Giant Election Notes

• A woman who's not Harper's wife made up I (heart) Harper.ca, presumably to lure in female voters with the warm caring Harper. This is why I don't run for office: I would refuse to be "wussied up" in campaign ads. The most notable thing about this page? When relaxing and playing some pool, Harper still wears a suit. How weird is THAT?
  
• For the first half of the election, the Edmonton Journal has been trying to argue (mostly daily) that "Edmontonians should elect Ann McLellan to have 'our voice' in government" and "it would be a shame" to lose our valuable cabinet minister. Now that its looking like a 1/20 chance that the Liberals will even be government, the Journal has decided....Ann should be elected because its good to have one Liberal MP after all, or because we should have a role in the opposition benches. Why not just be all up front guys? Tell us Edmontonians that you want McLellan elected because you can't bear to live in a city swept by the Conservative machine.
  
• Keith Dannacker in Saturday's Journal was upset by Laurie Hawn's mailout saying "if you were a friend to the Liberals, this envelope would be full of cash" (ha ha). Keith argued that "I happen to have a sign on my lawn supporting Ann McLellan, so I must be a friend of the Liberals" and then got pissy that his envelope contained no cash: "Did somebody steal the money you promised me, Mr. Official Agent?" Not only is it funny watching a LIBERAL SUPPORTER complain to a Conservative about graft, but its a little odd nobody has yet written back to tell Keith he's just not a good enough Liberal friend.
  
• As an aside, last Saturday's Journal had an opinion piece by King's College prof John Heimstra. I can't find the hilariously paranormal article online, but its a summary of this PDF document
  
• "There are more than 800 same sex couples in Edmonton" sniffs another Edmonton Journal new article by Karen Kleiss. [803, perhaps? -ed] "Most of whom live in the core ridings of Edmonton-Strathcona, Edmonton East, and most of all in Edmonton Centre." The rest of the article moves on to predicting the poofters will take down Laurie Hawn, while never bothering to note...if people are "born gay" why do they live so predominantly in a couple of ridings?
  
• Its normally the stuff of chuckled at conspiracy theories. So when the NDP accused the Liberals of trying to rig the election, why did the Liberals have to dump their candidate? There must have been something to the allegations, n'est pas? Might this justify a wide-spread belief about immigrant intimidation fraud and NDP involvement in rigged elections?
  
• I had to miss Paul Martin's Edmonton rally due to work commitments. I could have joined the lone protester and maybe made a bit of a splash. At least the original plans got waylaid: the Pipefitters Union changed their mind and wouldn't let Paul speak at their hall. (ha! couldn't find a link to the change though)
  
• Kim over at WestMustSeparate has a brief rundown of the Conservative majority mumblings going on. The ending tag line, "if Paul Martin got elected I'd have to separate" nails it on the head exactly why I wanted a Martin victory. This mindset would sweep the west if Ontario again voted for the crooked bastards.
  
• I didn't know that Macleans.ca webloggers were allowed to war (the CBC Election blog had a problem with intra-blog rivalries, but if they are then Colby Cosh has delivered a TKO-potential suckerpunch to Maude Barlow. The last bit, the "Canadian Nationalist" opposed to Canadian soveignty is the best.
  
• I'm still scared of Jack Layton's non-corporeal moustache (click "Jack Talk" at right of the page
  
• Queen's University professor David Skillicorn has analyzed the speeches of the 3 main party leaders and found Paul Martin "spun" twice as often as Stephen Harper, with Layton in the middle. Skillicorn ran speeches through a program that "claims to root ot patterns of straying from the truth in speaking". The spin rundown can be found here. "Average spin per speech"? Liberals-124, NDP-88, Conservatives-73. (Too bad there wasn't still a Reform Party... do them and the Bloc and it would look a lot like a map of the House of Commons!)
  
• Jack Layton is predicting an NDP win in Edmonton Strathcona. Dear God, lets hope he's wrong. That's my riding, for Pete's sake. (He said it at Bonnie Doon Community Hall too, which I could hit with a baseball from home. Stupid work).
  
• Jaffer confirms that concern in today's Riding Profile of Strathcona in the Journal. Shit.