Author Archives: Cory Morgan

Let this one go.

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I get it. I know. Bill 24 is a crass action on the part of the Notley government to create a wedge issue and to distract from her horrific fiscal management in Alberta. I understand that Notley is using children as a tool to try and preserve her inept government’s power in Alberta. Bill 24 is a solution looking for a problem.   GSAs have been here for years now and there has been no crisis of children being “outed” by schools. Bill 24 is modeled to label even people who have rational concerns about the wording has being terrible bigots even when its terribly unfair.

I get it!

All the above being said, we have to let this one go. Bill 24 was created for purely political purposes for the advantage of the NDP party and its working like a charm!

Alberta’s unemployment rate remains mired in the shitter. Our deficits and growing debt are nothing less than appalling. We have become a pariah as far as international investment is concerned as we watch an increasing number of multinational companies divest themselves from this socialist run government that tried and failed to tax us into getting outward bound pipelines. It will take generations to fix the damned mess the NDP are creating.

Are we hearing anything about the above issues right now though?

No!

The news is dominated by what is really actually a minor social issue and policy. The legislature sits precious few days as it is and the debate is all focused on Bill 24 while so many other issues are withering away on the wayside and out of the public eye. This just isn’t worth it.

Tension is growing within the United Conservative Party caucus over this too. We are a newly created party and need to form solid bonds within the leadership, membership and caucus. This is pretty damned tough to do when the legislative session is immersed in this hornet’s nest of a bill.

I used the picture of Notley laughing because that is exactly what she is doing today. The NDP had been on the ropes for months. The reek of fear and desperation from them was palpable in every hysteric tweet and news release. The UCP was taking Alberta by storm and the future of the NDP looked pretty damned bleak. The only possible out for Notley was for the UCP to mire itself in a no-win social issue. Well, the UCP jumped right into that issue in the first week of the first session of the legislature that they came to as a new party and Notley is giggling herself to sleep over it.

We need to pick our battles and this hill simply isn’t worth dying on.

Attempted amendments came today and they were of course shot down. That effort showed at least a little cooperativeness and bending by the UCP. Better late than never.

We know that the NDP will not grant the UCP a victory so small as an amendment changing the placement of a comma within the legislation. Send out a few more good proposals and then let it go guys.

Vote for the damned bill and get on with important business.

I know that Notley will find some other social issue to dump in front of the legislature in the next session. This tactic won’t stop simply because the UCP capitulated on this one. That said, if Bill 24 is the toughest social legislation that Notley could find to toss in front of the nascent UCP, I don’t think we need to worry much. She will have to really stretch for the next one and the electorate will tire of her constant pulling of the social issue fire alarm.

The UCP needs to dominate the agenda in the next couple years and they will never be able to do so if they are constantly bogged down in these kinds of issues.

If (and this is a big if) Bill 24 somehow is found to cause damage in the next couple years, the UCP can address it when they have a majority government in a couple years. If they insist on jumping in neck deep every time Notley tosses a social issue at them though, we won’t see an end to the accidental Notley Regime and by the time the next general election rolls around the great grandchildren of our grandchildren will be in debt. Its just not worth it.

Let this one go.

It’s OK to be white. Brilliant trolling by 4chan exposes just how insane identity politics have become.

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4chan is a large and well established message board on the net. It has been around since 2003 and is something of a free speech, wild west online. It has spawned countless memes ranging from light chuckles to the most tasteless of images. It can be a place for simplistic juvenile chatter or deeper political debate and everything in between. It has a large following and their actions can and have had impact outside of the realm of internet antics.

Identity politics and political correctness have gone beyond absurd in the developed world. People lost in the social justice warrior culture either have found an orientation, lifestyle choice (including religions) or ethnicity that they will fully identify by and will of course then play the victim of big bad society at every possible opportunity. Those who can’t find a niche in order to play the victim game get even more repugnant as they become self-loathing of their own race and apologize for being white along with demanding that others do so too. They are locked into and immersed within a sick world where they feel that a debt is owed to society by all who have been considered to have been born with their perception of racial privilege.

While this sounds exaggerated to people who live within the real world, this malady of thought is epidemic on university campuses and a 4chan stunt exposed this in all its repulsive glory.

Plans were made on the forums to encourage students in universities to go out on Halloween in costume (to avoid the inevitable efforts to prosecute) and to paste flyers and stickers throughout the campuses that held the simple statement: “It’s OK to be white.”.

4chan never made a secret that this was to be a mass trolling. In their own discussions it was said “The next morning, the media goes completely berserk” and “Credibility of far-left campuses and media gets nuked”. You would think that such open and blatant trolling plans would inoculate media and campuses to this but it clearly didn’t.

The 4chan stunt was a spectacular success as hysteria erupted in spots all over North America as idiotic snowflakes exploded upon seeing these ghastly signs greeting them on November 1. Can you just imagine the horror? Akin to openly organizing the KKK at the least!

Police were actually called in Boston and other locations. Is is actually fucking illegal just to say it’s OK to be white?

We are not talking about saying being white is superior to any race. Nobody is saying any race is inferior. Hell, the word pride isn’t even involved. All that is being said is that it’s OK and some crazy social justice warriors truly believe that in saying that, a person should be criminally charged.

