Chicago, Detroit, New York: All have had clean-up phases and redevelopment, even when the downtowns’ were ghettoized war zones like Detroit or when New York’s Time Square was a sea of panhandling and uninhabitable sleaze shops, peep shows and porno houses. And while Detroit still has lots of problems, there has been huge capital investment; Chicago too has developed its waterfront magnificently (Toronto’s is way behind).

In Canada, ratty-old Windsor (in Ontario) invested over $100-million in capital investment during the six years of 2000 – 2006. Shockingly, in that same period, here in Halifax, we invested only $1.4-million, according to the HRM Capital District Task Force.

$1.5-million, spent over that period, means nothing. Really, zero was invested in Halifax.

During the Mayoral debates sponsored by the Downtown Halifax Business Commission, this week, I presented these facts about the downtown. Mayor Kelly’s response: “Which downtown”? “HRM” he went on to say, “has many downtowns”.

Really?

At the beginning of the debate I mentioned that the cruise ships that come into Halifax harbor don’t have their denizens stopping at Chicken Burger in Bedford. Rarely, do any visitors, unless they have friends or family there, ever go to Bedford, Sackville, Fall River, Tantallon, etc. They just don’t do it. They go to their hotels and visit the places in the downtown core.

Instead of recognizing the win-win nature of a successful city, there is, in Halifax, a rural/suburban resentment.

A dear friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, and who lives in Bedford, said to me this morning in reference to my above discussion “I am tired of hearing all of these downtown people whining all the time.” Not comprehending that if we leave the potential of the downtown to wane, that that also restricts him and his family in Bedford.

There just doesn’t seem to be a connection. So, please tell me where all of those fine people in Bedford are driving to every morning? Boston?

Instead of the Mayor playing divide and conquer where everyone gets a pony, and downtown Halifax, the economic generator of the region, gets short shrift, and where the bedroom communities receive short term benefits, but where the longer-term benefits are quietly sacrificed, he should embrace the common sense principles of urban planning.

There are many urban planning experts out there who believe we are leaving all kinds of money on the table by our slow-moving red tape process and lack of strategic direction.

Urban planning now is knee-jerk, reactive – it is putting out fires and squeaky wheels. Simply put, a pot hole approach does not work when it comes to urban planning in the HRM or anywhere else.

My brother, Michael McClelland, was the lead architect behind Toronto’s huge “Distillery District,” where the historic Nineteenth Century industrial architecture of the Gooderman and Wortz distillery was used as the centerpiece of mixed use development.

Michael has also authored several books on architecture and urban design. His practice is one of the best in North America. I have been listening to my brother and his associates for decades and I have a sense of what is involved for Halifax – so do others who have lived here a lot longer than I and who know what I am talking about in this regard.

Instead of rallying people to support the city of Halifax proper, the downtown core, Mayor Kelly does the opposite. The sentiment expressed by outlying areas that says that the Downtown complains too much is tacitly winked at and exploited. Consequently, the downtown businesses, movers and shakers, and concerned residents are, generally speaking, opposed to the Mayor.

And so it goes.

I don’t know if you have been to L.A. or not but it is interesting to see. There is such a vast urban sprawl that there really doesn’t appear to be a downtown that is measurable. Through the smog and haze of everyone commuting by car, you can see, in the distance, tall buildings almost as a clump of bushes surrounded by a fog. The metro area of LA has almost 14-million people — 4-million in Los Angeles proper alone. There are so many people that the weight of urban sprawl is almost offset. But it’s not. It is still a mess, with long commutes and indescribable infrastructural problems – with water especially.

By not effectively concentrating resources, and by not setting urban goals and urban sprawl infrastructural limits (we need urban sprawl development disincentives); by spreading a skinny population thinner, you risk leading and leaving a legacy of sleepwalking, cover-your-backside pothole filling; by supporting through action or inaction that which is unsustainable, with a sizeable whiff of anti-densification, you leave, as a legacy, more years of treading water and decline.

