daveberta.ca - Alberta Politics and Elections

Daily props go to…

1. … Edmonton Strathcona NDP Candidate Linda Duncan – who has linked to us from her campaign website!

2. … Scott Feschuk‘s campaign blog. Not because it’s particularily good, but because it’s damn funny. Additional props go to whoever hired the guy?

3. … Mr. Steve Smith, who has set up an Edmonton Strathcona election info blog. Not as cool as this blog, but good showing, Mr. Smith.

4. … Roboraptor and Robosapien! How cool.

5. … the Revmod Gaffe-o-Meter.

6. … Mr. Bart Ramson, who has endorsed us as the BEST PERSONAL BLOG in the Canadian Blog Awards! Go. Vote. Now.

*PROPS UPDATE!!* Additional props #7 to Spencer Keys via Steve Smith for this wonderful Labour party TV ad from their last election.

Last night, we made an exciting purchase. We bought the most exciting Christmas movie on earth: The Muppet Christmas Carol. If you haven’t figured it out yet, this film just happens to be our favorite Christmas movie. This ends up being so for a number of very solid reasons…

1. It’s the Muppets. Nuh said.
2. A Christmas Carol is a SOLID Christmas story. And it has such a good ending!
3. Michael Caine is in it! Michael Caine is in a MUPPET MOVIE!
4. The Great Gonzo rules.

Anyway, for us, this means it is now OFFICIALLY the Christmas season.

Merry Christmas.

More updates for our 2006 Edmonton election candidates list…

– The Federal Liberals nominated their final candidate in Edmonton last night. Andy Hladyshevsky won the nomination against fellow Liberal nominee, Ellen Schoeck.

This leaves us with even less of an idea of who we’re going to vote for on January 23. Had Ms. Schoeck been nominated, we most likely would have supported her (her being the former Director of the University of Alberta Secretariat). So… we remain an undecided Edmonton-Strathcona voter… hmmmm….

– The NDP have filled their candidate spot in Edmonton-Sherwood Park by nominating Laurie Lang. Lang ran in Edmonton North against Alliance MP Deb Grey in 2000, and against Edmonton Manning Liberal MLA Dan Backs in the 2004 Provincial election.

– The Greens have nominated Trey Capnerhurst to carry their banner in Edmonton East.

This found its way into our email inbox the other day…

“Attention Daveberta!

This has been a test of the Jason Kenney early warning system. The system is designed to alert citizens to possibility of a Jason Kenney “supernova.”

World-wide, several detectors currently running are sensitive to a core collapse political supernova neutrino signal in the Galaxy. The neutrino signal emerges promptly from Jason Kenney’s core, whereas it may take hours for the first photons to be visible. Therefore, the detection of the neutrino burst from the next Jason Kenney supernova can provide an early warning for citizens, and, strangely, astronomers.

In the event of a real Jason Kenney “supernova,” please take cover under an umbrella. If a sense of irony overwhelms you, lie on the floor until the feeling passes.

Please contact the Holtopian Ministry of Galactic Phenomena for further information.“

Due to our house being old, ancient, drafty, and cold in the minus 27C winter as of late (the house was built in 1921, and might be haunted), we’ve recently aquired a “Chauffage Oleostatique” (for you anglotypes, that’s a “Radiator Heater”).

Here’s how the warning tag read:

WARNING – TO REDUCE THE RISK OF FIRE
1. Do not place any objects such as furniture, papers, clothes, and curtains closer than 3 feet to the front of the heater and keep them away from the sides and rear when the heater is plugged in.
2. Do not place the heater near a bed beacuase objects such as pillows or blankets can fall off the bed and be ignited by the heater.
3. Always unplug the heater if it is not being used.
4. Avoid the use of an extension cord because the extension cord may overheat and cause a risk of fire. However, if you have to use ann extension cord, the cord shall be NO. 14AWG minimum and rated not less than 1875 Watts.

Now, perhaps it has something with us spending the past two hours reading over critiques of the lamer-than-lame, Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, but we found the warnings to be kind of funny.

When we get the energy (most likely tomorrow, or Tuesday, we’ll update you on some exciting information! oohhhh, it’s exicting!)

no, not this Grewal…

Amarjit Grewal has been nominated as the Federal Liberal candidate in the Edmonton Mill Woods-Beaumont riding. Grewal beat out fellow nominee candidates Indira Saroya, Bruce King, and Charan Saggu.