Alberta is not immune and was not left out. These stickers popped up at the University of Alberta and the authorities there went predictably haywire. In their statement they said: “We are working with University of Alberta Protective Services to find the parties responsible.”

Then what assholes? Will you try to have these people charged? Will you have them expelled?

This is our tax dollars at work folks. Our institutions of higher learning.

Bed wetting pussies who go fetal in fear and rage at the simple concept that it may be OK to be white.

Thank you 4chan for helping to expose just how bad things are getting in the bizarro world of social justice.

Clutching pearls and whining about harmless statements is one thing, calling for criminal sanction and expulsion from universities is another. These idiot social justice warriors are getting out of control and are causing real damage. It is past time that folks started pushing back on these insane, identity politics before we become a society even more fragmented and hate filled than we already are.

Are we in a confederation or not?

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con·fed·er·a·tion:

noun

  1. an organization that consists of a number of parties or groups united in an alliance or league.

Canada is referred to as a confederation. As regions and provinces, we agreed to and came together under a common constitution under the understanding that membership in this confederation was to be of benefit to all of us as a whole.

One of the most important aspects of our confederation is the ability to move our people and goods unfettered from coast to coast. If we allow municipal or provincial jurisdictions to hinder the movement of goods and people, we will then become a loose collection of nation states. What benefit is there for a province to remain in confederation if inter-provincial barriers are as onerous or worse than international ones?

Our founding fathers knew this. That is why they entrenched the authority to govern interprovincial trade within our constitution. It is pretty straightforward and doesn’t take a constitutional lawyer to translate and interpret things.

Section 91 of the constitution lays out what lands under federal authority and part two of that section reads:

2.
The Regulation of Trade and Commerce

I quoted it to show just how clear this constitutional authority is. There is utterly no question that the regulation trade and commerce is under federal authority. No ambiguity.

Next is section 121 of the constitution which is also very clear:

121. All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces

The constitution makes it clear that the federal government has both the authority and the obligation to ensure the free trade and movement of goods between the provinces.

In looking at recent and current issues with inter-provincial pipeline projects, it is clear that perhaps Trudeau understands that he has the authority to ensure the free trade of goods but he apparently doesn’t understand the obligation to enforce that authority when required.

The National Energy Board is a federal creation. While we would not want to see constant federal intervention in NEB activities, the NEB gets its mandate from and ultimately answers to the feds. In caving to activists supported by provincial and municipal politicians, the NEB has essentially neutered itself as an authority on pipeline approvals. In tossing out an entire committee due to what really were some weak activist complaints and in entrenching the absurd requirement to take upstream & downstream emissions into account with pipeline approvals, the NEB killed the Energy East line through unreasonable regulation. This will have a chilling effect on future and current pipeline applications unless we see something drastically change. The Transmountain pipeline has been delayed yet again and it is looking very likely that it will be killed by the application process soon. This is where the federal government needs to take control and assert their authority.

The inaction from Ottawa on these pipelines is purely political. Trudeau is terrified of antagonizing Quebec politicians such as Denis Coderre and Philippe Couillard for fear of losing seats in la belle province. The same can be said in BC where the mayors of Burnaby, Vancouver and the Premier of the province are all lined up in opposition to the Transmountain expansion. None of these municipal or provincial politicians have any authority to hinder these projects but unless Trudeau begins to exercise his federal authority in these affairs, local opposition will continue to delay or halt these essential Canadian projects.

We can rest assured that provincial politicians in favor of pipelines will become more bold as frustration with Trudeau’s impotence on the issue grows. We can look forward to trade wars as Premiers use regulation to punish neighboring provinces for hindering development. While turning off the oil taps to Vancouver for a week could be effective in gaining support for infrastructure expansion, the support would be grudging and consumers as always would ultimately pay the price. Nobody would come out happy from such a trade war.

If provinces are forced to go toe to toe all the time on trade issues such as this, it is inevitable that people will start asking themselves what the point is in being within a confederation? As the price of consumer goods rise and unemployment skyrockets due to cancelled projects, those voices will gain strength.

Nostalgia and emotion will only carry a person so far if they can’t get food on the tables. People need to see a real, tangible benefit in being within confederation and the free trade of goods provides that. That benefit is quickly vanishing due callow inaction from our federal government and the long term costs to our entire nation could be exceedingly high.

As long as our constitution is not being enforced, we are only a confederation in name only. If inaction continues, perhaps real movements will begin move provinces out from even that nominal presence within confederation. Lets hope it doesn’t come to that.

Notley NDP working to reduce housing options in Alberta.

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I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising to see the NDP targeting landlords with their latest legislation. Landlords represent everything socialists despise. Landlords have worked hard, acquired property and are trying to become more prosperous through using the property that they own.

Property. Work. Profit. All evil in the eyes of the hard left accidental government of Alberta.

Like socialism itself, rent controls are a proven failure that leftists try over and over and over again with invariably negative outcomes. The only reason that the Notley NDP isn’t going down the rent control road right now is that there is a surplus of rental property available in our moribund economy and rents are dropping naturally. Since rent control isn’t on the table right now, the next best thing for socialists is regulation.

The Notley NDP plans to table legislation making it illegal for property owners to have adult only rental properties. Landlords will be forced to rent to families and you can rest assured that undesirable tenants will use the threat of age discrimination in order to force their way into rental properties that they normally would never have qualified for.

