The Harper Conservatives have launched yet another set of attack ads against Liberal leader Stephane Dion. Having no actual plan for governing, it seems that Harper and his cronies are stuck in perpetual election mode. Given that the Tories are now neck and neck with the Grits in the polls, it's interesting that the Tories have chosen to attack the Grits instead of telling the voter how good the Tories are. This would seem to indicate either the Tories have nothing good about themselves to tell the voter or worse yet, have absolutely nothing to tell the voter about themselves.

Back when Ralph Klein was premier, you could count on tonnes of back room shenanigans between his party and business leaders in Alberta. Basically the Klein government would do almost anything to give business what it wanted, in particular what the oil business wanted. Well Ralphie's gone, replaced by Ed Stelmach who has desperately been trying to paint his government, made up of basically the same people, is different from Ralph's. Well in some sense it is different, it is much leakier. The provincial Liberals have obtained emails about a controversial development near Balzac which apparently show that the government has bent over backwards to give the developers what they want. So much for change.

This reminds me of so many conversations I had on Holysmoke back in the old Fidonet days. There are many other good cartoons on the same site. I suspect that the creators of Alberta's new Creationist Museum won't be posting these cartoons anytime soon. The irony, of course is that the people who have made the museum will also likely be manning the museum. This means that, in reality, they'll become an exhibit in their own museum as an example of outmoded ideas who's time came and went hundreds of years ago.

In the continuing saga of the Rob Anders nomination fiasco, we find that the Conservative Party of Canada has changed the nomination rules yet again. It seems that in Calgary-West, you can only vote in a nomination meeting if you were a member as of August 2006, unlike in every other riding in Canada where if a Tory nomination meeting were to be held, you really only need to have been a member three weeks. It would seem that the Tories will stop at nothing to keep Rob Anders in his seat. Given that Rob Anders is pretty much a do-nothing backbencher it makes one wonder why the party is so hell-bent to keep him.

How do you tell if Stephen Harper or one of his MP's are lying? It would seem it's when their lips are moving. So far this week we have Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn claiming that he spent less on flights than his predecessor, and being caught in that lie by a simple web search. Then today, during question period, we have Stephen Harper lying about what the language commissioner said in his report. It's getting to the point where I'd require independent verification if a Tory were to sate the time.

Wow, it would appear that Canada's New Government (TM. Pat. Pend) is being run by three year olds who'll throw a tantrum if they don't get their way. They don't want to hear what might happen if they suck up to the Americans, so they storm out of a committee meeting. What's next, holding their hands up to their ears and going "LALALALALALA?"

Years ago I used to hang out on FidoNet before the Internet made it big. One of the people I used to debate with, a rabid right winger, used to have the tagline "Rules are for other people." Now a bunch of us thought this was a little odd from a law and order kind of guy, so when asked, he simply stated that as a conservative he would never do anything that would be illegal so he didn't need rules. We thought he was full of it and if the actions of the current federal Conservative government are any indication, he probably was.

Just how paranoid about the world do you have to be for this to be an interpretation of a new coin? Not that this is a new story but news from the US always seems to prove the axiom that "no one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public." or their defence contractors apparently.

At their Annual General Meeting, members of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives voted to avoid rent controls, backing the Stelmach government's position. This would appear to have the current Stelmach government just as ideologically blind as the previous Klein administration. The holy market must not be interfered with, even if that market is completely failing to provide the necessities of life. Homelessness is reaching epidemic proportions in Alberta as the number of rental units falls and the owners of the few rental units available are either converting them to condos or doubling or even tripling the rents. It would appear that the market, far from providing affordable housing, is doing exactly the opposite.

Politicians love to wrap themselves in the flag and say how wonderful the military is. Some of them love to send the military off on adventures in foreign lands where our young men and women are put into harms way, sometimes for a greater good, sometimes not. Given our current government's predilection towards the use of military force, I began to wonder how many of our politicians had the stones to do the job themselves, that is, how many of our MP's and PM's had served in the military in the past.