Author: Dave Cournoyer

…one month left! huzzah!

Well, after a great weekend of fun and partying (Sunday night was particularily fun), we went to the Canada Conference which began last night (but we only showed up this morning).

Breakfast at 7:30am took some effort (considering we were up until 2am writing papers…). One of the most interesting parts of the morning was when we got lost looking for the Sutton Place Hotel, where the conference was being held (considering we used to live downtonw… we chalk it up for being 7:00am).

The breakfast was interesting. Some of the early morning risers included U of A Board of Governor’s Chair Jim Edwards (who is also a former Tory MP), Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft, and U of A President Indira Samarasekera. The breakfast was interesting…. but too early…

The luncheon was interesting as well. 🙂 More details soon.

Also, did anyone in Edmonton hear the thunderstorm this afternoon??? It’s October!?!?! Rain and thunder? Weird.

It’s a beautiful fall Sunday here in Edmonton. Warmish. Sunny. Big blue sky. Very nice.

John Duffy has a review of Stephen Clarkson‘s new book“The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics“ in this weekend’s Globe & Mail. Mr. Duffy, as some may know, is the author of one of our favorite Canadian Political books: “Fights of Our Lives: Elections, Leadership, and the Making of Canada” (We’re a little surprised we beat Mr. Cherniak in posting this, he must be busy this weekend. 😉

Also, as Mr. Ramson has posted, Federal NDP MP Ed Broadbent has released his party’s democratic reform package and it’s about darn-toot’n time (yes, darn-toot’n!) someone brought the democratic reform to the forefront in Parliament (save the lame “fighting the democratic deficit” rhetoric). We look forward to seeing how it the package is received in this fall’s session in the House of Commons.

Also, the Sugarbowl has the best coffee EVER! yum

ADDENUM 1.1: Care of a link from Will McBeath‘s blog, the Edmonton-area Federal Tories have set up a central site with links to their candidates websites. It’s an interesting semi-website, though the massive picture of Stephen Harper is slightly frightening.

ADDENUM 1.2: Damn. WFT, daveberta readers. It’s Sunday and all of our formerly favorite rightie bloggers are suddenly returning from the dead! First, Rempel. And now, Young. Craziness. We thought all the right-wingers were supposed to be in Church on Sunday (or something?)?!?!

It seems our favorite right-wing blogger, the infamous Peter Rempel, has returned to his old haunt of RempeliaPrime after a sojourn over at thepolitic.

Welcome back, Mr. Rempel.

This is a little outside the realm of Albertus Politika, but if you haven’t yet, check out the video of US President George W. Bush‘s ‘video teleconference‘ with US troops and an Iraqi troop. Not only was this one of the funniest staged and scripted stunts we have EVER seen, but it was also one of the most blatant pieces of political masturbation that we have seen from this President.

This piece had some very memorable moments. The part when Bush dropped his pencil was particularly funny.

Best scripted quotes (in no particular order):

1. THE PRESIDENT: “By the way, you’re in Tikrit, as I understand it, as well. It’s kind of an interesting place to be.”

2. SERGEANT LOMBARDO: Good morning, Mr. President. I’m Master Sergeant Corine Lombardo, with the Headquarters 42nd Infantry Division and Task Force Liberty, from Scotia, New York. First, I’d like to say that this is a pleasure to speak with you again. We had the honor of your visit in New York City on November 11th, in 2001, when you recognized our Rainbow Soldiers for their recovery and rescue efforts at Ground Zero.

THE PRESIDENT: Were you there?

SERGEANT LOMBARDO: We began our fight against terrorism in the wake of 9/11, and we’re proud to continue it here in North-Central New York — North-Central Iraq.

THE PRESIDENT: Let me ask you something. Were you there when I came to New York?

SERGEANT LOMBARDO: Yes, I was, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: I thought you looked familiar.

SERGEANT LOMBARDO: Well, thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: I probably look familiar to you, too.

3. THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Sergeant Akeel, thanks for joining us. I appreciate — appreciate your service. You’ve got something to say, Akeel?

SERGEANT AKEEL: Good morning, Mr. President. Thank you for everything. Thank very much for everything.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, you’re welcome.

SERGEANT AKEEL: I like you. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate that.

(heaps of props on Mr. chris-face for coming down from his tower and informing us of this wonderful video)

For those of you interested, the University of Alberta Students’ Union will be beginning their annual Revolutionary Speakers Series next week!

The first speaker of the 2005-06 series will be Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon (on October 18th!).

Dr. Homer-Dixon is the author of The Ingenuity Gap, and Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto.

His lecture, titled: The Ingenuity Challenge: Surviving the 21st Century, will epically cross the following terrain…

“Global warming. Emergent diseases. Energy shortages. Infoglut. International financial instability. Mega-terrorism. Are the problems we’re confronting as individuals, societies, and a species becoming more difficult? If so, can we solve them? Thomas Homer-Dixon will address these questions by looking at how societies adapt to complex change. The 21st century promises to be among the most perilous in humankind’s brief history, but it will also offer unprecedented opportunities for renewal and social creativity.”