According to Liberal Campaign Director Jarrett Lalonde, Grewal won on the second ballot with 1,158 votes out of 2,305.

This one goes out to Jason Kenney and all the Omni-nerds out there!

(lol. “out there”)

A couple of candidate updates for our 2006 Edmonton Election Candidates list.

– Jim Jacuta has been nominated/appointed as the Liberal candidate in Edmonton-Leduc. In 2000, Mr. Jacuta was the Federal Liberal candidate in Edmonton North (against Alliance MP Deb Grey) and the 2001 Provincial Liberal candidate in Edmonton Stathcona (against Alberta NDP MLA Raj Pannu).

– The Marijuana Party has nominated Ken Kirk in Edmonton East.

– Both Edmonton Centre Liberal candidate Anne McLellan and Tory candidate Laurie Hawn kicked–off their campaigns yesterday evening. Look for this to be a battle royale between what probably are the two most organized campaigns in the country.

– Props to Shannon (our “highly placed source in the NDP”) for pointing out that the NDP are in the process of renominating candidates in ridings like Westlock-St. Paul and Edmonton-Sherwood Park. They originally had candidates nominated in all of Alberta’s ridings back when everyone was expecting a spring election, but they’ve had to renominate in some ridings since.

– The Green Party has released a document detailing why they think they should be included in the 4 national Leader’s debates. We tend to agree. It would be nice to see another party have the chance to take on the 4 traditional party leaders.

– The Greens have nominated Kate Harrington to run in Edmonton – Mill Woods – Beaumont.

– Also, after checking out the Marxist-Leninist Party website, our slightly twisted sense of humour was pleased to find this gem. Can you imagine the Liberals or Tories doing something like this? (A memorial to the 9 Liberal party members banned after Gomery….) No word as of yet if the ML’s or the Commie‘s will be running candidates in Edmonton.

– Also, CBC has set up a “blog report” blog covering the blog coverage of the election. Check it out. It’s fun.

Nope, this isn’t a post about Omni magazine (nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. oh, Mr. Feschuk you’re silly), but about the wonderful Canadian Blog Awards!

It seems through the stroke of luck that daveberta has made it to the second round in the BEST PERSONAL BLOG category of said awards! We also placed 21st in the BEST BLOG category with 29 votes! (beating out celebloggers like Warren Kinsella and grandinite.

You can see the results of the first round here. We moved on to the second round with 54 votes (compared to 112 for Jenandtonic, 96 for The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, 86 for Postmodernes Sprachspielen, and 57 votes for Postcards From The Mothership. We would also like to send a hello out to the Cassandra Pages, who got 53 votes and nearly knocked us out of the second round. Good showing, Cassie!

We would like to thank all those who got out and voted for us! We hope that all of you who voted for us in the first round will continue to show their support of this great Canadian blog in the Second Round (which will take place from December 3rd to 9th).

This of course, means that we need to step up our campaigning. So, here we go…

ahhh. the joys of the near end of the week….

Since the fall of the government this week, we’ve saturated this blog with nothing much more than election related posts. Now, we will continue with all the good Edmonton-related campaign gossip, we have some very very important updates to post.

a. We’ve now seen the movie Walk the Line twice. For those of you who don’t know, Walk the Line is an epic story of the life of the great Johnny Cash. Us, being HUGE JC fans, loved the movie. The movie covered the life of Johnny from the time as a young boy in Dyess, Arkansas though to his first marriage to his eventual engagement with June Carter. It was entertaining, the music was awesome, and it only enhanced our desire to listen to more Johnny Cash music.

Here is a list of the Johnny Cash CD’s we own:

1. At San Quentin
2. America IV: The Man Comes Around
3. At Folsom Prison
4. The Essential Johnny Cash
5. 16 Biggest Hits

We also have the movie posters on the wall in our office. GO SEE THE MOVIE!

b. It’s almost Christmas! Crazy! We took our Christmas Tree out of the basement last night (it looks like this).

c. We’ve finally started to return to our normal sleeping patterns after 2 extremely stressful weeks of 2-3 hour nightly sleeps…. sleeping is so nice.

d. Okay, maybe this IS an election related point (or letter…), but we’re seriously not sure who we’re going to vote for in this election. In the last election, we voted Liberal (we were in Edmonton Centre – Anne McLellan‘s riding – we’re now in Edmonton Strathcona), but this time around we’re really not sure. The more and more time we spend reading and writing reports on policy issues ranging from environmental assessment to pipelines to post-secondary education, we have really come to the realization that we are not very happy with the way things are going in these areas.

