When a Witch Weighs the Same as a Duck

Ed Stelmach's communication style is oblique and opaque most of the time. Opaque in the sense of being impenetrable by light. Today he all but confirmed that Stephen Duckett would be relieved of his duties as the Alberta Health Services CEO. At least that's what I read among the grimaces and incomplete sentences. I'm not surprised. Health Care is the most dysfunctional file in the Alberta Government and has been in constant churn since the end of the Don Getty era.

Duckett will be paid contract severance and we are obligated to pay to move him and his family back to Australia. (View his contract here.) On top of that, he may be able to sue for wrongful dismissal. While the cookie thing was certainly unprofessional I'm not convinced it is grounds for termination. On the other hand, the current condition of the Health Care System strongly suggests he either failed in his job, or just could not effect any good changes because of politics. In either case, I strongly suggest he was looking for an early exit anyway. It's not pleasant for a CEO to have no real control, and to work in a gong show environment.

Really, it's a failure of the whole top level bureaucracy, from the Premier downward. It's a strange feeling for me to agree with Danielle Smith on something, namely that the super board concept is a failure and needs to be disbanded. Of course, the Wildrose general philosophy about health care is very different from mine. Still, put that dog down.

One thing that did bug me, was the way Albertan's treated Dr. Duckett right from day one. Edmonton tends to be a little inward looking and Duckett wasn't really welcomed as an outsider. Furthermore, there were constant gratuitous references to his Australianness which were irrelevant and seemed xenophobic. The op-ed cartoons referencing Crocadile Dundy themes were sort of lame.

The PC Government has been fairly consistent for a long time. No matter what bad thing happens they'll use the wrong Yardstick, and the hammer will come down on the wrong person.

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Link Byfield "Resigns"

Link Byfield resigned his position as one of Alberta's senators-in-waiting today. I was hoping at his press conference he might have explained why his friend Senator Bert Brown participated in a shady vote down of a House of Commons Bill, passed by an elected majority. It's extremely ridiculous that Bert Brown can never be removed from his position, which he was appointed to for life by Stephen Harper. There is no bill Parliament can pass to force a term limit on Bert Brown or any other Senator.

Alberta held Senate elections in 2004 and three people were elected to serve 6 year terms as senators-in-waiting. Upon expiry this year, Premier Stelmach declined to hold another election and instead extended their terms. Regardless of what you think of this fake Senate reform, it's worth noting that Stelmach has zero regard for any kind of political reform.

The fact that Byfield is a Wildrose Alliance executive, and a candidate for them in the next election explains why Premier Stelmach was not willing to give him a tonne of free publicity with a senator-in-waiting election. The pattern by now is very clear. Ed Stelmach puts his party ahead of every single public issue, no matter what it is.

The senator-in-waiting act is a Provincial Statute that has no meaning outside of Alberta. It was invented by Ralph Klein as a PR stunt to shore up the right side (Reformers) of the PC Party. The Senate is a national body defined in our Constitution Act. All Senators are appointed by our Head of State, on the advice of the Prime Minister, who traditionally may ask for a recommendation from a Premier. This is High School curriculum knowledge, but seems on the decline among voting adults.

The Alberta Senate elections are relatively inexpensive, harmless, and give right leaning Albertans a warm fuzzy feeling about political reform. They get poor turnout and the candidates, so far, have only been drawn from the political right. Like everything else in Alberta, you can pick the conservative, or the other conservative. Watch out for the homophobia.

In all honesty, to me they are a meaningless gong show. And for the record, I'm interested in Senate reform as an ongoing issue.

The broader issue is not Link or Ed. This issue is the deteriorating knowledge about our institutions and how they work. I meet people who honestly believe a senator-in-waiting is legally entitled to the next open Senator position.

Stephen Harper and to some extent Klein and Stelmach have worked hard to de-educate Albertans about our national institutions, in particular about how Senate appointments work.

Where this issue goes in the future is hard to say. After the next Provincial election the Alberta Legislature could be divided up among 3 right leaning parties. I think it will continue to be used as a partisan wedge issue.

The next Liberal Prime Minister will not be bound to appoint any of Alberta's senators-in- waiting. Nor will he be bound by any of Stephen Harper's fake Senate reform bills. After all, Canada is founded on a faulty constitution, and other fault lines that seem intractable.

