daveberta.ca - Alberta Politics and Elections

Props to Socialist Swine for the quiz linkage…

Downtown Loft You scored 29 out of 40 on urban-rural and 35 out of 40 land intensity.

People know you as: The Yuppie Quote: “Sushi is so 1990s. How about Lebanese?” Congratulations. You are the coolest type of person. Or you like to think you are, anyway. Your score indicates you are a through and through urbanite who likes to live in the densest, most central part of town. Realistically, though, you’re probably a “new money” type who, although you claim to hate chains, still occasionally sneaks a Big Mac and always, always gets your coffee from Starbucks. The main difference between you and The Bohemian Gentrifier is that you have a better job. Examples of places you should live: Manhattan, Chicago’s Loop All Categories Secluded Hideaway / Farm or Ranch / Small Town / Little City / Suburb / Streetcar Suburb / Rowhouse ‘Hood / Downtown Loft

Friday, while downtown on business, we headed down to the HMV to check if they had a copy of the Muppet Christmas Carol Soundtrack on CD. Unfortunately, they did not. That leaves us dumbfounded at where to get a copy! Seriously folks! What kind of world do we live in when in EDMONTON – a city of nearly a MILLION people – you CANNOT find a physical copy of a Muppets Christmas Carol soundtrack!

1000% props for ANYONE out there in blog-o-land who can tell us where we can track down a copy in Edmonton. We pondered ordering a copy over Amazon.ca or ebay, but it most likely wouldn’t get here before Christmas….

Here are the places we’ve checked out so far…

1. a&b sound – downtown
2. Blackbird Music – Whyte Ave
3. Megatunes – Whyte Ave
4. HMV – Edmonton City Centre

So… back to the title of the story… while at HMV, we made a purchase or two, one being a pair of headphones. In the past, we have opted to buy the $6.99 headphones (which tend to break after a month or so), so this time we decided to be economically smart and buy the $11.99 pair (in hopes of saving money over the long run). So, very pleased with our purchase, we made our way back to our hovel in Garneau only to discover that the said $11.99 headphones were DEFECTIVE! ARRRR! Imagine our reaction. It twas not pleasant.

So, as time would have it, we broke out of the womb of academic submergence for 1 hour this afternoon to travel back to HMV downtown to exchange our headphones for an undefective set. So, the conclusion of our story is, HMV has nearly no problem exchanging stuff. They didn’t even ask us for a receipt! (we also stopped at Staples downtown to pick up some cheap printer paper).

And finally, Edmonton people: Isn’t it insanely beautiful outside? It must have been +10C today! Big blue sky! Spring jacket time! Very sweet!

mwahahahahahaha!

This week’s Blog of the Week goes to taracool.

Taracool is a fun blog we found a while ago. It’s writen by Tara, a fellow political science geek (except in Ontario). Check it out!

Also – 16 days ’till Christmas!!!!!!! 🙂

It’s officially the last day you and your’s can vote for this wonderful blog in the Canadian Blog Awards! So GO VOTE NOW!

The Federal Tories announced their Post-Secondary Education policy yesterday…

Here it is from Conservative.ca:

• “Providing students or their parents with a tax credit of up to $500 to help cover the costs of textbooks;
• Working with the provinces to increase family income thresholds for student loan eligibility;
• Exempting the first $10,000 of student scholarship or bursary income from taxation; and
• Ensure dedicated funding for education by removing postsecondary education funding from the Canada Social Transfer and placing it in an independent Canada Education and Training Transfer.”

okie dokie, here’s our take…

a) What’s up with using the tax system to fix everything? Seriously, we’re glad that the Tories are thinking about the textbook problem, but textbooks are expensive in September and January. Not May. How is a tax credit going to help someone when they need the money? Let’s segway into point b…

b) “Working with the provinces to increase family income thresholds for student loan eligibility” … okay, let’s make sure we got this one right… a Conservative government would make it easier for students to get into debt? sure…

c) The last two points are fairly straight forward. We would definitely support a dedicated Federal-Provincial PSE transfer and agree that scholarship and bursary money should be tax-free.

d) We were slightly surprised that some of the more controversial policies included in the Conservative Party’s Policy Declaration didn’t make the cut… including the dissolution of the Millennium Scholarship Foundation and implementation of an Income-Contingent Student Loan Repayment scheme…

Are these policies “hidden” somewhere? Perhaps in an “agenda?” 😉

Here’s our suggestion to Misters Martin, Harper, and Layton on how to spice up the election a bit.

Shake your groove thing. Shake your groove thing…

GOOD MORNING!

Partially because we’re nerds, and partially because we needed a break from studying environmental assessment policy, we’ve compiled a spreadsheet of the results of Edmontonians votes in the 2004 federal election for your reading pleasure.

Here are the total Edmonton-wide results…

…and here are the results broken down by the eight Edmonton ridings.

We don’t really have a point to prove, this is more for informational purposes.

Someone found our blog tonight by googling: balding actors/ joaquin phoenix.

Awesome.

Not that we pretend to actually know anything about childcare policy, but take a look at this baby picture for the Conservative Party website!

(Well, Mr. McBeath, is it cute or possessed? or both!?! Is it a TWO-tier baby!?!)
(SECRET AGENDA! SECRET AGENDA! SECRET AGENDA!)

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.“