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five weird things…

Last week, Angry in T.O. tagged us in a game of “Five Weird Things…”

As the game-name suggests, we list off five weird things about ourselves and then tag a couple of non suspecting blogging folks… so… here… we… go…

1. We love Maynard’s Wine Gums. In fact, we can eat an entire pack without even thinking about it (the 7 hour sugar rush is a bit of a kick though).

2. We’ve been to Ribstone, Alberta (how many other people can say they’ve done that…)

3. Everytime we see an NDP lawnsign, we think of orange popsicles (we live in the Garneau area, so we end up thinking about orange popsicles quite a bit).

4. We have an unhealthy obsession with public policy. We can’t stop reading policy reports. Not just on the job, but at home, and at Tim Horton’s, and at the Sugarbowl…

5. Our Cross-Country Skis were “Made in the USSR.” And yes, they are wood. They are awesome.

So, in retaliation for Angry in T.O.‘s tagging us, we shall tag Socialist Swine, Section 15, Zorph, Peter Rempel, and Taracool.

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upcoming candidate forums!

Here are some upcoming Edmonton riding and City-Wide Election Forums we know of…

Wednesday, January 11th

Riding: Edmonton Strathcona
Horowitz Theatre
University of Alberta Students’ Union Building
115th Street & 89th Avenue
5:30 PM

City-Wide Forum
Topic: Immigration
Norquest College Auditorium
10215 – 108th Street
7:30 – 9:00pm
Sponsored by Edmonton Mennonite Centre for New Comers and Norquest College
Moderated by: Portia Clark

……

Thursday, January 12th

City-Wide Forum
Royal Alberta Museum
12845 – 102nd Avenue
7:00 PM
Sponsered by Public Interest Alberta

……

Friday, January 13

Riding: Edmonton East
“Spotlight 2006 – The Candidates’ Forum”
On Shaw TV channel 10 and 630 CHED
7:00 PM

……

Monday, January 16

Riding: Edmonton Centre
10804 – 119 Street
7:30 pm
Sponsed by the Unitarian Church of Edmonton’s Social Justice Committee

City-Wide Forum
Vote Alberta Young Candidates Forum
Red Star Pub
10534 Jasper Avenue.
8:00 – 9:00 PM
(Edmonton East candidate Nicole Martel will be representing the Liberals)

……

Thursday, January 19

Riding: Edmonton East
Eastglen High School
11430-68 Street
7:00-9:03 PM
Sponsored by the Newton Community League.
Moderated by Dave King, former Minister of Education for the Province of Alberta.

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cold war 2006.

Do you think being indicted by a US Federal Grand Jury and being accused of being a spy could be bad for your career?

HUSBAND, WIFE INDICTED AS BEING CUBAN AGENTS

A husband and wife who work at Florida International University were indicted by a federal grand jury Monday on charges of being covert agents of Cuba.

Carlos and Elsa Alvarez are being held in jail, pending a bail hearing. They have not entered a plea, but their lawyer told local reporters that they were not guilty. Carlos Alvarez is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies. Elsa Alvarez is a social worker in the university’s counseling center.

A spokesman for Florida International said Monday night that they had been placed on paid leave, pending further developments.

We also thought this was interesting…

The charges are less severe than espionage. According to a press release issued by the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, the charge of being a covert agent carries with a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Check out the rest here.

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naked old white guys don’t inspire people to vote.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

Seriously, folks…

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leader’s debate party- in edmonton…

… on the U of A Campus at RATT tonight starting at 6pm (yes, only one hour away, but hey!)

RATT’s on the 7th floor of the Students’ Union Building for those who are interested in joining the festivities!

And… unlike Mr. Jaffer, we’re pretty sure Stephen Harper will show up to this debate…

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edmonton strath-to-the-cona.

Last night, along with Mr. Robertson and Mr. Smith, we attended the Edmonton Strathcona candidate forum held at the Knox Metropolitan United Church. Though it wasn’t the most exciting forum, we do have some thoughts…

1. Tory candidate Rahim Jaffer, the three-time incumbent for the riding was a no-show at the forum. Mr. Jaffer was joined in the no-show category by Marijuana Party candidate Dave Dowling… was Mr. Jaffer too busy campaigning for Tory candidates in Ontario to show up to a forum in his own riding?

2. Liberal candidate Andy Hladyshevsky was the most polished speaker. He was calm, cool, and humerous at times. For the most part, we would have a hard time disagreeing with many of the things he said.