Now, perhaps some people may shake their heads for hearing this and say “duh, daveberta,” but it’s not like this is a sudden revelation to us, it’s something that’s been troubling us for quite some time. So, like responsible citizens, we will take a good hard look at the party policies, local candidates, party leaders and their performances, and come January 23, we’ll show up and fulfill our civic responsibility.

Come the end of December/beginning of January (when we have time), we plan to put on our policy analysis hats and dissect some of the federal election promises.One policy area close to our hearts (and résumé), post-secondary education policy, was the highlight of today’s NDP campaign.

Jack Layton announced today that his party plans to “restore what he estimates was $4-billion in cuts to post-secondary education made by the Liberals in the 1990s” by “scrapping the corporate tax cuts the Liberals announced in this fall’s fiscal update.“

This call by Mr. Layton, not surprisingly, jives with the Canadian Federation of Students’ “Restore the Four” campaign… imagine that… what a coincidence…

Mr. Layton wasn’t clear on where in the system the $4 billion investment would be directed: Federal-Provincial Transfer, student debt relief, scholarships, grants, research, etc?

Though it’s not as nice as the $7 to $8 Billion PSE transfer promised by Prime Minister Paul Martin during the 2004 Great Canadian Job Interview in St. John’s, it seems a positive commitment to post-secondary education in Canada.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Tory MP Peter Goldring and friend.

Edmonton East Tory MP Peter Goldring, above (with the gun), launched an attack yesterday against Etobicoke-Lakeshore Liberal candidate Michael Ignatieff. Mr. Goldring accused Ignatieff of being “arrogant and ill-informed” for comments he wrote in his book Blood and Belonging. The comments were regarding the Ukraine.

Mr. Goldring was quoted as saying “I know how sensitive Ukrainians are to those who would support in any way the behaviours and attitudes of their former Russian oppressors.“

According to the Toronto Star, Dr. Ignatieff believes he has been wrongly maligned by a group of Ukrainian-Canadians seeking to derail his federal election campaign in a west Toronto riding.

Now, we haven’t read the book, so we really can’t defend or denounce Dr. Ignatieff either way, but we remain quite skeptical. Perhaps if the attack had been launched by another Tory, say… James Rajotte, Rona Ambrose, Jim Prentice, or just about any other Tory MP maybe we wouldn’t roll our eyes. But for those of you don’t know, Mr. Goldring, an ardent advocate of Canadian expansion in the Caribbean, has been known to sit on the silly side of the Conservative caucus (here’s our favorite).

Mr. Goldring forgot to mention that Edmonton East Liberal candidate, Nicole Martel, is from a Ukrainian family. How long will it be before Mr. Goldring accuses Ms. Martel of collaborating with the Russians?

100% props to Ainge from Lotusland for this.

Well, it’s snowing in Calgary, Vancouver, and Edmonton – that must mean that Paul Martin wasn’t the only one who didn’t want an election. Looks like God and Mother Nature didn’t want an election either.

Anyway… back to more serious business… it was announced this morning that the election has been set for January 23, 2006.

– Anne McLellan has her campaign office up and running today in the Edmonton Centre riding. It’s located downtown in the old McDonald’s building on 117th Street and Jasper Avenue. Anne’s in for a tough fight with Tory challenger Laurie Hawn, but her campaign team is more than definately up for the challenge.

– It looks like the Federal Liberals are having some difficulty finding candidates to nominate in Alberta. Last we heard, among others, they still hadn’t nominated a candidate in the Edmonton Leduc riding. It wouldn’t surprise us if the NDP placed second to the Tories in some of the ridings the Liberals have yet to nominate candidates in. Also, the NDP and Green parties seems to be in a bit of a scramble to nominate or appoint candidates in some Alberta ridings. If one is to believe the party website, one would think that the NDP has actually lost candidates in some rural ridings (ie: Westlock-St. Paul).

– The CBC has their CanadaVotes2006 site up and the Globe & Mail also has their Decision 2006 election site up.

*UPDATE*: More candidate updates for our 2006 Edmonton candidates list.

– George Hodgson has withdrawn from the Liberal nomination race in Edmonton Strathcona. This leaves Ellen Schoeck and Andy Hladyshevsky to duke it out in the Dec 5 nomination meeting.

– It seems that Paul Wallace is no longer the Green candidate in Edmonton East.