I've been away from the blogging keyboard for a while. It's been busy here at Castle Evil between the end of the training year with my unit and the end of the school year at my civilian job. Now that the lazy days of summer are here, I can again wax semi eloquently about the issues of the day. Today I'm going to look at Stephane Dion's carbon tax proposal. Now I'm not going to look at it from a stand point of will it work or won't it or what it will do to the economy or our greenhouse gas emissions. I'm going to look at it from the standpoint of how it will affect Dion politically.

M64 - Spiral Galaxy in Coma Berenices

M82 - Irregular Galaxy in Ursa Major

M53 - Globular cluster in Coma Berenices

M81 - Galaxy in Ursa Major

No sooner than Harper loses his nigh-incompetent Foreign Affairs minister, then Harper himself starts messing up the portfolio. It would seem that the Harper government is so desperate to put a positive spin on the Afghanistan mission that they'll they'll tell the media about agreements that don't exist only to retract the statements when in flight, reducing the ability of reporters to change their stories before publication. Now I'm sure the Tory apologists out there will simply state a mistake was made, but one has to wonder about the timing of the mistake, not to mention that most PMO staffers don't go to the bathroom without prior approval from Harper himself. It all seems that the "mistake" was planned so that the headlines back home would read "Harper gets troop deal" as opposed to nothing at all.

M57 - Planetary Nebula in Lyra

Collinder 399 - Asterism in Vulpecula

NGC6871 - Open cluster in Cygnus

M39 - Open cluster in Cygnus