3. Marxist-Leninist candidate, Kevan Hunter was great entertainment. His answer to nearly every question, ranging from Kyoto to committing 0.7% GDP to International Development Aid had something to do with Canada’s “illegal occupation of Haiti…” crazy Marxist. 😛

4. Progressive Canadian candidate Mike Fedeyko was a pretty good speaker, though he slightly misjudged the crowd when he started quoting a Fraser Institute report…

5. Green Party candidate Cameron Wakefield was okay. Not the most polished speaker, he wasn’t able to compensate oratorical for the Green Party’s lack of solid policies…

6. NDP candidate Linda Duncan was a good speaker. Though we’re most likely going to vote for her come January 23rd, we were not overly impressed with her performance at the forum. But it’s nothing against her personally, none of the candidates really impressed us.

Overall, it was a pretty tame forum, we’re looking forward to the next Edmonton Strathcona forum at the Myer Horowitz Theatre on the U of A Campus on January 11 at 5:30pm – tell your friends and show up!

So, ending it off, here are our current predictions in the Edmonton Strathcona race (rounded off, of course)…

Rahim Jaffer, CPC – 18,000
Linda Duncan, NDP – 13,000-14,000
Andy Hladyshevsky, Lib – 12,000-13,000
Cameron Wakefield, Grn – 3,000-4,000
Dave Dowling, MP –500
Mike Fedeyko, PC – 400
Kevan Hunter, ML – 100

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jon stewart to host the oscars!

How sweet!

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green university

As we continue our analysis of the federal parties Post-Secondary Education platforms, we would like to welcome everyone to the Faculty of Platitudes! (aka: the Green Party of Canada PSE policies…)

In their recently released main policy document, the Green Party has lived up to their name and proved that they are green in the PSE policy arena (nyuk nyuk nyuk…). Not a very good PSE policy package, it sits on the extremely vague side of the scale on just about every point.

In the document, they left us with six main PSE points… and not much to analyze…

Here it is…

“166. Work with provinces and higher learning institutions to reduce post-secondary tuitions.

Okay. This sounds fine and we’re assuming it means giving the provinces more money for PSE. Dedicated transfer? Vague.

“167. Boost participation in cooperative education programs and apprenticeships.

Vague…

“168. Encourage more hands-on learning in our post-secondary education system.

Really vague… We would seriously like to know what “Hands-on learning” means… does this mean anything at all?

“169. Harmonize government programs such as the Millennium Scholarship Fund to provide a single need-based grant program to reduce student debt.

We agree that harmonization of programs is good for efficiency, but we have a suspicion that our definition of harmonization and their definition of harmonization may be different. Tones more needs-based grants are needed, but we need more details.

“170. Increase investments in post-secondary education and ensure that public funding plays a major role in research and development initiatives.”

Sounds good. But vague.

Well, in our professional opinion, the Greens have definitely dropped the ball on this policy area…

As well, the Globe and Mail has released some of the details of the Liberal PSE policy, which is supposed to be released tomorrow. We’re not going to comment on the details from the story; we’ll wait until it’s actually released before we do the critiquing.

(As well, be sure to check out our take on the Conservative PSE policy and an NDP PSE announcement.)

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tagged by that crazy swine…

The always fun Socialist Swine has tagged us in another one of those blog meme’s that float around… so, here you go….

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:

Pizza Chef, Fundrasing & Event Coordinator, Research Officer, Executive Policy & Information Officer

Four movies you could watch over and over:
Spiderman, Primary Colors, Shawn of the Dead, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Four places you’ve lived:
The Bayou & Edmonton, Alberta

Four TV shows you love to watch:
Family Guy, the Daily Show, The West Wing, The Sopranos

Four places you’ve been on vacation:
Halifax, Paris, Brussels, Nice

Four websites you visit daily:
CBC, Newsfutures, CalgaryGrit, Homestar Runner

Four of your favorite foods:
Maynards Wine Gums, Oranges, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Chicken

Four places you’d rather be:
Rather be? Why? Edmonton rocks!

Four albums you can’t live without:
– At Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash
– The Royal Tenenbaums Soundtrack
– The Get Shorty Soundtrack
– Riding with the King by B.B. King & Eric Clapton

Four vehicles I’ve owned:
– None. 🙂

So, assuming this is how it works, I tag the following four people for this meme:
c-lo, interluctor, lotusland, & senator catalyst

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sit, chicken. sit.

And it will.