Who cares about property rights? How dare the owner of a property get to choose who may actually reside within that property? Those monsters!

Our legislation is already so tenant heavy in the allocation of rights that literal absurdities are happening.

In Cardston, a man is squatting in a shed rent free on a driveway of a home. It is his ex-girlfriend who had the lease and this bum hasn’t paid a dime. Despite this, the landlord can’t evict this parasite and has to go through a drawn out court action at great expense. It is outright insane and this sort of story is happening to varying degrees on rental properties throughout the province. 

These regulations will have the same inevitable effect that rent controls do. They will lead to a reduction in available rental properties as it becomes increasingly unviable to invest in these kinds of properties. As landlords flee the rental market and development of rental properties slump, a rental crunch ensues. Then renters find themselves more screwed than ever as rents skyrocket (that supply & demand concept that continues to elude the left).

The next response from leftist governments when private enterprise flees a market is predictable as well. The government will take on the role of providing housing.

Government housing around the world is invariably shitty. If you want bureaucratically run slums, this is the way to do it. Ghettos are created while the productive flee ever more deeply into the suburbs. Thankfully, our accidental government wont be in power long enough to get to that end but it will take some doing to undo this damage and this assault on property owners.

Plenty of landlords willingly rent to families. Some, however choose not do. They should be allowed to. It is their own damned property after all. Supply and demand will ensure that enough housing is available for all demographics in the long run if government will keep its meddling hands out of the market. Alas, that is contrary to the nature of the Notley NDP and the damage will be done.

Conservative unity has Rachel Notley terrified, & it should.

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For the first time since the late 1990s conservative minded Albertans are unified under one political banner. Jason Kenney was the prime orchestrator of the unity movement from its inception to its conclusion with 95% merger support from the memberships of both the Progressive Conservative Party & the Wildrose Party.  Kenney demonstrated the same drive and organizational strength as he solidly took the leadership of the nascent United Conservative Party. With such a solid and proven record as a formidable campaigner and strategist, the prospect of facing off against Jason Kenney in a general election is a discomforting one for any NDP strategist who maintains any basis in political reality.

All the above being said, it is not simply Jason Kenney’s leadership alone that has the NDP and their supporters in abject terror for their political lives today. Those who follow political movements recognize that a massive, well organized movement has developed that will be difficult to stop whether Jason Kenney leads it or not. Conservatives have truly united and will now be able to focus on forming the next government with pragmatic common sense goals and policies.

The leadership race for the UCP was hard fought and with no holds barred. While it is painful to endure such races, they are indeed prequels for what the general election will look like. Whoever was going to lead us against the Notley Regime in the next election had to prove themselves to be tough and exceedingly well organized in what will be a terribly rough campaign.

Due to the nature of these races they can be very dangerous for parties. Leadership races can turn into civil wars that create rifts that never heal within the party. Opponents and detractors of united conservatives poked as hard as they could from the sidelines in hopes of fostering division within the party.

To the disappointment of Notley and her supporters, the UCP came out of the race more unified than ever.

In this picture we see three very dedicated supporters for three different leadership candidates. Dean Leask on the left passionately supported Brian Jean’s leadership bid. In the middle and wearing my best wrinkled shirt, I supported Jason Kenney. On the right and looking much more presentable is my wife Jane Morgan who stepped down from the UCP leadership committee as she strongly felt she wanted to get involved and help Doug Schweitzer on his campaign. All of us serious and committed conservative supporters and all firmly in different camps.

Now that the race is over, we are unified in our support of the UCP under Jason Kenney. Dean will still drop by my pub, Jane still lets me come to bed with her (except after times when I have indulged in taco Tuesday) and we all will be working hard together to replace the NDP government with a UCP one.

The picture is indicative of the rest of the room that night. There are some sour grapes out there. There are some folks who need a little time to embrace the party under the new leadership. All in all though, the vast majority of the membership is united and looking ahead today. Hopes for an internal implosion by some have been dashed.

The picture above is even more striking and indicative of how and why the UCP is striking fear into the left.

Along with my wife and I we see Piotr and Christina Pilarski. Both very politically active and driven couples who have worked on a number of campaigns. Until recently though, we were always on different teams. As Wildrosers and PCs we all fought tooth and nail with each other for years. That was the kind of division that led to our accidental NDP government and that division is utterly gone today. We all will be working together to defeat the NDP now.

I have attended countless Wildrose gatherings over the last ten years. Last summer I attended my very first Progressive Conservative function when I went to the PC leadership gathering. Last Sunday I went to the UCP leadership race and was thrilled to see all the political movers and shakers from both parties all in one spot. It was not a tense gathering. It was not a forced marriage. We are all pumped and excited about being on the same team. The NDP has given us cause to unite in a way that no conservative leader ever could.

Think of the resources duplicated and wasted in the last few general elections as the Wildrose and PC parties battled with all they had. Strategists, campaign managers, donors and thousands of volunteers at every level all divided and working against each other. While a tiny minority of those have chosen not to join the UCP, clearly the vast majority have stayed on.

Now imagine the campaign machine that is in the works here. All of these people, the experience and the funds united with a common cause and under the leadership of a masterful campaigner.

That is what has the NDP in a true panic. Its not just Jason Kenney’s leadership. Its the huge and dedicated organization of people now focused together on ridding Alberta of its accidental, socialist government.

