...for the Alberta Conservative government announcements to start following their defeat at the hands of the Grits. First we have disaster relief for the cities suddenly, pardon the pun, flowing like water and sudden announcements of new schools for both Calgary and Edmonton. It almost seems like the Alberta Tories are starting to wake up after a 30 year slumber.

Any day there's one less sitting Tory in the world is a good day. The Alberta Liberals have taken Ralph Klein's old seat of Calgary-Elbow. Unfortunately the Tories retained their hold on the rural riding of Drumheller-Stettler. The result in Calgary-Elbow was a bit of a surprise , given the predilection of Alberta and specifically Calgary voters to vote for Conservatives like sheep. The question is what does this defeat for the Tories mean?

Transport Canada announced yesterday that their new no-fly list will go into effect on the 18th of June, a mere 10 days after the announcement. Of course people will be able to board aircraft as long as their children between 12 and 18 have government issued ID with them. Ten days should be no problem picking that up. To ease the transition, until September minors can use one piece of non-photo government ID. Now I was up at the Calgary International Airport on Monday and there were no posters or anything about this announcement up at that time. I suspect that there will be some issues the rest of this month when people show up with their children and aren't allowed on the plane because the government couldn't be bothered to announce the change in a timely fashion.

In a page taken from their federal counterparts, the Alberta provincial PC's have two faces. One face is what the Premier has stated time and time again during his leadership campaign, then there's what his Education Minister Ron Liepert said to the Alberta Teacher's Association.

During question period yesterday we had this outburst from our Prime Minister:
When the Leader of the Opposition is able to stand in uniform and serve his country, then I will care about his opinion of the performance of the Minister of National Defence.
This from a man who's never served a day in uniform himself. In fact he goes on to say so:
Mr. Speaker, I will just say that it is true I have never served in the armed forces. I consider that an experience that I have missed in my life, but I can say that I have always lived and worked and paid my taxes in this country.
Ok, he did pay his taxes. Way to give till it hurts.

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.

After 15 years of service, I finally retired my 1991 Honda Civic yesterday. Though it had been a reliable vehicle all those years it was starting to show its age. With a small oil leak, a small radiator leak, a problem with the throttle body sensor and the windshield wipers packing it in a couple of weeks ago it was time to look at a new vehicle. The Civic has been relegated to being my hobby car, something to tinker on the engine without the fear of not being able to get to where I need to go. I have replaced it with another Honda, though not another Civic. Since I need more cargo space than the Civic can provide combined with the fact I'm not to keen on the new styling on the 2007 Civics, I've gone with an Element.

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.