i'm here today because i think the liberals are going to be devastated in the upcoming election, which is beginning to look more and more like an ndp sweep. it's delicate. due to vote splitting on the left, the difference between an ndp sweep and a conservative sweep is merely a few points. 200 seats are going to swing on 3-4%. it's dramatic, and not representative of the country's will in much of any outcome.

and, i think stephane dion is sitting in what is probably the only safe liberal riding in the country.

i believe they made a mistake in abandoning him too quickly in favour of what they saw as a coronation, against any kind of logic. dion is in the mould of the previous leaders of the past liberal dynasties: he has huge amounts of experience, and has written some substantial legislation. replacing him with a tv host from another country that pretty much everybody agrees is politically a democrat was cynical and foolish. he had a set of very good policies. he needed time, patience and support. in a past era, he would have gotten it.

the remaining opportunists will abandon the party in october, as it is now void of immediate opportunity. i expect that the task to rebuild this party is going to fall on him, once again. he'll have all the time in the world, this time.

pluto has a really weird orbit that brings it in between uranus and neptune, and actually takes it closer to uranus from time to time. there's a large, measurable effect of neptune on pluto's orbit that is well understood. accepting that the geological activity may be due to gravitational effects that planetary mechanics refers to as "oscillations" is still a little outside the realm of accepted science, but it's also a research question that is building greater support. it seems as though planets like jupiter and mars may have some effect on the geological activity that occurs on earth. likewise, the answer to this apparent mystery may very well lie in this developing understanding; it may be gravitational interaction with the other planets, primarily neptune.

i see they're ruling out tidal drag because of the perception that charon and pluto are in equilibrium, but this is a goofy assumption for three reasons:

1) those calculations are fairly crude. i wouldn't be going around using them to argue against anything.
2) "equilibrium", in context, is never going to be "perfect equilibrium". there's outside forces. it's not a closed system.
3) the larger pluto-neptune-uranus system orbits in cycles that are measured on the scale of centuries. we don't have the kind of data required to draw conclusions about the stability of the system, and won't until we can at least observe an entire cycle with what we today call modern equipment.

it's consequently more accurate to say something like "plato and charon seem to be in approximate equilibrium at this phase of the uranus-neptune-pluto system". and, that statement doesn't say anything about the possibility of tidal drag through other phases of it.

the way i'd imagine it is something along the lines of that pluto is moving through these gravitational fields in a relatively erratic fashion and that the modulations that occur as the result of that movement are exerting pressure in different directions. for a large part of the orbit, pluto would be held in place by a four-body system dominated by itself, the sun, neptune and uranus. it would often be pulled in opposite directions by uranus and neptune. oscillations in that system could produce the forces required to set off the plate mechanics.

but, i don't really have the interest to work this out in detail. at least not right now, anyways.