Rachel Notley usually shows composure. In a tweet this morning though, she clearly lost control and her petty and belligerent tweet this morning showed the abject terror that has infected her.

Yes, the tired old fear and smear drum is being beaten and it will be in an ever more shrill way until the NDP are finally tossed soundly from the legislature of Alberta in a general election.

I guess we can’t exactly expect the NDP to campaign on their sound fiscal management or on the “social license” that they never managed to buy us with the wretched carbon tax. Fear & smear is all they have.

Thank’s to Dave Rodney stepping aside, we will get to see a micro-preview of the next campaign as a by-election will be held in Calgary Lougheed. I sort of feel sorry for the residents of that constituency as they are about to be barraged by what will be one of the largest single constituency campaign teams that the province has ever seen. Volunteers from the new UCP are chomping at the bit to work on a campaign together against the NDP and they will be coming out in the hundreds if not the thousands as the by-election is fought. No door will go without being knocked multiple times nor phones without multiple calls. Hopefully Notley calls the election before Christmas so voters can get an assured non-political break right after the campaign.

As I said in a posting yesterday, David Khan finds himself rather hooped here. He is a brand new party leader as well and he needs a seat. His hopes are slim to none in Lougheed but he will look terribly weak if he doesn’t contest it.

One possible out for Khan would be in Calgary Mountainview if David Swann steps aside. Swann has no plans to run again and leaving a year or so early won’t harm his ambitions much This would be a terrible gamble for the Alberta Liberals though as they very possibly could find themselves going from one seat in the legislature down to none if Khan can’t win in Mountainview.

If David Khan can’t win in Calgary Mountainview in a by-election though, I think it is safe to say that he can’t win anywhere. Mountainview is the closest thing that the Liberal Party has to a provincial stronghold in Alberta.

Personally, I think that Doug Schweitzer would be an ideal UCP candidate to run in Mountainview as well. What better place to send out a dynamic, young and moderate urban Calgarian UCP candidate? I am just spitballing here of course but I think it would be a great race and if he won he would be a great addition to caucus.

We are in for some exciting political times in the next few months no matter how you look at it. As a conservative I have never felt so optimistic as I am now with this new united movement. There is a mountain of work to be done before the next general election but with this giant and experienced group, I am confident that it will be well polished by the spring of 2019. Yes, Rachel has good reason to fear for her job.

The Alberta Party. New & refreshing? Nope. Same old crap.

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Well, on October 4th I predicted that Karen McPherson would be running across the floor to join the Alberta Party in a desperate gambit to save her political skin. 

I am surprised that she crossed so soon though. This makes Greg Clark look like a fool at best, or an outright liar at worst.

Greg Clark has been pitching for years that the Alberta Party is something fresh. He said that they won’t play like the old backroom boys did. Clark implied that they would grow organically rather than through opportunistic floor crossings.

Well it looks like Clark was feeding everybody a line.

Don’t just take my word for it though. Listen to Greg Clark in his own words.

The video is only a minute long and he gets right to the point.

Yes. According to Clark not so long ago, crossings would only be proper if done with open and public consultations with constituents. The was to happen before a crossing happens rather than after. This is pretty clear as Greg Clark said that constituents should be able to say if they support the crossing or not. Rather pointless to ask after the fact isn’t it?

So yes, Greg Clark has determined that a backbencher who was happily sitting with a socialist party less than a month ago is such a perfect fit with his Alberta Party that he did a 100% flip/flop on his own promise and brought her in with no public consultation whatsoever.

I understand that Greg Clark was feeling insecure in going into the next legislative session with the smallest caucus in the house. While this does make Clark’s caucus twice the size of David Khan’s caucus, it is still tiny caucus. Was this caucus growth worth the cost of Clark’s credibility? Time will tell.

We can pretty much toss out all these cute little informational videos that Greg Clark made about the Alberta Party now. We know that he will toss those promises out in a heartbeat if opportunity presents itself.

Rather sad. He seemed like one of the more principled ones in the legislature.

By-election time.

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In a surprise move, Dave Rodney has stepped aside to allow Jason Kenney to run for a seat in Calgary Lougheed.

The question now is, will Notley give a full campaign against Kenney in the by-election and risk a crushing defeat that will be viewed as a bellwether for the next general election or will she go by the old tradition of not running a candidate against a new party leader? Either way it puts Notley in a very difficult position.

Calgary Lougheed is solid conservative country and the NDP only ever came close due to a vote split in the last election. That will not be happening this time around and Lougheed is in Kenney’s stomping ground of South Calgary. No long parachute here.

This also puts the Alberta Party in a tough spot. They need to show that they are a force outside of Calgary Elbow. Can they win a seat in an area with a low concentration of hipsters?

David Khan, the new leader of the Alberta Liberals is in need of a seat as well. He really has little excuse not to contest this seat and will look weak if he doesn’t. Khan will look weak if he is soundly beaten in a by-election a year before a potential general election too.

This is going to be a fun race and I look forward to volunteering on the campaign however I can.

In Kenney’s first day as leader of the United Conservative Party he has managed to put the leaders of every other party in the province on the run. I expect a trend as we see a man preparing a government in waiting rather than maintaining an opposition.

The worst of conspiracy theories.

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There are countless conspiracy theories out there with new ones springing up every day. The internet has provided a whole new platform where theorists can bounce poorly sourced anecdotes and links to oddball sites to help reinforce their perception of reality on a subject no matter how far from reality it may actually be.