Cursed with an untenable city size through amalgamation, City Hall leadership is ignoring the facts for that which is politically expedient.

Everyone gets a pony.

Unfortunately, there is only one downtown — despite where you get the votes.

But does Stephen like dogs?

Much can be said about a person by what they call their dog. Stephan Dion calls his dog “Kyoto” (after the climate change summit), and apparently, Stephen Harper calls his dog Lehman Bros.

Ok, maybe not.

Clearly, for Harper, his bizarre insistence on cutting funding for the arts (44 million worth) and his “get tough” youth crime policy with punks and violent crime (what Gilles Duceppe refers to as sending them to the “university of crime), will be his “Green Shift” in Quebec - policies that backfire. In fact, according to many, Harper has lost the majority he so coveted by losing the votes in Quebec he so needed with those two foolish electoral planks.

As far as policy goes, “getting tough on punks” works well in Ontario, and in Eastern Canada, but not in big cities and in Quebec where crime issues are seen as more complex; in fact, Quebec has a very low crime rate - a rate that they proclaim is due to their more compassionate social policies, and not punitive policing and sentencing.

As far as the art cuts go, it was the oddest thing Harper has done yet. It was totally unnecessary and not predicated on political gain. It shows, in Harper, a cultural bias and mean-spiritedness that is more true to the persona and form W.C. Fields the curmudgeon, than Stephen Harper the statesman.

But Harper is not a man of the people. One case in point was illustrated by former Tory, now independent Bill Casey, who pointed out this week that Harper has imposed/chosen one third of the riding candidates in Nova Scotia, instead of drawing from grassroots riding associations. Casey said “He would never have gone over the heads of 1/3 of the riding associations in Ontario”. Moreover, Harper, according to Casey, unlike Conservative leaders past, does not consult his regional party caucus members. This lead-from-above-approach culminated in the regionally alienating Atlantic Accord fiasco and the sub contract loss which circumvented the Maritimes for Victoria.

All of this points not to a culture of defeat, but to a culture of defeating the Maritimes.

The debates don’t really matter either. It doesn’t change the facts that Stephen Harper is a mean, dry drunk.

Have a cigar Mr. Fields; boy was he was bitter — dry or wet.

The real problem here is Dion himself. Despite the personality deficit, something that Harper has as well (in fact the only time Harper does show personality it is his smile: a reptilian leer that is supposed to project warmth and approachability), Dion’s policies are flat and flavorless.

The more compelling Conservative star, Defense Minister Peter Mackay, chose to conduct a 45-minute interview with me where difficult questions were asked (good-naturedly), and where the rising-in-the-polls NDP leader Jack Layton also chose to visit the program — twice (once in studio). During this election, Dion, the man with both an image and communication problem, the man who needs to connect, with seats to win or lose here, has been a no-show.

Dion came to Halfax the other week and didn’t have five minutes to even phone it in.

We all know that Stephen Harper’s approach is to avoid talk radio – even super-friendly Western Conservative talk hosts. But, to their credit, the Conservatives had their top Tory, Peter Mackay, into the fray yesterday. Peter Mackay has even called into the show unannounced on other occasions.

The only reason loyal Nova Scotian and Liberal star Scott Brison hasn’t come on air yet during this election cycle is because he has been on the air with me lots, and Scott shouldn’t have to do all the heavy lifting for the federal Liberals. I haven’t asked Scott on yet and either has my producer Bill Dicks. But we will, we have to, especially with such a weak leader.

There is nothing wrong with Harper as the incumbent, playing the evasive game. It is politics and you do what works. To his credit less is more – it is good strategy. It is Harper’s election to lose. That’s how incumbents work. The only reason Liberal PM Paul Martin went on air with me during the last election is because the polls were showing he was losing – Paul was desperate.

I am sure that the quest to replace Dion is already underway – quietly. The dirty little secret of this election is this: Dion, as Liberal leader, is finished. The Liberals are merely waiting for this election to play out and are putting on a brave face.