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and they rejoiced at our triumphant return…

As the eve of 2005 has passed, we find our creative juices running fairly low. We had a very relaxing holiday, but after spending the past three days in party/celebratory-mode, we find our desire to even write this blog post on the low end of low.

But alas, we shall force ourselves to please the mighty blog gods with a post…

We have a couple things to mention…

Federal Leadership. We’re still having a very hard time getting excited about this writ period. All the party leaders are boring and uninspiring. We don’t particularity enjoy Paul Martin, but we enjoy Stephen Harper even less. We are also fairly disappointed with Jack Layton in this election (so far), he’s just not very inspiring. Please, someone offer VISION. Please.

Income-Trusts. We don’t really know much about them, but the entire thing seems slimy.

Edmonton Strathcona. We’re still unsure of who to vote for. We think we like our local NDP candidate, Linda Duncan, but we haven’t ruled out voting for Green candidate, Cameron Wakefield, as a protest vote.

For those of you interested, there are a couple of Edmonton Strathcona election forums coming up in the near future (at the University of Alberta and Knox-Metropolitan Church). We’ll post more info when we confirm them.

As well, Edmonton Strathcona Progressive Canadian candidate, Mike Fedeyko has set up his website and has joined Linda Duncan in candidate sites linking to our blog. Props to both of them!

Warren Kinsella. We’re a little disappointed we didn’t make Mr. Kinsella‘s top 10 blogs list. What’s up Warren baby!?! 😉

Blogs/Webboards. Mike Klander. Gordon Stamp. Seriously folks. Did they think that people weren’t reading their stuff?

As for Mr. Klander’s Olivia Chow comparison, we can assure everyone that Oliva Chow (see right) is much much better looking than a Chow Chow dog (we met her last year).

Also, see Derek’s take on Mr. Klander… hahaha. keep it up, Mr. Raymaker.

As for Mr. Stamp, well, we don’t think very highly of Alberta separatists, so we’ll leave it at that.

Movies. We’ve seen a couple of good movies over the holidays. We saw the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Fun with Dick and Jane, and Walk the Line (for the third time…). They were all good. Fun with Dick and Jane was particularity funny.

haha. We’re watching Office Space as we blog. This movie is too funny… har har har…

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oh la la!

Yes, we have triumphantly returned to our lovely hovel just in time for that great annual event we all call “New Year’s Eve.”

We shall post more soon, but for now we leave you with this lovely doozy.

(props to c-lo for the linkage)

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joyeux noël.

As we shall soon be heading out of town for a couple days, the blogging will be light (if non-existant) until our trimpant return… we really hope you can cope without us…

We here at daveberta would just like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Season. Have fun, stay safe, and enjoy yourselves! Tis the Season! 🙂

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god bless milk and cookies.

Today, we found this lovely site with tonnes and tonnes of Family Guy video clips. Check it out, it’s on the awesome side of radtacular.

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Michael Ritter Scandal

michael ritter scandal – UPDATE!

Click here for the complete Michael Ritter Scandal Chronology.

Yes, that’s right, just in time for Christmas, we bring you an update on our good friend, the former Chief Legal Consel to the Alberta Legislature, Mr. Michael Ritter and his adventures in international money laundering (for backstory see here, here, here, here, and here).

It just keeps getting juicier and juicier!

It seems that the U.S. Department of Justice has sentenced Mr. Larry Toshio Osaki to 20 years in prison for his involvment in the $250-Million Ponzi scheme…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 16, 2005

UPLAND MAN WHO RAN $250 MILLION PONZI SCHEME GETS 20 YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON

Los Angeles, CA – A man who ran a gigantic Ponzi scheme and continued to offer bogus investments in accounts receivable “factoring” after being ordered to stop by a federal judge was sentenced this morning to 240 months in federal prison.

Larry Toshio Osaki, 57, of Upland, was sentenced at the end of a 3 1/2-day hearing by United States District Judge Stephen V. Wilson, who said the defendant “single-handedly caused huge loss and havoc.”

In addition to the prison term, Judge Wilson ordered Osaki to pay more than $145 million in restitution to victims.

Osaki pleaded guilty on March 22, 2005 to conspiracy to commit securities fraud, two counts of securities fraud, obstruction of justice and one count of money laundering. Osaki’s scheme cumulatively collected a quarter billion dollars from nearly 7,000 investors and caused $145 million in losses. That scheme started at his Pasadena company, J.T. Wallenbrock & Associates, and was continued with a second firm based in Edmonton, Canada.

Read the rest here.