... and so little time to do it. With school back in full swing, I find myself with less and less time to blog. So for today I have to decide on what to write about. There's US Secretary of State Rice's visit to the Maritimes to give Canada a pep talk to stay in Afghanistan (and the resultant gushing of Peter MacKay over Condi). Further the Alberta Minister of Health has been making statements about privatizing more and more of Alberta's health care system. There's also the escalation of our involvement in Afghanistan with sending our tanks in as well. All in all a busy week for sure. I have decided to write about an interesting development with the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party.

So the supposedly "open" Conservative party is now being sued by it's own members. It would appear that the party apparatniks are going out of their way to protect the wing-nuttier members of their caucus. So far the Tory "central committee" has stopped challenges to Rob Anders and now Myron Thompson.

It would seem that the latest polls in the US have the Republicans running scared. Signs include President Bush admitting that they have secret prisons but that those prisons are being shut down, oh, and the prisoners will be given their Geneva Convention rights. There will also be new rules for US troops in their "questioning" of prisoners where US troops will no longer be allowed certain "techniques" for questioning prisoners (read torture).

During my travels of the blogosphere, I came across this article on Harper's upcoming address to the United Nations. This lead to this article by Esra Levant demanding that the Harper government pull Canada out of the UN. This article and the comments left at Buckdog's got me to thinking about the rocky relationship between the UN and neo-conservatives.

Stephen Harper has said he wouldn't govern by polls. He isn't above governing by focus group it seems. Since it would appear that the oil companies and the Bush Administration have convinced the Tories that they should back Canada out of Kyoto, the Tories are looking for something to replace it. It would appear that they are looking for something that allows greenhouse gas emissions, but not other pollutants. To find what will be palatable to the Canadian public, they commissioned a focus group of 75 Canadians to look at the issue.

Well today was Ralph Klein's last day in the legislature. Some thoughts about this event. First was a comment he made on the radio about how his government didn't have a plan for the boom economy. Second is how bad things could get with his replacement.

The Harper Conservatives seem to be unable to help themselves, or at least their supporters, with yet more patronage appointments. It would appear that the new board of directors of the Toronto Island Airport just happen to all be Tory supporters. Naturally, the National Post, which printed the story, spent most of the article trying to spin things in favor of the Conservatives and discredit the NDP MP who made the discovery.

...of $450 million dollars. To be accurate, the Harper government, through the softwood lumber deal that they've negotiated, provide as part of the $1 billion that won't be coming back to Canada $450 million into a slush fund that the Bush White House can spend as it sees fit. No congressional oversight, no real strings on how the money can be spent. Under the deal, the money has to go to the White House by the 1st of September, just in time for the campaign kick off for the mid-term elections.

Stephen Harper spoke during the last election on how the Conservative Party was better than the others because it would be more open and accountable. So far, Harper's government and party have done everything to show that it's not going to be open and accountable. Items such as claiming that even MP's must win a nomination process but then making it next to impossible for someone to challenge an MP shows the level of hypocrisy the party will stoop to.

The Tories have been making it so easy to write about politics these days. Here's a another doozie, this time from the mouth of the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary, Jason Kenney.