This just in: World War II is over.

And now the troops are coming home. Or moving elsewhere:

the United States is planning to shift most of its forces from Germany, South Korea and the Japanese island of Okinawa.... The plans ... would reorient America’s presence in Europe eastward to Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, and shift U.S. power in the Far East toward southeast Asia, with options for new bases in northern Australia, the Philippines and even Vietnam being explored.

Fifty-eight years after the end of World War II, we're finally pulling out the occupation troops. Does anyone seriously doubt that we'll be in Iraq for tens of years?

(Of course these are only plans, and they're subject to change, blah blah.)

I was up until 4:00 AM last night babysitting a server rebuild after the root disk started failing on our client's main server. (The code resides on a RAID, and is fine.) So please excuse me if I'm a bit punchy.

So the Conservatives have dealt themselves a death blow, saving any other Canadian political party from having to put them out of their misery. At least so argues Lorne Gunter in an Edmonton Journal article excerpted on David Frum's political diary. (Not sure about the ethics of that, Dave...) The depressing end:

Loyal Tories are left with four choices: swallow hard and accept an Orchard-influenced party, sit out the next election, make nice with the Martin Liberals or join the Canadian Alliance. The last option is the least palatable, but the other three guarantee a fourth, consecutive Liberal majority, perhaps even with significant gains in the West.

Perhaps I should be happy for the Alliance, but I have no doubt of their ability to piss away this opportunity as they have every other. Where is Stephen Harper's statement that freedom is what the CA stands for, and that free trade with Canada's neighbor and closest trading partner (the bedrock of the Canadian export economy) is a key component of the CA platform? Instead he's whining that MacKay won't return his calls:

The Alliance leader said there is now no point raising the issue [of electoral co-operation] with Mr. MacKay. Still, he intends to continue pressing pro-unity members of the Conservatives to consider the plan.
"Mr. MacKay has not only indicated no interest at this point, he indicated he is not open to discussion," he said.
...
Mr. Harper said Mr. MacKay had not yet returned phone calls he placed to congratulate him on his victory in the leadership race.

Idiot. It's not MacKay who you're trying to impress. Try to get some of the free-trader Tories before they all go to the Liberals.