For Dion, this election is already over. Even if the Liberals do better than they expect, it won’t be good enough to save him and keep him on as leader. The Liberals have no chance of winning this time, and their political flirtation with political apocalypse this time out is something they won’t soon forget.

And if these same Liberals and the backroom boys that work them have prescience or sentience at all (backbone would be nice too), they will disavow themselves of the distractions of a Gerard Kennedy or Martha Hall Findley.

It is time for Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff to, once again, fight it out.

The Libs need to sell Canadians on the benefits of their team due to the sincere, but meeker, approach of Dion. The recent Liberal rally in Halifax this week, reported on by the national news media, is a case in point. When Bob Rae, who accompanied Dion, spoke, he pumped up the crowd. For Dion, there was kind applause.

Watching Dion speak is like cheering on your child at the school play — please Stephane, remember your lines, go the boy’s room first, make sure you don’t get too nervous — oh wait, is your fly up? Smile now.

Other revelations today included Liberal Defense Critic Brian Wilfert from Richmond Hill (poor Denis Codderre) revelations on the soon-to-be-announced cost of the Afghan war. It is a, gulp, 20 billion dollars! This includes the casualty healthcare costs of soldiers coming home with PTSD or other ailments, whoch will take years to treat.

The Liberals have no leg to stand on when it comes to Afghanistan; the Grits started the war (our combat role), they allowed Rick Hillier to make Defense policy (Rick knew we had no helicopters), and they voted for the Conservative extension of the mission to 2011 (?!)

The NDP have ludicrously suggested we just leave — now. Jock Layton told me this week it would be “orderly”, but should he be in the power chair he would know that we would not just leave. The advantage the NDP have (the Liberals are always pointing this out) is that they are not likely to form government, so they don’t have the same relationship between theoretical, populist, feel-good words and cold, real-life, hard-bitten actions.

The only time I ever saw Bob Rae lose his cool occurred during my last radio interview when I illustrated the absurdity of creating a mission re-emphasis in a combat zone: instead of cutting and running, like the NDP, or a protracted Afghan stay, like the Tories, the Libs wish to wallow in a combat zone in the south, but emphasize “reconstruction” over combat. To do that, I pointed out to Bob, you have to move out of Khandahar.

Since the vote for extension, Liberal policy on Afghanistan has been both irrelevant, and untenable.

Both the Grits and the Tories share the blame for the outrageous military and human cost of Afghanistan; where our Navy is, as a consequence, victimized by budgetary cannibalism; and where so much political water has been spilt over the Afghanistan dam.

And the boy-band of the Liberals plays on, these not-so-new-kids on the block, reunited and recriminating against the backbeat, with Stephen Harper as a modern-day Sinatra crooning My Way.

From UFO abductions, to the “one world government” freaks to the Free Mason fans, to “The Protocol of The Elders of Zion” crowd, to the British Royal family-killed-Diana troopers, to the Moon landing-was-faked folks – you name it.

They all show up the week we remember the day September 11, 2001.

In terms of conspiracy culture, it must be said that in the early days of JFK assassination studies, researchers like Donald Freed and Mark Lane as well as New Orleans’s Prosecutor Jim Garrison (made famous by Oliver Stone’s film JFK, despite the fact that there is much to Stone’s conclusions that were wrong), and others, were vilified and placed in the “crank” category too. Later on, in the mid-70s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that yes, indeed, there was a conspiracy in the murder of JFK.

But that doesn’t mean that everything is a conspiracy.

Consider this about 9/11: we all saw planes hit the buildings; we all knew that Osama Bin Laden declared war on America and the “Crusader” nations; the intelligence community also knew of Bin Laden’s earlier attacks on American embassies in Africa and the USS Cole; furthermore, we all know how easy it is to have a committed hit team, willing to sacrifice themselves, highjack an undefended, open, airliner cockpit.