In the real world, any conspiracy involving more than a handful of people won’t last more than a few months without general exposure to the truth. People simply aren’t all that good at keeping their mouths shut. That doesn’t stop those paranoid few who have managed to convince themselves of conspiracies that involve the complicit participation of thousands and even sometimes millions of people. Conspiracy theorists aren’t always crazy or stupid. These are just a class of folks who somehow feel compelled to set aside all rational evidence on a subject and have convinced themselves that things happen due to closed groups of people (or aliens) with nefarious intent. Usually if a person is into one conspiracy theory, one can find with a few questions that the person in question is into all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Most conspiracy theories are harmless and irritating at worst. Some are even offensive. No big deal. We don’t have the right not to be offended. I usually dismiss people pushing such theories as it is pointless to try and debate them with facts and their theories are not causing any real damage. Things change when we get into medical conspiracy theories though as many of those theories are outright dangerous and may drive some ill and vulnerable people into some very poor medical choices.

I was listening to the radio and the subject of vaccination came up. The usual horde of cranks popped out of the woodwork with their usual bullshit anti-vaccination pap. These folks have convinced themselves that polio and smallpox just vanished all on their own and the only reasons that vaccination is being promoted is to control minds or make money.

While anti-vaccination kooks are damaging enough, it is the anti-cancer care kooks that piss me off even more. Often these kooks are one and the same.

The main basis of the vapid anti-cancer care conspiracy theories is that the evil empire of “big pharma” has been purposely hiding cures for cancer as it is more lucrative to treat the disease than it would be to cure it. I know that facts are wasted on anybody who really believes such bullshit, but I do want to document exactly why this very dangerous conspiracy theory is bullshit as we see some very scared and vulnerable people who have been diagnosed with cancer falling for and clinging to the idiocy of these conspiracy theorists. This is what makes conspiracy theories in this realm dangerous and repugnant in the extreme.

OK. It seems that pretty much everybody can agree that “big pharma” is greedy and only in it for profit. I can live with that. The purpose of private enterprise is indeed to make a profit. There is utterly nothing wrong with that. That fact is also the first one that blows a giant whole in the bullshit theory that “big pharma” is suppressing cancer cures.

There are thousands of pharmaceutical/biotech companies in the world and they are all trying to make a profit. What better crown could any of these companies wear than that of being the one who came up with a cure for cancer (or even one type of cancer)? If a company, small or large came up with a cure for cancer you can rest assured that their share value would immediately rise by billions of dollars. The researchers would be immortalized with world prizes and pretty much everybody at a senior level at the company could relax and retire as a multi-millionaire. Are we really to believe that thousands of companies are all holding back in order to take part in this grand conspiracy? They are willing to make small profits or even go broke before releasing a cure for cancer? That’s what cancer conspiracy theorists want us to believe.

With thousands of companies we have millions of staff and people involved in the medical field involved with cancer treatment. Are we really to believe that these millions of people are willing to let their loved ones die in order to hide a cure for cancer? Are we to believe that these millions of people are so dedicated to the conspiracy that they will die themselves of cancer before letting the cure leak out? These heartless monsters are willing to watch millions of people endure the grueling conventional treatments for cancer and still will not break away from their conspiratorial group? That’s what cancer conspiracy theorists want us to believe.

Do you really think that the millions of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and such would be suddenly unemployed if cancer were to be miraculously cured? There are huge waiting lists around the entire world for every possible kind of medical specialist. We can all rest assured that all of those professionals will still be making good money and be quite busy if they were to be suddenly placed in a cancer free world. I doubt that these millions of people are hiding the cancer cure in order to keep their current jobs. That’s what cancer conspiracy theorists want us to believe though.

There are all kinds of cancers out there with all sorts of treatments. Some have a very high survival rate with relatively minor treatments. Some have a moderate cure rate with some pretty intrusive treatments. Some have a tiny cure rate and involve horrific treatments and some at this time are simply incurable. This is why upon diagnosis of any kind of cancer that it is so damn important to ignore the cancer conspiracy cranks and find out as much as possible from true, medically trained (not bullshit naturalists) doctors who specialize in cancer before making what literally could be the most important decisions of your life.

My mother was diagnosed with a type breast cancer a few years ago. It took a radical mastectomy and chemotherapy to treat her cancer. Quite an ordeal. I am happy to report that my mother is alive and well today after having undergone treatment and am confident that she would be dead had she refused it. Not all breast cancers can be beaten but we were fortunate in that hers could.

My cousin Shawn was diagnosed with an oral cancer caused by HPV a few years ago. He fought it with all he had. Shawn underwent multiple surgeries, chemotherapy and some horrific radiation treatment that put him through agony. For a short time, it appeared that the cancer had been beaten. Unfortunately, it had metastasized and returned with a vengeance which killed him before he could reach 50.

If he could turn the clock back would Shawn have chosen to undergo those agonizing treatments only to die a couple years later? I suspect that he would have as Shawn indeed lived for and deeply loved his young family. He would fight for every possible minute to stay with them and that is exactly what he did. What a terribly difficult sort of decision to make though. These sorts of decisions happen with cancer patients every day and we can’t let these choices be clouded with bullshit conspiracy theories.

