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You do realise he was running for election to the Legislature, not President of the United States? He won his seat by a large margin (perhaps the PC's largest, not sure), and immediately resigned it rather than serving in the opposition. His former constituents are rightly livid at his bad...

Something very interesting has been going on in Alberta of late. For the past several months, the political reportage here has risen from the depths of mediocrity and has, for the first time in my life, actually held the government to account.* Klein and even Stelmach could have gotten away with...

Norway spends more of its GDP on defence than any country in Europe. Its military is the same size as ours. Sweden and Finland have bigger militaries. Their insignificance has to do with geography and population size (kind of like us, only even smaller).

We really have to start thinking this way in Calgary. Unfortunately, we here have a very complacent attitude towards nature here ("we don't need plows, a chinook will come;" "it won't flood in High River!"). This is "the" flood of the century (time will tell), but I can tell you that in the time...

Tiamo, Thank you for your reply. You'll be relieved to know that I agree with your points, especially that Canada has no part in this event. I must only add that I don't believe that even were Assad to win this war, would his position in any way be strengthened. His victory can only be Pyrrhic...

I agree with most of your premises, but the thing that undermines it is that many, if not most of the extremists, are not Syrians. Second, while chaos can breed extremism - so can its opposite, authority. Syria was anything but chaotic prior to the onset of this war. The fact is that modern...

We must acknowledge two things: first, Assad and the West have common enemies (and some uncommon ones, too). Second: he's doing more damage to them than we have in many years. So yes, "best friend," in the good old cold war sense. What he's done in the past is irrelevant. He's thrashing our...

Terrorists already have more than a foothold in Syria. In effect it is a beachhead. Al-Nusra alone is estimated to have what, 6000-10,000 fighters? More than enough for one Normandy beach... Events bring curious, or hilarious change. A year ago it could easily be said that we should be...

It certainly doesn't hurt Assad that the rebels are busy killing each other, or declaring war on the Kurds whenever they are free. Assad is not General Franco, but it helps when you share opponents similar in that one particular respect. One has to wonder how much popular opinion remains on the...

And people were farming in the American southwest, where they are no longer, and Southern Arabia was also supporting large urban civilization of which Yemen is a mere shadow (in both cases because it became too dry and hot). Climate change does not always equal warming, nor is a single example...

Somewhere there's a journalist wanting to write a story about a parrot-hockey-prophet.

From what I gather on the Elections Alberta Website, the only obvious candidate for a Constituency where Strategic Voting (here defined as Liberals and those to the left of them who voted PC) was Calgary-Fort, where Wayne Cao won reelection with roughly 100 votes. From the data, there are...

Update: Liberal Darshan Kang has come back to take Calgary-McCall. This gives final results of 61 PC, 17 WR, 5 LIB, 4 NDP. Shares of votes hardly changed from those just posted above. All in all, I am terribly surprised. Despite losing the vast majority of their voters, the Liberals held on to...

Well CBC has declared a PC majority government. I myself was only slightly wrong in thinking a Wildrose minority, at least compared to most of the professional analysts. It seems like the greatest smear was putting the image of a Wildrose government in the vision of voters, where after a few...

This one is far funnier and less hyperbolic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsOaPkML464

What I find most surprising was that the Conservatives finished in third - effectively last - in both ridings. I was expecting, and to some degree, hoping, for better out of them. With that in mind the article comments on the above are surprisingly insightful, as in some are in some way...

Having just walked across much of Calgary-Varsity on my way home from Denny's, I thought I would give a campaign sign report. This is currently a liberal riding, but the incumbent is retiring. So far there are only two Liberal signs that I have seen, both on public land. The PCs have two...

Perhaps the most significant part of the race is the effect that having an actual race is going to have on our election turnout. The winner will be, I think, the WAP - I just don't know how much it will translate into seats in northern Alberta. The Liberals and NDP could pick off a few PCs in...

Humiliating? No. The Americans have demonstrated a remarkable capability for rationalizing, if not forgetting, defeat. To the rest of the world, the hypothetical "humiliation" already happened (Iraq). No one will be shocked to see what happens to Afghanistan when the Americans inevitably lead...

If anyone missed it in the article above, the Americans months ago deployed forces in support of operations against the Lord's Resistance Army. Naturally, back then, all the coverage of it condemned the Americans for getting involved in another war. It's good to see that people have caught up...