This will be a great lecture, so make sure to come and check it out!

We just found out last night that next week we’ll be attending the Canada 2005 Conference as a guest of the Edmonton Journal. Though we may have many issues with the general declining quality of the CanWest newspaper chain, we thank the Journal for their generous payment of our delegate fee. 🙂

It should be an interesting event. You can check out the program here.

So, as you can see (after you check out the program), the political star-studdednes of this conference will make for some VERY interesting blogging. Be prepared for multi-day blog action next week.

The political nerd in us can’t wait to chat it up with the likes of Bob Rae, Lorne Calvert, Ralph Klein, Don Getty, Jeffery Simpson, Allan Blakeney, and Grant Devine… more soon.

This evening, we attended a reception/lecture care of the University of Alberta School of Business at the Westin Hotel. The evening, which hosted guest lecturer Dr. Mark Jaccard of the School of Resource and Environment Management at Simon Fraser University, was interesting.

Dr. Jaccard made a hour-long presentation titled “Sustainable Fossil Fuels: How Alberta’s fossil fuels can be this century’s cheapest source of clean energy.” As he flew through the hour-long lecture fairly fast, it was very clear that the entire evening was a sales pitch for his new book.

As we discussed with fellow attendees at the reception following the lecture (hosted by EPCOR), our definition of ‘sustainability’ and that of Dr. Jaccard were clearly two different entities (ours being a source of energy that will last potentially forever-hence, sustainable, and his being one which would last for about 100 years-maybe). Also, his seemingly pro-nuclear undertones were fairly alarming.

All things aside, we did have a nice conversation at the reception with Tory MP Ken Epp and Alberta Liberal MLA Bill Bonko, who were also around to check out the show.

Also, the free Chardonnay was nice.

People who take their blogs too seriously are knobs. We do it for entertainment. Once it isn’t fun anymore, we’re gonna shut this thingy down.

Luckily, it’s still providing us with ample entertainment.

Aside from floating the idea of a K-14 education system, it looks like Advanced Ed Minister Dave Hancock is setting up a leadership website here (it also has a better picture than this one).

Also, for those of you who haven’t yet checked it out, Nicole Martel is running for the Federal Liberal nomination in Edmonton East and has set up a website with a cool blog (some you may know of Nicole from her former blog: GoPolitical.ca – which is now automatically linked to her new site). Currently, Nicole is running unopposed for the nomination, but rumours are floating around that Dan McLennan, President of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, and potentally former Edmonton Mayor Jan Reimer (Mayor from 1989 to 1995) may take a run for the Liberal nomination in Edmonton East.

So far in Edmonton East, the Tories have renominated the wanna-be President of Turks & Caicos, Peter Goldring, and the ND‘s have nominated former coordinator for the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters, Arlene Chapman.

We’ve known Nicole for a number of years and can definitely say with extreme confidence that she will make a great candidate come the next Federal election.

We’re currently sitting here in SUB looking at the paper that will not end. The sheer suckiness of it is sucking the life forces out of us. Literally!

We started it last Wednesday and don’t feel like it’s EVER going to end. It’s not a big paper by any stretch of the imagination. We planned for it to only be 7-8 pages. But, like a mole in a hole, we are approaching the eight pages with no end in sight. Arg! We really dislike these small paper types. All we want to do is write our little heart out, and they restrict us… anyway…

We’re sitting here in SUB and we can only be described as a refugee from our massive pot-headed housemate. We’re like the Palestinians of Garneau! (kidding…) We have nothing against mari-ju-an-a on its own, it’s the moron on the other side is the problem. 24/7 can be a little overwhelming. It’s like living with Cheech or Chong (the non-cool one-the one that wasn’t on Nash Bridges). Our friend thinks he’s a dealer. We don’t think he’s smart enough to pull that off.

Anyway… for the record, the wireless connection here in SUB sucks in a major way. So far, we’ve been sitting here for over 3 hours and have had to reconnect over 20 times. We’re willing to accept that it could be our lame PC laptop, but we’re not ruling out that it’s the fault of that shady organization known as the ‘Students’ Union.’ Shady bunch, indeed. 😉 Maybe we’ll write an epic story for this blog soon. We’ll see… Anyway, back to the paper mill…

ADDENUM 1.1: We see that the scoundrel of Calgary himself, Mr. C. Grit has linked us up in a post again. Props for the linkage, Mr. Grit. You are a lady and a gentleman.

ADDENUM 1.2: For those of you interested in heckling, Mr. Peter Mackay will be on the U of A campus on Thursday speaking about how he gave up the chance to be Nova Scotia’s Premier or something.

arg. papers. mindshattering of late.

At least an hour of wasted time here.

Also, there’s a new Strongbad email.