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On a personal level, I've been a bit tired and had a hard time getting to the Canadian posts this weekend but I do love it and made a window late here on a Sunday night to kick the week off.

Canada's very expensive G-8 and G-20 get-togethers are going to avoid the controversial topics of abortion and climate change (controversial to Harper and the Tories only, it would seem). The purpose of spending all this money to declare that the nations involved should and will tighten their belts and address few other issues of substance or importance is going to be controversial to Canadians once they notice that's what is taking place.

Not addressing climate change because it's difficult and possibly, but not necessarily, expensive is the act of an administration that's either cowardly or so ideologically driven that they are blind to the consequences of inaction. With Canada's Conservatives it could be both. The science of AGW (anthropogenic Global Warming) is really not in doubt.

Iggy tries to figure his way around all the talk of coalitions and mergers and.... well, I'm just dreaming here, but I have my fingers crossed for an August shotgun wedding. Iggy would look awesome in peach and make a very attractive brides-maid!

Lastly, a reminder that there have been oil spills in Canada's Arctic waters along with other toxic substances but if ever there were a spill in Arctic waters like the one in the Gulf, the consequences would be even more dire.

Oh crap! A report just in and another Canadian has lost his life in Afghanistan - Sergeant Martin Goudreault, 35, died on Sunday after an improvised explosive device in the Panjwaii district. Heartfelt condolences to his family and friends should they come across this.

On the anniversary of D-Day, maybe it's a good time to mention that Canada has been fighting in Afghanistan for a longer time than it did in the European theatre in WWII.

There's nothing like taking a couple of days off to help you fall behind!

From the Arizona Republic:

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school. The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity ….

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town’s most prominent intersections.

“We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” Wall said. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”

Happily the story doesn't end there. By weekend's end the man leading the campaign against the multi-ethnic mural, Steve Blair, had been fired from his talk radio show and they were no longer changing the color of the children's faces in the mural. Maybe the moral of the story is I really should have more faith in humanity.

While we're on the subject of raging Republican racists let's not forget this idiot, South Carolina State. Sen. Jake Knotts, who said, "We got a raghead in Washington; we don't need one in South Carolina." Classy!

Okely-dokely, don't stop me if you think you've heard this one before: BP spills 500,000 lbs of toxic chemicals at Texas plant where 15 people died in 2005. BP, always willing to prove they have their priorities straight, have purchased several phrases on search engines such as Google and Yahoo so that the first result that shows up directs information seekers to the company's official website. Aren't they awesome?

Some Republican shills say things so stupid that it's hard to know exactly what to say about them - with others, it's pretty cut and dried, "We give you money, you say nice things about us or nothing at all!"

Climate Progress has the complete story about how the Bush/Cheney administration enabled the mess in the Gulf that we are currently witnessing. It's a sad tale of tax breaks for coal, oil and gas and nuclear energy corps, and non-stop cuts for renewable energy programs.

Consequences of Climate Change: Ocean acidification.

Right-wingers complain that homophobes are always portrayed as mean and bullying on TV. Not enough happy-go-lucky hate-filled people on your box! While we're on the subject of whiny Republicans, here's House Minority leader John Boehner crying because Paul McCartney made fun of Bush's intelligence, or lack thereof, and demanding an apology. Coincidentally it was on the same day that Bush declared waterboarding (although illegal) was awesome!

One of the more ridiculous media memes out there week, "Bitch-slap us please Mr. President!"

Sadly, that's seemingly never how it goes anymore. There's hardly a day where they don't try and sneak something past. Today, Canadian politicians were talking about a continuing role in Afghanistan for Canada past the 2011 pull-out date. Here I was absolutely positive I had read Canada's forces were getting out in 2011, no matter what. Having already made our contributions to the NATO effort, and in spite of what the Americans want us to do.

Our PM, busy visiting 10 Downing Street today, took the time to take a shot at the opposition saying that "losers don't get to form coalitions." Seems a bit shrill considering it's all speculation at this point, and in light of polls showing Tory support hovering at a whopping 31.7 %!

Here in Montreal our constabulary once again breaks the public trust and raids compassion clubs. It's terribly important that medical marijuana doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Good thing no one was playing dice or they could have ended up dead.

In Canada's north, Arctic sea ice on pace to reach record low levels this year. Another sign of anthropogenic climate change can be found in this Science Daily article on ocean acidification. Maybe it's time to talk about sustainability and some of the tough choices we need to make. Too bad it couldn't get done at Copenhagen back in December.

No, that's not a headline for a post on evolution but rather a question about how did the spill in the Gulf come to pass? How is it that oil companies could be self-regulating? All MSM spin aside, who really is responsible for the volcano in the Gulf otther than BP, Transocean and Haliburton? Rebecca Lefton of the Center for American Progress has the answer, and it ain't Obama.

She reports that every year from 2001 to 2008 included tax breaks for coal, oil and gas and nuclear energy corps and/or cuts to renewable energy programs. For example in the budget for 2002 the House energy bill included $33.5 billion in tax breaks for dirty energy and steep cuts for clean energy research and development: “Solar and renewable energy R&D would drop by more than a third; nuclear energy R&D would be almost halved; and energy conservation R&D would fall by nearly 25 percent.”

By 2005 after continuing the pattern of more money to fossil fuel and nuclear industries, and cuts to renewable energy R&D, they went even further: The Interior Department’s MMS—the agency responsible for managing oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf and collecting royalties from companies—decided in 2005 that oil companies, rather than the government, were in the best position to determining their operations’ environmental impacts. This meant that there was no longer any need for an environmental impact analysis for deepwater drilling, though an earlier draft stated that such drilling experience was limited. In fact, MMS “repeatedly ignored warnings from government scientists about environmental risks in its push to approve energy exploration activities quickly, according to numerous documents and interviews.” And an interior general analysis even found that between 2005 and 2007 MMS officials let the oil industry to fill out their own inspection reports.

That pretty much covers it. The Bush administration bent over backwards to accommodate the oil and gas industry and they took full advantage. There's more, so go read the whole thing but that pretty much gives you enough to know that if politicians are going to be blamed for the ecocide that BP has caused in the Gulf, it should not be Obama. Here's a song written for Sister Sarah. Enjoy!