The Ric McIver campaign balloon makes its way through downtown Calgary. Who ya gonna call? Kathleen Wynne? Some of the cast of the Gong Show, Alberta Edition, below: Former infrastructure minister McIver, Infrastructure Minister Wayne Drysdale, and actual acting infrastructure minister Dave Hancock. Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party is looking for
Continue readingAuthor: David Climenhaga
Alberta Diary: With floodwaters rising again, will Sun News Network renew its hysterical ‘gun grab’ attacks on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?
Sun News Network columnist Lorne Gunter is presented an award by National Firearms Association President Sheldon Clare for his commentary on the so-called “High River Gun Grab.” (Grabbed from the NFA’s website.) Below: Floodwaters roar through High River last year. (CBC Photo) Rain is falling and floodwaters are rising again
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Red in Central Canada, blue in Ottawa an immutable rule that favours Harper’s Tories? Don’t bet on it!
Is Justin Trudeau finished because Kathleen Wynne just won in Ontario, like the mainstream media’s pundits are telling you? Don’t be too sure! (Say, as one Twitter commenter asked, who is that old man with Mr. Trudeau?) Below: The same guy with NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair. Weird! Below them: Lawrence
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Pride goeth before destruction: Tory leadership candidate Ric McIver’s already slim chances fall into a burnin’ Lake of Fire
Progressive Conservative leadership candidate opens the 2013 March for Jesus in Calgary. If he hadn’t gone back this year, he’d probably be OK. Below: King Solomon. He fell into a burnin’ Lake of Fire He went down, down, down and the flames went higher! And it burns, burns, burns …
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Rachel Notley makes Alberta NDP leadership bid official with Calgary and Edmonton announcements
Alberta NDP Leadership candidate Rachel Notley addresses her supporters in Edmonton yesterday afternoon. Below: Ms. Notley talks to the media. No surprise, then, as predicted yesterday, Edmonton-Strathcona MLA Rachel Notley made her entry into the Alberta New Democratic party leadership race official yesterday morning in Calgary. If anyone had any
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Rachel Notley will either enter the Alberta NDP leadership race today or hold the strangest news conference ever
About-to-declare NDP leadership candidate Rachel Notley with the author of this blog. Below: Already declared NDP leadership candidate David Eggen with the same guy; Grant Notley. Bottom: Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Ric McIver at the “March for Jesus” in Calgary yesterday, grabbed from Mr. McIver’s Twitter account. Good morning, everyone.
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Waitin’ for the end of the world … Hear, O Ontario! Mr. Manning will be with you momentarily
Preston Manning readies himself before the mirror of his Seventh Floor office at the Prophetic Market Institute in Calgary, the Calgary skyline in the background obscured by a June rainstorm, one of those June rainstorms, as he ponders the frightening meaning of last Thursday’s Ontario election. Actual Alberta market fundamentalists
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Ontario election: OK, that didn’t really work … can we get back to being New Democrats now?
Ontario’s victorious Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne last summer. Below: Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak. Well! That didn’t work out quite as well as we’d hoped, did it? Can we get back to being New Democrats now? I speak, of course, of the results of
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Opposition attack on Tory leadership frontrunner Jim Prentice a measure of how deeply Alison Redford wounded her party
“Diamond Jim” Prentice, at right, in a strategy session with Alberta Premier Dave Hancock, as described by the provincial NDP and seen by the Wildrose Party. Below: the real Mr. Prentice and former premier Alison Redford. If you’re looking for a yardstick with which to measure the truly spectacular failure
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Wildrose Party remains far in the lead despite entry of Jim Prentice to Progressive Conservative leadership race, new poll says
The Wildrose Party with Danielle Smith holding the reins appears to continue to lead the Alberta Progressive Conservatives handily. Actual Alberta politicians and astonished onlookers may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: PC leadership candidates Jim Prentice, Thomas Lukaszuk and Ric McIver, none of whom seems to be making much
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Newsprint ‘wraps’ – not good for fish and, as it turns out, not much good for newspapers either
The Edmonton Journal’s “wrap” Friday, showing the hidden front page inside. Below: The wrap’s uninspiring front page. Now that nobody sells fried fish wrapped in yesterday’s edition of the local daily any more, presumably for fear the ink will leak through into your liver, the term “wrap” has come to
Continue readingAlberta Diary: The NFA is right about one thing: it’s time to talk about guns and mental health
The National Firearms Association’s logo and slogan. What do you think their message is? Below: NFL President Sheldon Clare and the organization’s Executive VP, Shawn Bevins. All photos grabbed from the NFA’s public Facebook page. Enough time has passed since the shocking murders of three Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Be there or be square: When pride goes mainstream, is just being there enough?
Riders from the Gay Rodeo welcome Edmontonians to the New West yesterday! Scenes from Edmonton’s Pride Parade below: Alberta Premier Dave Hancock, left, and Edmonton City Councillor Scott McKeen, right, with a parade participant; Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson on his bicycle with his kids; a couple of parade participants trying
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Enough petulant propaganda, please: the hammer of D-Day crushed Hitler on the anvil of Russia
D-Day on Juno Beach: Canadians trudge ashore under a strange colorized sky. Below: The distinguished Canadian military historian, the late Reginald H. Roy. It’s been 70 years today since our magnificent Canadian soldiers went ashore at Juno Beach in Normandy to play their part the grim and deadly task of
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Ric McIver needs to explain his longstanding connections to the ‘Progressive Group for Independent Business’ and its beliefs
Found on the Internet, apropos of nothing in particular, Ric McIver and friend. Below: Craig B. Chandler of the Progressive Group for Independent Business. Up to now, Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Ric McIver has quite successfully flown under the radar about his ideological beliefs. Indeed, very little has been written
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Conservative former Edmonton mayor endorses conservative future Alberta premier: Yawn
Former Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel and PC leadership candidate Jim Prentice, obviously pleased to be in one another’s company, at a news conference yesterday in Edmonton at which Mr. Mandel endorsed Mr. Prentice. Below: The other Tory leadership candidates, Ric McIver and Thomas Lukaszuk, and New Democrat MLA Rachel Notley,
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Master of survey spinning takes potshot at poll showing Jim Prentice far ahead in Progressive Conservative leadership race
Stephen Carter, back in the day, looking very pleased with himself. Below: Former Carter clients Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi and Alison Redford. Below them: Pollster Janet Brown. What would happen if a new poll put Thomas Lukaszuk in third place in the Tory leadership race? Oh, wait! The former labour
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Don’t let any ‘celebrities’ tell you different, we’ve got friends of science here in Alberta
Don’t worry: you have absolutely nothing to do with the apocalypse. You might as well mine more bitumen while you wait for it. Below: Barry Cooper; another version of the Friends of Science billboard; yet another great billboard supporting democracy and the people. Billboard photos found on the Internet. Alberta’s
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Right-wing Rage Machine readies the Full Neil Young Treatment for Archbishop Desmond Tutu
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu will now be subjected to the full Neil Young Treatment for speaking out against overdevelopment of Alberta’s Bitumen Sands. (CBC Photo.) Below: Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Ric McIver; Mr. Young, back in the days when Albertans were still allowed to love him. Retired South African
Continue readingAlberta Diary: A blast from the past: Oh, those Tories and their stories!
A postal worker searches for David Climenhaga’s lost letter from the minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Ray Speaker. Nope. That’s not it … Nothing’s turned up just yet. Below: Mr. Speaker and NDP MLA Ed Ewasiuk. On May 7, 1991, Ray Speaker, the minister of municipal affairs in the
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