The King is back! Election and Global Warming Talk! More Video of the Toner.

The in-laws arrived this morning.  My times of leisure are ended.  Although, they will help with babysitting duties so I can't complain all that much.

While our days of leisure are almost coming to an end, as the Spring Festival winds down, Wuxi Expats can at least take solace in the fact that the King of Wuxi Expatdom in back in Wuxi after spending five days with his in-laws in Huai An.  He told me, his most humblest of subjects, that he had a good time.  He watched two movies and only drank bijoe one evening.

The King's spin on his incorrect Mitt Romney prediction is that Mitt will return  and get the Republican nomination 4 or 8 years down the line.  Mitt, says the King, is still young and his  2008 candidacy only established his presence for a winning run in the future.  The King, being an amoral Liberal Party of Canada member (putting amoral and Liberal Party of Canada together seems be to a unnecessary double emphasis), is falling back on the adage that the electorate have short memories  and is so counting on me forgetting that he made this prediction.  I promise I will dog the King every day for the next eight years about it.

The King and I went for a beer last night to the Australian Pub where I had the pleasure of meeting an American who was eager to discuss the U.S. presidential race and an Australian who was skeptical about the global warming cause. 

Steve Lawrence, who I will quote to the best of my memory, talked of a possible explosive Democratic Convention if the delegate count between Obama and Hilary remained close.  Democrats, in their primary system, have Super-Delegates who can vote for any candidate they please unlike the normal delegates who must vote for an assigned candidate.  Super Delegates make up about 20 percent of the total delegates.  So they come into play if there is a tight race for the nomination.  These Super Delegates are chosen from the party establishment  and  include state governors and prominent federal level Democrats.  It had been assumed that Hilary held the sway of these Super Delegates.  But because she ran in the Michigan and Florida primaries against the wishes of the Democratic National Committee, she may have rankled enough Super Delegates into switching allegiances to Obama.  This means that the exact delegate count for each candidate is not known exactly and that the delegate counts on the Internet are estimates.  And so if the Obama and Hilary continue to have a close contest for delegates, it may go down to a brokered convention with plenty of fireworks because the Super-Delegates will have great pressure put on them for various reasons and from various camps.  This is provided the Obama wave that seems to be rising does not topple the house of Clinton first.

The Australian I talked to last night about who was skeptical about Global Warming seemed to believe that the crusade accompanying the theory was almost an American plot.  The discussion about Global Warming, he said, has been presented in a strange way such that dissenters have been shut out. Recent Climate temperature increases could well be a part of long climate cycle over which mankind has little effect but not too many get to hear of this theory.  This shutting  out of dissent he blamed the Americans for (I have to remind myself that Al Gore is American).  The Australian sceptic also voiced the opinion that Ethanol is an idiotic idea.  It will disturb food markets resulting in shortages.  As well, making ethanol requires a lot of energy in itself making it an inefficient energy alternative.

An American asks why do the Brits hate free speech?  He asks this after reports saying the British Olympic Comittee has tried to muzzle possible criticism by its athletes of China.

Here is Wuxi Tony Update #34.  You can see what Tony is like when he gets up in the morning.  He wakes up looking like a rose, actually.