The 'Bozo Eruption' Vote

It was one of those "Dewy Beats Truman" moments, the type of political upset where the decision of voters goes entirely against the media marketed expectations, as Alison Redford led the Progressive Conservative party to it's 12th straight provincial victory in Alberta yesterday after weeks of absolute certainty that Danielle Smith's upstart Wildrose was about to end the PC dynasty.

But the PCs didn't just barely win, they won a landslide majority of 61 seats. Wildrose now forms a distant opposition with only 17 seats, which almost doubles the number of seats won by the Liberals and the NDP combined with 5 and 4 seats, respectively. Considering that some polls had Wildrose up by 15 per cent over the PCs earlier this month, the fact that they fell so hard with only 17 seats to show for their efforts is being attributed to the "Bozo Erupion" and the strategic voting it prompted.

Ontario Lives to Fight Another Day

It should come as no surprise that the Ontario Budget passed this morning, and that a potential election has been, for now, averted. But even before the so-called "breakthrough" was made between Premier Dalton McGuinty and NDP leader Andrea Horwath was announced yesterday, there was about as much of a chance of another Ontario election as there is for severe winter weather in southern Ontario this late in April, which is to say a small chance, but generally speaking not very likely. 

The new budget now has a 2 per cent wealth surtax on 23,000 Ontarians earning $500,000 or more a year, raising $470 million next year, which will all go towards paying down the $15.2 billion deficit, while the levy, which costs someone making $600,000 an extra $3,120 annually, will be in place until Ontario balances the budget, now scheduled for 2017-18. The Liberals have also added $242 million in funding for child care, $20 million for northern and rural hospitals, and boosted welfare and disability benefits by 1 per cent at a cost of $55 million. 

Remembering AIDS

Last year was the 30th anniversary of the first diagnosis of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and its cause, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection. What was at first though to be a rare form of pneumonia that afflicted people with already compromised immune system, turned out to a modern plague that grew as a boogeyman throughout the 80s and 90s. 

Now That's What I Call Bipartisanship

The sight of two guys fighting downtown in the middle of the afternoon is nothing new under the sun, but when that fight is broken up by two well-known local politicians, then this becomes a case of man bites dog. 

The story was in today's Guelph Mercury:

Strange Bedfellows

Who Is Pierre Poutine?

Not that one, the other one.

It's the most pressing question of our time. Bigger than "Who is John Galt?" which is now so ubiquitous that Lululemon put it on a bag.

On a recent post on #CDNPoli, blogger Brian-Michel LaRue, "a 29 year old Canadian-American from Montréal, sometimes journalist, sometimes DJ, professional traveler, quite the amateur photographer and writer," revealed Pierre Poutine as Andrew Prescott, local blogger and deputy campaign manager for Marty Burke in last year's Federal Election.

Well, case closed then.

Crisis of Conscience?

If you've been following recent developments in the culture wars south of the border, you'll know that in some places in the U.S., if you want to have an abortion, you have to now jump through several proverbial hoops both invasive and bizarre. For instance, before the holiday weekend, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed into law stipulations that women can't get an abortion through a provision in the Healthcare Reform Law (Obamacare) when it goes into effect in 2014, and that they have on confer with a doctor one-on-one to prove that they're not being pressured into having an abortion by a friend or family member.

Believe it or not, this might not be the most draconian, anti-abortion measure taken in the last week in the United States. Over in our old friend Arizona, some language in a new bill would ban abortions for some women depending on how long they've been pregnant. The big deal? You ask. Well, according to the language in the bill, a woman might be considered pregnant even before she's pregnant. As quoted from the website RT:

Reviewing the Guelph Review

When it was announced a couple of weeks ago that Sun Media was going to be cranking out a new weekly paper here - and in three other markets in Ontario - some of us wondered if it was part of the company's continued prosecution of correcting the left-wing bias in the media. But having read a new copy of the Guelph Review, I can safely say that if this was the point of the new paper, then they've really missed the mark.

The Three Estates

Leave it to the Toronto Sun to not let a holiday weekend go by without finding an occasion to sock it to civil servants.

The issue du jour: a column by Mike Strobel decrying how government offices get Monday off, while all the working stiffs of the world have to schlub back to their desks. Those technocrats and their "Easter Mondays" and cushy pensions, and decent wages... While I will concede that "Easter Monday," as a concept, is a flimsy handle to throw a day off on, but Strobel doesn't go far enough in his own "analysis." Yes, Easter Monday will be enjoyed as a day off purely by those in government jobs, but I doubt Mr. Strobel will jump to the defense of the real working masses when he goes to the mall on the August Civic Holiday or Boxing Day.

Lessons on How to Be Offensive

Of course, the demise of the long gun registry has come with it's fair share of controversy, but today New Brunswick-Southwest MP John Williamson took controversy to a whole new level. Let's go to the video tape:

Ben Knows Politics

I something funny on HuffPost today: Ben Mulroney was talking about politics. 

You can read the entire exchange at the above link, it's an inane Twitter back and forth about how a former staffer under Ben's father Prime Minister Brian Mulroney might have misstated something about pensions with Ben sticking up for his dad. What's weird about this situation though is that Ben Mulroney is talking about politics, because I could have sworn that he knew about as much about the subject as he does about pop culture. 

What A Gas!

Toronto was all aflutter Monday when a travel company offered a promotion at a Eastern Ave. gas station where they sold gas for 50 cents a litre. The natives went crazy and it took about an hour for the cheap gas news to get around town. It started at 6 am, and by 7 am the cops had to be on scene to help keep traffic in-line, all because gas had been slashed in price in the name of promoting a company that I doubt anyone bothered to learn the name of. The name of the company wasn't even named in this CBC story.

Fighter Fiasco

Not a great day to be in the market for fighter jets, it seems, as the Federal government has hit another road block in its quest to buy new planes. A report issued today by Auditor-General Michael Ferguson said basically that the entire endeavour to this point has over-budget and less than transparent. The purchase of  65 fifth generation Joint Strike Fighters made to Lockheed Martin has been fraught with Parliamentarians getting misleading information which understated the problems the program was experiencing and provided artificially low cost estimates, according to Reuters.