There are countless, shitbag, parasitic fake cancer treatment centers all over the world. Mexico has turned into something of a hub for these heartless pricks. I personally have known a few people now who turned to Mexican clinics for cancer treatment. The mortality rate in my anecdotal experience with those places has been 100% so far.

These ghoulish criminals prey on people when they are at their most desperate and cancer conspiracy theories are one of the most effective tools in their toolbox.

Many cancer treatment prognosis are pretty awful to behold. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be told that you will endure agony caused by radiation and chemotherapy only to have a 20% chance to live for example. Perhaps some people will choose to take the shortened life and eschew the treatment. Perhaps some will take that chance and hope to be in the 20%. I can’t think of a decision more personal or important to somebody. I can’t think of something more sick though than having that decision mired by false promises from some crooks with an “alternative” therapy who will not only kill the patient, but will empty their bank account while they are at it.

I don’t blame people for trying the alternative options especially if the diagnosis from medical doctors has been terminal. It is a desperate choice that I so far have been fortunate enough to not have to try and make. Who knows, maybe if I was diagnose with a terminal cancer I would still fall for a pitch from one of these “alternative” treatment pushers. I despise seeing crooks push false hope with those faith/herbal bullshit treatments though. These cancer victims are suffering enough already.

Some people will say “well if it’s terminal, what is to be lost in going to these alternative clinics?”. Not to be crass but what can and would be lost is money. Tens of thousands or possibly even hundreds of thousands of dollars can be spent on these witch doctors. While money may not be the most important thing on the planet, it still will be damned important to the family left behind and I would rather see cancer victims leave their money to their children than some repugnant con-artist selling a fake cure.

Go ahead. Talk about how the moon landing was fake. Rant on about how the Illuminati are controlling the planet. Hell, deny the holocaust for all I care. It’s all bullshit but you have every right to believe it. Don’t try to feed me those medical conspiracy theories and keep them the hell away from people who need to make very real and serious medical choices however. You will be causing real damage then and your theory will have gone from a crackpot notion to an assault on an innocent person’s well being. Just keep that crazy shit to yourself and let people make their decisions.

Don’t bother flooding my comment section with links to medical conspiracy shit either. I am pretty open with differing views in the commentary but will not give any time or space to that crap so there is no sense wasting your time and mine.

I’m voting for Jason Kenney

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While always leaning towards supporting Jason Kenney for leader of the United Conservative Party race, I honestly came into this whole thing as undecided. I was open to seeing who else was going to enter the race and what they were going to offer. There has been a vigorous race with a good selection of views among the candidates.

I watched multiple debates and attended the Red Deer one in person. I have read the releases from the candidates (seems like one hits my inbox every 20 minutes or so) and have  watched how they campaign on social media and on the road. I have concluded that Jason Kenney is indeed the best person to lead the United Conservative Party into the next general election in Alberta.

The most important thing to me in choosing a leader is their general ideology. One can’t select a leader based on policy specifics or they will find that eventually they can’t support anybody. There are countless issues and political responses out there. One has to choose the person who appears to best represent them when responding to issues. Kenney has consistently held conservative values and represented them while in office. While I am not totally with him socially, his respect for grassroots policy generation and action makes me comfortable in supporting him.

Some have tried to be critical of Kenney in that he won’t put out a specific policy platform. How could Kenney support grassroots policies while dictating them in the leadership? Were Kenney to document a specific set of policies right now and some policies later conflicted with what the members selected at an AGM, we would see confusion and division being sown by the usual suspects. When asked directly whether through his constant live Facebook appearances, many townhall meetings or in interviews, Kenney has never hesitated to give his own view on specific issues. He wisely won’t bind the party to those views as he respects the membership. The only way somebody could claim that they don’t know where Kenney stands on issues is if they never made an effort to listen to him.

Ralph Klein was the right man at the right time in Alberta. Unfortunately his work was eventually undone as political complacency replaced responsibility during good economic times. One of the wisest things Klein put out there was how he would find out which way the parade was going and would get in front of it. That is what Kenney is doing now.

A trait of Klein’s that Kenney demonstrates in spades is the refusal to cower, back down and apologize whenever the hysterical left has demanded so. People were literally kicking the doors of the legislature while Klein did his great cuts. Pundits and unions went off the deep end in demanding that he back down. They said Klein was committing political suicide. Klein ignored them and won an even bigger majority in his second election. The left has fabricated a scandal a week involving Kenney and are constantly making demands that he apologize on social media. Kenney is brilliantly ignoring them and not letting himself get dragged down into their mire. That takes strength as so many counsel capitulation to the frenzied left. There is little point in addressing them and none in apologizing to them.

Kenney has been bluntly up front when questioned. In a radio interview a little while ago, a prospective supporter called in and asked Kenney how homeowners could be subsidized for home upgrades. Kenney bluntly said that they won’t because we are broke. This seems like a minor incident but when one considers that 99% of political aspirants would have given a long-winded, mealy mouthed reply in hopes of being everything to everybody, the lack of hesitation shown by Kenney in saying no was refreshing and significant. I want straight answers, not ass kissing.

Some knock Kenney as being a career politician. Yes, it is nice to see people from all sorts of career backgrounds contributing in politics. In a large caucus we get get all those voices. We are looking for a political leader, should we not want somebody with a solid base of political experience? To claim that Kenney shouldn’t lead because he is a career politician is akin to disqualifying a surgeon from head surgical position because they had spent too many years in the operating room on the way up. Political leadership is one of the most complicated trades on the planet and there is no degree program for it. Experience is an asset and Kenney has decades of it.