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Sunday Night Cockburn

I'm loner with a loner's point of view,

I've always been a loner,

Now I'm in love with you

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UN Endorses State Violence against Gays

The Social, Humanitarian Cultural Affairs Committee of the UN General Assembly has voted to remove reference to sexuality from a resolution which condemns the use of "extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions".

Shame on the United Nations. And since it was a close vote, shame on those nations that abstained or didn't show up. I realize the UN has little real power, but these kind of resolutions are extremely important. Please recommend this post

Shortest Post Ever

I don't believe a single thing Stephen Harper says about Afghanistan. Please recommend this post

James Travers: Remembrance,Country

James Travers is such a great writer. Here he says exactly what needs to be said, at a politically incorrect time.

There are many things my father and uncle wouldn’t recognize. They wouldn’t understand a country where patriotism is partisan, where men and women in uniform are used as political props or where death and sports are shamelessly conflated on Hockey Night in Canada.

Every year on Remembrance day there's that one thing that I see or read that just caves me in.

Cross posted Please recommend this post

Queer Ugandans ask Parliament for refugee assistance (Canada)

Since when is it the role of a Member of Parliament to agree or disagree with someone's lifestyle choice. Someone please shoot me, I can't live in this country anymore.

The Commons subcommittee on international human rights – part of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development – heard from the Pride Uganda Alliance International on the plight on queers in Uganda.

He also noted that the influence of American evangelical Christian groups has been widely felt as they try to use the proposed Ugandan law as a “model” for other countries to follow when it comes to legislating against homosexuality.

The mention of these evangelical groups prompted Conservative MP Dave Sweet to try assure the witnesses that not all Christians condone the acts of hate even though “we might not agree with the lifestyle choice,” while Reid said that he felt his parents, who were evangelical missionaries, would be horrified by what has transpired in Uganda.

Bold is mine. One hopes our government will do the right thing. It must be incredibly awkward for the social conservative caucus in Harper's Government, given their close ties to the groups that are exporting homophobia to Africa.

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Canadian Veterans National Day of Protest - Calgary Alberta

(a lot of links below, hope they all work ...)

I attended the Canadian Veterans National Day of Protest this morning in Calgary. It was a good event on an unusually warm November day. I was disappointed that more Calgarians did not come out for this. After reading up a bit I was really shocked and saddened by how badly the current government has mishandled Veteran Affairs.

Here is a link to what they handed out at the rally today. There is more good reading at the Veteran`s voice website, and at the event website.

Please sign the petition here.

Here`s a video of the speech by retired Major C.J. Wallace, and under that is a link to some photos at the event.

Canadian Veterans National Day of Protest - Calgary Alberta

Please recommend this post

Health Care WAP Style.

Here's a podcast of CBC Calgary's noon hour show today, featuring Danielle Smith talking about the Alberta Health Care system. It starts at around 25:40. Her critiques of the existing system are mostly right on. Everyone knows that the Stelmach government's management of the health care system is ridiculously incompetent. There are really no words to describe it.

However the Wildrose/Fraser Institutes philosophy presented here is equally as ridiculous. She really gets hammered by a number of callers who see through the BS.

An emergency hip replacement for a senior is not the same as shopping around for new vinyl siding.

Please recommend this post

Prentice Abandons Ship

What can you say about Jim Prentice? Widely regarded as a moderate conservative, well liked by fellow MP's and a well respected Calgarian. But also, a man with no influence or future in Stephen Harper's highly radicalized political movement.

Two Prentice moments that stick out for me:

1. Voting for same sex marriage. I believe that he was sincere in this vote, mostly alone among conservative MPs. In three elections in Calgary Centre North, Prentice won by wide margins. He took no political hit for this brave choice, which also says something about Calgary.

2. The second moment was the discovery of the wreckage of the British ship HMS Investigator. This ship was sent out in search of the Franklin Expedition in the 1850s and itself was destroyed in an ice pack. In August 2010 Prentice sailed out into ice free water to look down through the water at the wreckage of the Investigator. He gushed, apparently, that it was just like looking through a window into the 1800's. Actually, its probably more like looking into the future where there's no more ice and everything is under water. Prentice expressed no sense of the irony of this discovery given his responsibility as the environment minister. Archeology is made much easier by global warming I guess.