Many of us who have studied politics over the years are well aware of “The Project for a New American Century,” which openly declared that Iraq should be invaded and that the U.S. military should actively promote America’s “full-spectrum” dominance — openly admitted to, publicly declared, a strategy in writing, with signatures and named names. For its doctrinal Fathers wanted to be known, and to take credit for the military approach. They were the Neo-Conservatives, former Liberals, who believed that the military efforts of the state could be marshaled to further American power generally, corporate needs of America specifically, as well as American special interest groups, including the Israel lobby.

They were not hiding. There was no secret society.

9/11 “Truthers” (what a joke that is), say that there must be something else: the buildings were brought down by planted explosives other than the planes themselves; that the heat from the planes burning wouldn’t be hot enough to melt metal.

Let’s look at that one, the one about explosives blowing up the towers. First of all, why?

Whether the building actually collapsed or not, the political and terror effect would’ve been the same. The Pentagon didn’t need to be totally destroyed for the point to be made by al Qaeda. So, this whole issue about explosives at the base and demolishing it and having it covered up by plane strikes, or assisted by plane strikes, is simply stupid, ludicrous.

Why would someone in the U.S. government want to have the attacks in the first place? Conspiracy drips call 9/11 a “Reichstag Fire” — where, in the 1930’s, Hitler promoted panic to accrue concentrated political power by committing arson on capital buildings and blaming the communists.

The authors of the “Project for a New American Century” openly discussed utilizing a “Pearl Harbor” style attack as a galvanizing opportunity to move forward. We all understand that such an event always had the power to mobilize the masses. So did the Neo Cons. Nothing was secret, hidden.

But if 9/11 was an “inside job,” why weren’t any of the highjackers Iraqi? Why weren’t weapons of mass destruction planted in Baghdad? Why can you plant explosives at the World Trade centre and then time it for live explosions when the planes strike, but not plant inert WMD in Iraq?

Why would America have to distract itself with a war in Afghanistan if the real goal was oil domination of Iraq? Iraqi highjackers would’ve solved that problem. Yet, they weren’t there. None of the 9/11 terrorists came from Iraq.

One 9/11 conspiracy crackpot even went so far as to doubt whether or not there were even any highjackers at all; that the Boeing corporation makes airplanes that can be remotely piloted.

The fact that these crazy notions by outrigtht cranks and crackpots exist despite the fact those who were victimized aboard the doomed airliners called out to their loved ones on their cell phones before the end and told the world what was going on.

Then there is the problem of the U.S. government response to the events on the day of 9/11. Instead of the obvious: shock, dismay, and outright bumbling by security forces, the “inside job” crowd says that there must be something else. The late scrambled jets must’ve been intentionally kept away from the attacks that day to ensure that the attacks occurred.

Was the 1993 basement bombing by al Qaeda a conspiracy too? Where were these conspiracy clowns then?

I guess Israel bombs itself too. The suicide bombers must all be Mossad.

When confronted by rabid Trekkies, William Shatner once challenged them. “Get a life,” he said.

Oh, but I forget. Captain Kirk was a Freemason. Or is he Jewish? Mossad perhaps?

You see, the Puffin is Dion’s favorite bird because it, apparently, buries its own feces — much like the Liberal party of Canada. Where is Gerard Kennedy these days anyway? You remember Gerard, don’t you? Gerard is the guy whose intrigues manipulated the Liberal convention to create Dion as Liberal leader when he, a former Ontario Liberal, was stopped.

What is worse than the Conservatives showing Dion dunked in dung –  the stuff of which Triumph the insult dog revels in? How about the Liberals, themselves, trying to add machismo and virility to bookish Dion by showing him in various outdoor activities on the www.thisisdion.ca, (remember Stockwell Day in a wet suit on a Sea-do?)

Stockwell Day, while an effective Cabinet Minister, never did connect with voters as a leader — the same way Dion doesn’t connect. And while Prme Minister Stepehn Harper has a huge charm and communication deficit as well, Harper’s policies do, in fact,  appeal to many men and his no-nonsense aura men also understand. Harper has also benefited from his lack of Christian fundamentalism, and social conservatism, something that when previousy exposed in Stockwell Day, torpedoed him in what is a liberal and secular media.