Kenney’s experience is an asset in that the left can’t play their usual “hidden agenda” card. With decades in Ottawa and in holding multiple senior cabinet positions in government, it is rather difficult to claim that Kenney has been holding on to some hidden insane political agenda all this time and has been waiting to release it once he is finally on the Premier’s chair. Kenney has an excellent knack for planning ahead politically but I don’t think he held back while in Ottawa in anticipation of a provincial role. If Kenney had some loony, extreme agenda it would have come out while he was in Ottawa and he would have lost his seat over a decade ago.

Kenney’s experience will aid in governing as well. The painful intricacies of a large bureaucracy need careful management. While we need to cut and to cut deeply, we need to do it with precision rather than with a chainsaw. Kenney has a solid grounding in experience to know where things can be cut and where they can’t without doing more damage than good.

With so much time in office and in so many positions of responsibility, we can be confident that Kenney can handle the pressures of the job. Albertans dodged a hell of a bullet when Danielle Smith cracked and took what she thought to be an easy out from a tough job offered by Jim Prentice. If Smith couldn’t withstand the pressures of leading the opposition, imagine how she would have done as Premier.

Aside from political ideology, a person has to ask themselves who is best placed to win the next election. Since announcing his intent to lead the PC Party and negotiate a merger Kenney has proven himself and incredibly effective leader. With relentless work and in ignoring detractors, Kenney won the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in a landslide. Kenney then led us to a merger with 95% member support. Kenney is now very well placed to win the UCP leadership and upon gaining that will be our best person to win the role of Premier.

Lets make no bones about it. Last weekend’s municipal election in Calgary was a battle of the right vs. left and the left won. While it is clear that there is a huge appetite among the electorate to get rid of left wing leaders such as Naheed Nenshi, it is also clear that they electorate won’t elect just anybody to get rid of them. Voters want to vote against Notley, but they also want to ensure that they are voting for somebody as well. We can’t take anything for granted and polls have yet again proven themselves to be about as effective as a magic 8 ball. A strong and careful campaign has to be run or we can be assured of another 4 years of devastating socialist government in Alberta.

Brian Jean seems to be a decent enough fellow. He indeed stepped up to the plate when the party was in need and took on an unenviable role despite his having some terribly challenging family events. He has for the most part done an adequate job in leading. There are three things that together make me rule him out for the leadership of the UCP.

In the next election we will be running on a campaign of austerity. That is always a tough thing to sell to people and the only way to do so is to lead by example. I am invoking Klein again here. One of the first things Klein did as Premier was to cut the salaries of all MLAs including himself. While that is a drop in the budgetary bucket, it gave him credibility when he asked others to cut their own budgets. It made people believe that Klein could indeed get things done in Edmonton. Under Brian Jean’s leadership, the relatively small caucus budget was grossly mismanaged leading to what will be a terribly underfunded opposition party going into the next legislative session. By most accounts it appears that the money was pissed away on staffers whose role was not so much to work for the party but to aid in Jean’s leadership bid. Jean has never managed to give a credible explanation otherwise. How could we trust that management if and when he gets into the Premier’s chair?

Another issue I have has been Jean’s lackluster support of unity. Jean was opposed to unity until it became clear that it was unavoidable. He then became supportive. Pragmatism is a good thing and politicians are allowed to change their mind. Jean however has been claiming that he had always been a proponent of unity and I don’t care for being fed bullshit. Just admit that the political winds changed and you changed along with it. That I can respect. Don’t try to spin me though.

Brian Jean has already had a kick at the cat in a general election and we saw how he performed. Jean was in a tough spot and did an OK job but not nearly good enough. I just don’t want to take the chance again on letting him represent conservatives in what will be such an important election. I just don’t see how he will manage to galvanize the electorate in the way we will need to.

In the last general election, I managed the campaign of one of the Wildrose candidates. It was a tough go and we were having a terrible time trying to get a feel where things were going. There was a huge appetite for change at the doors that led to a giant undecided factor in the early part of the campaign. Danielle Smith and Jim Prentice’s gross political manipulations had revolted the electorate and they desperately wanted a new option. People held on for the debate in order to make up their minds and let’s be blunt, Brian Jean was nothing less than a catastrophe on the stage.

In hopes of reinvigorating our volunteers, I had rented a projection TV, bought beer and pizza and invited everybody to take a break and watch the debate live at campaign headquarters. My horror grew as Brian Jean blandly repeated his promise not to repeat taxes over and over again with a vapid facial expression that really did make one imagine that a string was being pulled in and out of his back in order to make him speak. Ian Robinson with the Sun called Jean’s performance in the debate “ghastly” and I can’t think of a better word to describe it. You don’t hear that word too often but in this case it was perfect.

Our volunteers left the debate night more dejected than ever. In the next week at the doors it became clear that our worst nightmare was coming to pass. In being repulsed by Prentice’s arrogance and weirded out by Jean’s robotic performance the undecided voters went with Notley who at least had shown some positive energy. The rest is history.

Jean has become somewhat more animated since that debate but his style still hardly sets the world on fire. I do not want to take the chance and give this man another chance in a debate against Notley. There is simply too much to lose.