After the elaborate photo-op with the Archeologists it was back to Ottawa to cut more climate change programs.

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Batman and the Birth of Venus

Isabel Samaras is my latest guilty pleasure artist. It hits my spot because I love both pop art and classical art. This Batman and Robin piece works in so many ways.

And then there was this homage to Bouguereau and all those birth of Venus paintings, using character from Gilligan's Island. Too much.

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Billy Connolly for Alberta Premier

Welcome to the Committee to elect Billy Connolly as Alberta's Next Premier (CEBCANP).

This must be an old video, and where do you get one of those Beetlejuice suits.

I think he would make a great Premier. How could we do worse than what we have now? Please recommend this post

God's Word on the Election

Jim Blake is the Calgary based head of Concerned Christians Canada, an Evangelical pressure group with political ambitions. Jim is none too happy about the election of Naheed Nenshi as Calgary's new mayor.

He starts off by quoting the prophet Hosea:

They set up kings without my consent;
they choose princes without my approval.

This verse is often quoted by dominion theology advocates. Democracy is displeasing to God unless you elect the one God wants. Or the one Jim and his friends want. It gets confusing. Don't laugh it's not funny. These guys are walking in and out of the Prime Minister's office and laying hands on your MP.

Jim get's to the meat of the matter:

Well we will all have to be very watchful of City hall now. Many of the worst aldermen have been re-elected and now with a Mayor who clearly has stated that he is a Muslim and an open supporter of the "Pride Parade" and therefor [sic] "alternate lifestyles", things should be very interesting.

Yes, they will be interesting. This is one little sign that my vote for Nenshi was well placed. I'm alway fascinated how one person's spiritual path turns them into a small minded bigot.

Aside: At the bottom left of the blog post there's a poll asking you to evaluate Ed Stelmach's performance. It's very strange that Alberta's worst Premier gets such a high rating from this group. Don't God's people have any discernment these days?

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D-Bag of the Year Award

Link.

Congratulations to Naheed Nenshi for winning the Mayor's job in Calgary. Now we know obnoxious conservatives can be defeated in Calgary. Next task: Alberta PC's.

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Calgary's Next Mayor

Tomorrow morning I will vote in the Calgary Municipal election. I have not missed a municipal vote in Edmonton or Calgary since I have been an eligible voter. Some times I wonder if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I have been conflicted for a while about who to vote for mayor, but right now (12:30am) I am strongly leaning towards Naheed Nenshi. We have been led to believe that this is a three way race between Barb Higgins, Ric McIver and Nenshi. While I'm very wary of partisan story lines, the polling has been very clear that Nenshi has strong momentum and closed a very large gap between himself and the other two.

This is one election I would never bet on. The polling has been wacky to say the least. All I will say is that tomorrow I think a lot of pundits will be very surprised at the outcome. Some may have to change careers.

Higgins and McIver are non-starters for me, for a list of reasons that aren't all that interesting. I had hoped to see more women in the mayor's race. I was disappointed with some of the sexist commentary that went on discussing Ms. Higgins personality and platform. Higgins weakness was her arrogance, and refusal to engage or debate. But people framed it completely different than those same qualities in a male candidate. We have a ways to go.

The truth is I liked Naheed as a candidate early on, but I also liked Kent Hehr. When Hehr dropped out of the race I really didn't see another candidate that resonated with me.

At the same time I was asking questions in my head, being a skeptic of political claims and promises. I generally don't like euphoria based politics. Enthusiasm is great, but at some point it becomes cult-like, and the true believers become difficult to talk to. All of the candidates ideas fell down from heaven and can't be questioned. Bleh.

The Calgary Sun's endorsement of Nenshi has been troublesome, and I'm not 100% sure I want to vote for someone who earned this endorsement. I tend to think these things are negotiated by the campaign managers, but maybe it came out of the blue. Subsequent columns at this paper make it obvious that they believe Nenshi to be an acceptable substitute for McIver. In other words, they expect Nenshi to be a slash and cut fiscal conservative. The endorsement means the Sun saw Nenshi as far enough to the political right to be acceptable to them. That worries me a lot.