It is easy to portray Dion as feckless, and hapless, because he can’t speak unaccented English. And while voters forgave former PM Jean Chrétien due to his blue collar roots, toughness, Trudeau-era legacy, and his thoughtfully short sentences to the electronic media, professor Dion is another matter. He is an academic. There are no excuses.

Oh, apparently one excuse. Finally, Dion admitted that he has a hearing impairment that doesn’t allow him to hear “the music of English”. And while Dion’s English has improved, on a cell phone he can still be difficult to understand on a talk show – and that is a problem.

Answer this: would an Anglophone politician be successful in Quebec if his French was bad? It is a blatant truism and prerequisite that to be a successful politician in this country (or to have any Federal job), you have to sell your message in both languages, you have to be intelligent, and, hopefully, have a personality that wasn’t born from a car crash.

Dion’s facile and fatuous new website that has him posing as a man-of-action Irish Spring soap man, is unintentionally much worse for its affections and pretensions than the sympathy he will receive by the computer animated, Tory confected, pooping Puffin bird.

Any animation, with Dion, will help.

I once asked a friend what his reaction was when he walked out of a Toronto store and a pigeon shat on his shoulder. He told me he went out later that day and bought a lottery ticket.

My friend took the pooping as a sign of good luck. So did his dry cleaner.

And Stephen Harper will take Stephane Dion to the cleaners soon too.

Tuesday August 26^th, 2008, the day after that broadcast, the editorial in the Chronicle Herald correctly pointed out that the Premier “recoiled” from a debate with Liberal point man, Scott Brison. The editorial went on to question why the Nova Scotia government would sponsor a web site that misled Nova Scotians by not including the Liberal tax cuts into their carbon tax “cost” calculator.

It was former Public Works Minister, and MP for Kings Hants, Scott Brison, who directly “outed” the fact that Premier MacDonald refused to come on my program at the same time as he, and that Brison had to call in 30 minutes after the Premier.

It shouldn’t be about debating. It should be about the Premier expressing concerns about a policy that may hit his Province particularly hard. The act of debating (or losing a debate, more precisely), should only be an issue if you are a shill, or a Federal Party flatulence-catcher.

While real men don’t eat quiche, real Premiers don’t sycophantically placate Ottawa just because the party name starts with the letter “C”.

Explain Danny William’s loyalty? He was a Newfoundlander first, and a Tory second; same with Bill Davis in Ontario, Peter Loughheed in Alberta, Quebec’s Robert Bourassa and Jean Charest, and Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty who had to whine to Paul Martin over city funding in Ontario.

Federal votes don’t elect Premiers. In fact, the opposite is usually true.

And defending your Province against Ottawa is a necessity as a Premier; where the Province is blood, and Ottawa, water.

But Stephane Dion is not the Prime Minister. Stephen Harper is. So, why the hard sell by the Nova Scotia Premier against the opposition party? Is it really about the plan, or Federal party loyalties?

Mr. Premier you have to ask Mr. Harper how much his green policy is going to cost consumers.

Both Peter Mackay and Environment Minister Baird have told me the Conservative plan is to cut green house gas emissions by 20 per cent. OK great, but how? What is the Federal Conservative plan? Can anybody spell out the specifics?

That wonderful world of weaseling wafted in with all its rodent redolence last week when Environment Minister John Baird (a decent enough guy, personally) announced that his party won’t reveal their carbon regulations, and its’ impact to the consumer, until after the election!

I will say again, if you are a Premier and you enter the fray of carbon tax policy debate, you will only care about “losing” a debate with a person like Scott Brison if you are trying to score points somewhere else.

If you are an honest broker, you ask your Province to support that which is in its best interests — despite what Ottawa sells, and despite the Federal party that sponsors it.

