Blevkog: A question for the crowd…

Today’s announcement that Peter MacKay is not going to run for his seat in Parliament this fall has me thinking that maybe this is a sign that Stephen Harper is losing control of his party finally. Some months ago when John Baird announced that he was stepping down to spend

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Blevkog: The miracle of birth…

It’s so thrilling to see a foundling cracking the shell for its first few pecks at freedom. (And never has a better beak been built to crack one, too!) And now, with today’s announcement, Peter MacKay marks his transition from pupa form (Canadian politician) to what I can only assume

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Blevkog: It is on… apparently

With the new round of polls in the hopper and the NDP surge from their surprising provincial victory in Alberta quantified, if it didn’t before, it looks like the national election campaigns are firmly up and running for the three major political parties. The campaign ads are beginning to appear

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Blevkog: “It’s real – get over it”

So says ipolitics (pay wall), referring to the NDP surge that was confirmed this week by polls released by EKOS and by other groups. They go on to demonstrate that, while NDP numbers jumped dramatically with the recent Alberta provincial election results, the upsurge really began as early as February. What

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Blevkog: Oil buck$

Playing around on the internet at lunch today, I came across a couple of interesting databases that confirm, at least visually, that we are a petro-economy. With data on the daily price of West Texas crude from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (thanks Google!) and daily foreign exchange

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Blevkog: Polievre and the election wrinkle

It’s not exactly news that Stephen Harper and his merry band are willing to cut a few corners when it comes to getting democratically elected. It’s also probably not news that the party that has been found guilty on several occasions of major financial shenanigans when it comes to advertisements

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Blevkog: Vote Together

I’m all in favour of voting your conscience. I’m all in favour of voting for the person who best will represent your riding. However, in the screwed up system that we currently have, your ballot gets used to determine both MP and governing party. And, since a party in power

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Blevkog: Omar Khadr Update

The Supremes have just ruled that Omar Khadr should be tried as a juvenile for crimes he may have committed in Afghanistan. This is no surprise as Omar Khadr clearly  was under 18 years of age at the time of his arrest and he conforms with the UN definition of

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Blevkog: A troubling picture

A just-published report  (enhanced pdf) containing new measurements of global sea-level rise has some troubling news – the rate of sea level increase has accelerated over the past twenty years. What I would argue is the most troubling is the increased precision with which these measurements are made owing to new satellite

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Blevkog: A simple question, unanswered

If the Trans Pacific Partnership is really the biggest game on the planet, why really is it okay to negotiate it in complete secrecy? Secrecy to the point that our elected representatives, who theoretically should have our best interests at heart (heh) can’t even see the thing? Why is it

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Blevkog: Pride, vanity, and puerile BS

Anyone wanna guess how much noise would be made by the Whinging Right if the Libs or NDP ever did something like this? Are the Conservatives trying to remind the electorate of Tony Clement’s gold unilingual business cards of a few years back? Are they trying to create easy-to-use election

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Blevkog: It has come to this…

I have been placed in a very weird position. This week’s election results in Alberta, in which Rachel Notley handed Jim Prentice an historic electoral slapping, has made me agree, I think for the first time, with something said by Kevin O’Leary, the bloviating former CBC in-house tycoon. In his

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Blevkog: Careful words

Note the careful words, words that are worthy of a former Prime Ministerial spokesweasel: “I deeply regret the ordeal this has been for my family,” he said. “There’s been no way to shield or protect them.” The ordeal, of course, is Dean Del Maestro’s trial on charges of intentionally mis-representing

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Blevkog: One would think…

One would think that the question “How many jobs will be created by the federal budget?” when asked of the bloody finance minister who had just delivered the thing would get a better worded response than “dunno“. If jobs were the teeniest tiniest concern for this government, one would think that

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