I realize this has been a little incoherent. Barring any last minute revelations from visiting Angels (or a sex tape) I guess I probably will vote for Nenshi. Whoever wins will have a huge challenge managing the expectations of the next 3 years. I would not want that job. There are huge capital projects, rising costs of what we already have, and an anti-taxation sub-culture. Good luck. Calgary will need the smartest Mayor available.

Aside: I was completely disgusted with the race/religion baiting of the Calgary Herald during this campaign. I completely repudiate this nonsense as being in any way relevant to the Calgary of the future.

Edit, October 20, 2010: Changed "next 4 years" to "next 3 years". Duh. Also, fixed 4 (four) typos. Please recommend this post

153

A quick thank you to the 153 Toronto Elitists who voted to discontinue Bill C-391. This vote was a smaller side-show in a broader battle that will no doubt carry over into the next election.

For me the low point was the heckling of Scott Simms. This descent into ignorance has been around for a while and we will have to deal with it. Our political culture needs to change, one way or another.

James Travers' piece is also worth a read.

But now, the Audries:

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Think

Aretha lays it out for Matt Murphy. The Best scene from a musical ever.

The moral seems to be that if the boys show wanting to get the band back together, don't tell your SO. Please recommend this post

Destroyers of Cities

Near the end of Ray Bradbury's classic novel Fahrenheit 451 the main character, Guy Montag, leaves his city for the countryside and joins up with a band of exiled hobo/intellectuals. While sitting around a fire talking they see the sky light up as the city is destroyed. In Bradbury's imaginary future world there is never ending war and sudden destruction.

The group's leaders Granger, has a soliloquy near the end of the novel that kind of nails it all together:

"Now, let's get on upstream," said Granger. "And hold on to one thought: You're not important. You're not anything. Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddam steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them."

Mirrors, not bombs. Please recommend this post

Love Your Enemies

ThinkProgress:

After more than 30 years in business, the Fayetteville Women’s Clinic in Arkansas closed its doors on July 30. The clinic had more than 500 patients and was “one of only two places in the state where women could have a surgical abortion.” While it focused mainly on obstetrics and gynecology, it also performed 700-800 abortions each year.

The Chief Physician of the Clinic, Dr. William Harrison, is ceasing operations because of his battle with cancer.

An anti-choice group is taking credit for the closure of the clinic noting that:

“It is truly an answer to prayer that abortions will no longer be carried out at this facility. All the glory belongs to God.” [...] How Humbling it will be to see God use the simplicity of prayer, fasting, outreach, and vigil to bring an end to abortion in many more areas, just like Fayetteville?”

I'd like to think that when they were bragging they didn't know about the cancer diagnosis. But they probably did. And that's too bad because it plays into their narrative that God is a monster who throws cancer around at the request of his chosen.

It's a really really appalling attitude, a sick-minded world view, and utterly disconnected from any ethical teaching religion might offer.

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IPhone Consumerism

A small lineup of 20-30 people wait for their chance to buy an IPhone, at the Apple store in Market Mall, Calgary.


It's hard to know where to start.  The whole fan-person, lining up for gadgets topic is so broad and full of side issues we could be here for days.

As a technologist I love gadgets and electronics in general, however this perpetual culture of buy and re-buy as a means of keeping our economy going is something to think about.

Most Technology tends to roughly follow Moores law, where price, speed, and functionality tend to radically improve every 18 months or so.  In some cases manufacturers are getting into one year cycles.

This is both good and bad for the consumer. If you have the means and the interest you can line up every year or so and get a great deal of satisfaction out of the next version.  If you don't have the means, you quickly get left behind.  Your 4 year old flip phone is a key status marker out in the wild.

I remember asking a Rogers Sales Person about why they lock people into 3 year plans when the Phones are only desigined for a much shorter life span. (Both feature wise and in terms of break resistance.)   She stared at me for a good five seconds like I had just asked for sex, then recited the talking point about how great it is to upgrade in the second year.  You should see that "loyalty price" spreadsheet, it's huge.

If you get tired of waiting in that line-up there's a Cookie's By George right around the corner.  Two rich gooey chocolate chip cookies for $3.  There is no Moore's Law for cookies, they'll always be as good as they get.  But picture this, a three year contract requiring you to eat a certain number of cookies in order to get an overall reduced price.

Reprinted from The Last Cut is the Cheapest Please recommend this post