We already know that Ottawa does not work in Eastern Canada’s, or the West’s or
Ontario’s best interests. Recent history points to the Stephen Harper created crisis over the Atlantic Accord, where the government changed the original offshore revenue and equalization deal and said it was offering “options”.

I don’t know about you, but I rarely trust Ottawa. At least here in Nova Scotia you can run into your Premier in the grocery store. That’s accountability. Accountability you can trust.

Stephen Harper’s new TV ad has him leaning and leering into the camera in a pullover we used to wear in high school in the 70’s, replete with a vaguely creepy expression and proceeded by a sea of staged testimonials regarding the issue of trust.

If only Stephen Harper didn’t have Karla Holmolka’s eyes.

Suskind has written explosive exposes of the Bush administration including the One Per cent Doctrine on Vice-President Dick Cheney and The Price of Loyalty on Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, and now The Way of The World, which establishes that the Bushies doctored intelligence, falsified other evidence, knew in advance Saddam had nothing, and generally lied and manipulated to start a war in pursuit of an ideology.

Now, Craig Unger, who previously wrote House of Bush, House of Saud and The Fall of the House of Bush, has his book renamed for the trade paperback American Armageddon: How the Delusions of the Neoconservatives and the Christian Right Triggered the Decline of America. The paperback has a new afterward that updates things to the spring of 2008.

Of all the Bush-bashing books, and there are quite a lot of them, this is one of the best. It chronicles the rise of Bush and the machinations and intriguer efforts of Dick Cheney and the rest of the Neo-Con crew. Of particular importance is Unger’s insight into the religious and father-hating nature of Bush, whose childhood rage at underachieving and disappointing his Father until the age of 40, translated into President W’s empowering of his Father’s life-long enemies. People like the discredited former secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

Unger reminded us that no one knew that the Bush Presidency would be so radical. The Neo-conservative agenda metastasized like a cancer, it was something that spread and took on a life of its own. It was never supposed to be this way. Bush was never considered a radical, or an ideologue of any kind. However, once he took office, the rats ran around the cheese. Suddenly, Bush had a belief system, a way to perceive the world, an agenda — unfortunately.

The candor-filled Unger mentioned to me on the air today that George W. Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, is extremely disappointed with the massive screw-up his son has made of the office of the presidency and the country his father loved so much — never mind Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Craig Unger so effectively and so diligently chronicles, in the end, the loser son, the boy who couldn’t shoot straight, the kid who was always uncomfortable with his social/academic betters and who also knew deeply how limited he really was; who leaned upon his God to find a faith in himself beyond himself, and, in so overreaching, fell back to his family place as the black sheep, the failure, the boy who never made his father proud, who never had the right stuff, and who, this time, took the world, and the blood of so many others, down with him.

Nova Scotians rely on fossil fuels more than anybody in the country — 90 per cent of its electricity and 60 per cent of its home heating – and we are the most vulnerable.

The point is, however, no one really knows what the Liberal carbon tax is going to cost consumers. More importantly, the Liberals are, at least, discussing costs. The Conservative and NDP green platforms will cost us too. Yes, that’s right brothers and sisters, there will be a “carbon tax”, no matter what you call it, and no matter who is in power.

The Conservative green plan will cost consumers, of that there is no question. Energy companies, if hindered in their profits by whatever party, will pass additional costs and/or lost revenue onto the consumer. The Conservatives know this.

Proof of this Conservative awareness is the government’s own document from Environment Canada, released on March 10^th, 2008 called “Turning the Corner”: Regulatory Framework for Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

Canadians can therefore expect to bear costs under the regulatory framework that are not trivial. At the same time, these costs strike an appropriate balance between environmental results and manageable economic impacts.For the majority of individual Canadians and for businesses outside the regulated sectors, these costs will be most evident in the form of higher energy prices, particular with respect to electricity and natural gas. However, increased energy conservation and efficiency are expected to limit those increases.” The document is available here: http://www.ec.gc.ca/doc/virage-corner/2008-03/541_eng.htm

The Liberals have at least said what they will do to help the people out in terms of tax relief after the energy companies charge us more to make up for those lost profits (see the tax cut calculator on the www.thegreenshift.ca web site.