Jason Kenney isn’t perfect but he is far and away the best candidate to lead the United Conservative Party into the next general election. He has the experience, the self-control, the work ethic and the common sense that we need in order to take Alberta back. I look forward to seeing Jason winning the UCP leadership at the end of the month.

On the UCP leadership race. There is no easy way to do it.

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I am annoyed. I am a longtime member of the founding party and was a member of the PCs before the merger. Despite this, my registration to vote was rejected for some reason and now I have to contact the party to try and resolve this before I can vote. I was annoyed at snapping a pic of my drivers license and jumping through the hoops in order to attempt to register in the first place.

Despite my annoyance, I understand that there simply won’t be an easy way to go through this process if we want it to be fair and legitimate.

There are two big factors in a leadership race that members at large often don’t take the time to think about and those are cost and security. Its dry stuff. Having served on a leadership committee before, I know where the issues are and why the process has likely evolved into this annoying setup.

I am going to start with security.

Leadership races can be passionate and messy affairs. Some campaigns stick within the rules and some try to stretch or even break rules when they think they can get away with it. Some supporters act to stretch rules on their own thus causing embarrassment to one team or another and sometimes conspiracy theorists fabricate breaches in the rules during and after leadership race.

The most important and toughest things to do are to verify that each voter is legitimately qualified to vote, that they are who their application says they are and that they actually purchased their membership on their own.

In a past leadership race I served on the committee for, one of the teams literally sold memberships to dead people. They had bought bulk memberships using a veteran’s organization members list and submitted these to the party. I guess they figured that they could convert these veterans to their candidate later. Needless to say, some infuriated widows called the party office demanding to know why memberships had shown up in the mail for husbands who had passed away years before. Its sad but this kind of crap happens and it takes levels of security to ensure that it is kept in check.

I was on the Wildrose Party Executive committee prior to the 2012 election as well and dealt with the nomination battles. In one of our Northeast Calgary communities, the battle was rather hard fought. There were 4 candidates for the nomination. Three were of identifiable ethnic minorities and one was not. Thousands of memberships were submitted in a matter of weeks. Upon examination, it turned out that thousands of these memberships were duplicated among all three of the minority candidates. Whether we like to admit it or not, some cultures are more inclined to play some rather rough politics than others.

This put us into a terribly sticky situation as a party. What optics could look worse than disqualifying three non-white candidates in favor of a white one? We spent weeks with some people literally going door to door and confirming memberships. It was proven without doubt that all three of the candidates in question had sold memberships over and over to the same people and without their knowledge or consent. Some still cried racism when we punted them but they had little to stand on as we had made a solid case on who had broken the rules.

The more security in the system one has in races, the better the chance that the situations like those above could be avoided. That said, every level of security comes with a degree of inconvenience and cost.

Now on to cost.

We are in an unprecedented situation. The United Conservative Party is starting from scratch. The bank account began at zero. Those who have worked with parties during leadership races know that getting volunteers and donors to the party during these times can be damn near impossible as leadership candidates are all working the hell out of the feet and wallets of every possible party supporter already. That is why entrance fees were high. The bills have to be paid somehow and managing one of these races is expensive.

The most secure way to do a race is still with ballot boxes in every constituency in the province where volunteers or paid people can check the identification of every member as they come in to vote. The Progressive Conservative Party used to do races that way and it worked fairly well. The PC party of that time had literally millions of dollars that they could dedicate to this most expensive means of running a race as well. The UCP simply doesn’t have those resources. Gathering and counting all of those paper ballots securely was expensive and time consuming as well.

Another means is with mail in ballots. We did that with the Wildrose Party race that elected Danielle Smith. There were a number of security measures along with uniquely numbered ballots and multiple sealed envelopes. While is was possible that a person could fake a membership or two, to come up with the thousands of unique mailing addresses in order to get the ballots made rigging pretty much impossible. This method too was very expensive and time consuming. Cases and cases of sealed ballots were kept in secure storage and a long counting process ensued.

Now on to electronic voting as the UCP is using. It comes at a cost but I imagine that it is much cheaper than the prior two methods I listed (as least I sure hope so). Vote counting is nearly instantaneous which is nice as well. The huge challenge though as we are seeing is in the verification of the members. That is why the best that they could come up with was this registration method. though it is a bit of a pain in the arse.

Registrations still need to be confirmed by a real live person as well. That takes a lot of staff/volunteers and time. That is why there are cut off dates set. The party simply can’t cut things too close to voting day or there could be some real issues if processing isn’t complete in time.

Are there better ways? Perhaps. Maybe even probably. As it stands now though, this is what we have and it simply will have to do.

Every leadership candidate and their team agreed to the rules and the system when it was set up. It is rather disingenuous if any candidates are claiming that these timelines and regulations caught them off guard. They know the deadlines and the requirements. It was incumbent upon them to prepare their campaigns based on these things and if they couldn’t get prepared in time, it is nobodies fault but their own.

I will still grumble at all these steps. I will likely have some suggestions to avoid this sort of thing whenever the next leadership race comes along. Until then though, I will simply accept the system and do what I have to do to cast my ballot.

This race will very likely be choosing our next Premier of Alberta. There is no easy way to conduct such an important vote while ensuring security. While this system has some bugs, it will serve its purpose just fine in the end.