Jack Layton is apparently a gambling man. He's gambling that he can get what he want's from the Tories without alienating his own supporters. This gamble will pay off if three things happen. Failing to achieve this things will cost Layton and the NDP dearly at the polls, given that much of their support came from disgruntled Liberals who didn't want to vote Conservative.

With the recent cabinet shuffle, it now seems the Tories are scrambling to regain lost support. In several road to Damascus conversions, the Harper Conservatives are desperately trying to look like born again environmentalists, multiculturalists and not war hawks. New minister of the environment John Baird in fact was heard stating the priorities of Canadians have changed in the past year in that they want action on the environment.

So as expected, Stephen Harper has shuffled his cabinet. Presumably he has done this to prop up sagging Tory fortunes in the polls. Key to this is the replacing of Rona Ambrose with John Baird in the environment portfolio. Harper is likely hoping that Baird will have better luck selling the Tory's environmental non-plan to Canadians than Ambrose had.

In my reading of the various media and blogs out there the question comes to mind is Harper doing for the Conservative Party of Canada and conservatism in general what George Bush is doing for the Republicans in the US? Garth Turner thinks that Canadian conservatism has a much different flavour to it that the flavour that Harper is presenting. Turner's thesis (and this could just be sour grapes) is that Canadian conservatism tends to be more progressive socially and conservative fiscally. This got me thinking about what Harper is doing to the face of Canadian conservatism and what damage he's inflicting on the CPC while he's doing it. The big question is does Harper's vision of Canada resonate with Canadians?

So we have Stephen Harper saying that Gilles Duceppe is using the troops in Afghanistan for political ends after Duceppe threatened to pull the plug on the Tory government. After all, it's only Stephen Harper who can threaten elections and use our troops in Afghanistan for political ends. The depths of hypocrisy that Harper will stoop never ceases to amaze me. Harper spends much of the summer and fall making everything a confidence issue, daring the opposition to topple his government. Now, when they begin to call his bluff, Harper gets all hurt and starts name calling. Not to mention how Harper and his merry band would use the troops in Afghanistan in an attempt to silence critics of their policy there.

I've added a plug in to Geeklog, the software that runs my blog. This allows me to put files up for people to download. Now my primary reason is so I can share some of my photography, since my D50 creates rather large files and just putting the photos up here on the blog would create download time problems. So click on the My Downloads link at the top of the page and enjoy.

In one of his columns, neo-con wing-nut Ezra Levant questions Stephane Dion's loyalty to Canada. This is such a red herring you can smell the stench from here. In point of fact, it's hyper-hypocritical of Levant to do so. Why? Ted Morton.

For years now we've heard the neo-conservative elements of society complaining that public health care is too expensive and that the private sector could do a much better job for less money. Well here's proof that the market can't do the same job for less money than the publicly funded health system. Seems the super-whahoo private emergency clinic can't make a profit on what the government pays for emergency procedures. Funny how the private sector can't do the same job the public sector can for less money.

So with all the parties with leaders in place, a new poll! If the election were held today, who would you like to see as prime minister? So click here to get to this site's main page and the poll is on the right hand side.

This past weekend the members of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives elected a new leader. Since they're the party in power, Ed Stelmach will become premier. Of the three choices between Ted Morton, Jim Dinning and Ed Stelmach. Stelmach was probably the least offensive non-Calgary candidate. The fact that Stelmach wasn't from Calgary was probably a factor in the final ballot.