Nova Scotia premier Macdonald says that the Harper government will “work with the Province” to help ease the pain when it comes to the Conservative plan. What does that mean? “Trust us”? Anyone can use generalities and say “don’t worry, we’ll work it out”, just like the Liberals will say “it won’t cost a thing”, “revenue neutral.”

Sure.

I asked Liberal leader Dion if there is room for a “side deal” with Nova Scotia or New Brunswick with the Liberal “Green Shift” plan and he said, very directly, no — a straight answer and at least Dion is trying to make the carbon tax “revenue neutral” by providing tax cuts.

I applaud the principal of Premier MacDonald standing up for Nova Scotians; and, in that regard, Premier Macdonald should applaud former Conservative MP Bill Casey who also stood up for Nova Scotians over the Atlantic Accord debacle and who was forced out of his own party for voting with his conscience on behalf of his constituents, Province, and region. Instead, the premier is supporting the local Conservative candidate against Casey.

And while the Premier agreed with me when I brought up the subject of the Feds backtracking, and reneging, and weaseling, on the promise to provide more supply ships to the Navy (after a big announcement from Defense Minister O’Conner in 2006 in Halifax), it is non other than Casey that is coming on tomorrow to pointedly raise hell about it.

The Premier should also be critical of the costs to Nova Scotians when it comes to the Conservative Carbon emissions plan; in other words, defending the province — being critical of all federal parties, or any other entities that don’t benefit the residents. We should have specifics as to what any side deal for Nova Scotia, from Harper, will look like.

Look at the billions Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams, a Conservative, garnered for his province when he stood up to everyone – all by himself. Any less of a man would’ve left money on the table, or in the hands of the oil companies, or the Feds.

You have to be a partisan, but being Premier means being a partisan to those who directly elect you — and only to them. There is no such thing as a Federal party in Provincial politics. Often we vote federally the opposite of whom we elect provincially. While the political ideologies are similar in that parties can belong to the same “family”, execution and the nuances and vagaries of national interests obviates any specific, provincial ties. For example, the Liberals have a provincial party in Alberta, which is like running a Christian college in Riyadh.

Former Public Works Minister, and Kings Hants Liberal MP, Scott Brison has accused Premier Macdonald of knowing that he will lose the upcoming provincial election and is claiming that the Premier is pulling for a Federal patronage appointment in the same manner federal partisan PEI Premier Pat Binns was rewarded the Ambassadorship of Ireland three months after he lost his Province.

We’ll see.

The world has never been this unstable. Certainly pre-World War One was one such period, but there were 75 per cent fewer people on the planet and no nukes back in 1914.

In addition to nuclear weapons, there also exist today battlefield low-yield nuclear weapons that are tempting to deploy, tactical weapons which easily escalates into strategic use. Strategic use is, of course, a world-ender. We might survive it, but it wouldn’t be a pretty place to live in after a nuclear exchange with intercontinental ballistic missiles unleashed: subsistence farming, nuclear winter, nuclear fallout and radiation effects, “Mad Max” style survival, and the end of society as we have understood it to be.

Ron Suskind joined me today from Washington D.C., author of “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope In an Age of Extremism”, as did Eric Margolis author of “War At the Top of The World”, to discuss our Afghanistan policy and the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Simply put, the enemy is better at predicting our response modalities than we are. They can see around corners when it comes to what we can do to them and how we react, whereas we, ourselves, can’t see where we are going, or where we have been, or what history means.

Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Pakistan are winning. In order to survive, Ron Suskind says we have to emphasize more goodwill/aid efforts.

It was Machiavelli, the great Renaissance thinker who posited the notion in his great work “The Prince” that if you cannot destroy your enemies you must befriend them.

And we cannot destroy them.