The only shortcoming here though is that the Sith Lord has to adopt an alter-ego in order to do it. It would be better if he never had to put on his Sith cloak, he just did it all as Palpatine. It’d be harder to write that way, but I think it could be done, because of plausible deniability and the presumption of incompetence before malice.

This is what I mean, say Palpatine wanted to seize control of the Senate, destroy his enemies and bring down the stability of the whole Empire without anyone suspecting his true motives. How would he do that? That’d be more interesting than having him playing dressup, it’d also make him a much more effective evil leader. When you’re incompetent, no one can hold you responsible for the evil you’ve wrought, because the assumption is your judgment wasn’t good enough to at least usually choose right over wrong.

So we’ll see.

I haven’t seen Don Cherry in a while, but when I did watch he was very anti-European hockey. Even though that was the more entertaining and challenging form of the sport. Instead, he wanted ‘good, tough Canadian’ hockey players (big guys who couldn’t skate very well). He demeaned talented players and thought grit and other factors that couldn’t be measured should be the measure of a player’s worth.

I think Don Cherry did a lot of harm to hockey (not that I care) by making people think that European style hockey was useless.

The same with these pundits, there’s a lot of dumb people out there who hear what these people have to say and buy into it completely, unable to see that the other side has some worthy ideas. They become a cult, just repeating mantras, as if Don Cherry said so.

…Almost one-third of the world’s people don’t get enough iodine from food and water. The result in extreme cases is large goiters that swell their necks, or other obvious impairments such as dwarfism or cretinism. But far more common is mental slowness.

When a pregnant woman doesn’t have enough iodine in her body, her child may suffer irreversible brain damage and could have an I.Q. that is 10 to 15 points lower than it would otherwise be. An educated guess is that iodine deficiency results in a needless loss of more than 1 billion I.Q. points around the world.

I used to own politicalnews.ca but ironically, it’s just expiring about now.

I’m heading off to bed soon to get a good night’s sleep, but the election results I’m looking at (courtesy The Globe and Mail) has:

The Progressive Conservative Reformists at 144 seats, The Libs at 75, the Block at 50, NDP at 36 and Indies at 3

The Green Party got shut out.

Martha Hall Findlay (Lib) won my riding.

All in all, I guess I’m pretty happy, a nice, minority government, though apparently strengthened over the last Conservative-led minority.

I dislike politics. But unfortunately in this day and age you have to vote and pay attention because they’ll steal all your money and give it away to their friends if you don’t.

I voted today, and it made me feel kind of dirty.

Hopefully they’ll last four years and get some good stuff done. I’d like to see that Arts funding cut, but Can-con requirements raised, for one thing.

But that’s another story.

Record deficit expected in 2009 (U.S.)

The actual 2009 deficit could climb still higher because the new projection does not reflect full funding for the wars. In addition, a worsening economy could add to the red ink by reducing tax revenue and increasing safety-net payments, such as jobless benefits and food stamps

And ABC: Without ‘creative White House accounting,’ Bush’s deficit is actually $600 billion.

Beyond that, I think medicare, business incentives and even socialized education aren’t strictly required. The problem is it’s impossible to keep government in check. Government propagates itself – if you give someone some power, then he or she will create new roles for expanded power. So instantly you get more government and more regulation.

So Obama and Huckabee won in Iowa, which I guess gives some talking heads (and strategists) interesting things to say. The only thing that would make me happy to hear is “We’re reforming the Constitution to make it work.” Because the U.S. Constitution has made it embarrassingly easy for people to get rich off government. To the point where they’ll go to war and bankrupt the nation to make themselves some money.

I think what’s happening in the U.S. now, with their current regime is a reflection of that. The U.S. Constitution was written so that the elite of society could manage the country while seemingly it’s for the people, by the people. No one knows who should be making the final call about – gulp – who the President should be, whether torture’s illegal, etc. etc.

The leaders of the U.S. can make and change rules at their whim, because enforcement of those rules is unclear.