[Thanos]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Thanos Thanos:

I'm not sure what's worse. The reality that I am literally losing everything. Or that I'm being accused of arrogance and hypocrisy by proud Liberals, and that they're laughing at me as my entire life is being destroyed.

I'm sorry to hear that old buddy. Things'll pick up. They always do.

Not this time. Too many torpedoes right into the waterline to recover from with this round. All of the incremental progress I made in my career over the last twenty years has been destroyed in the space of a couple of months. The reality of this one is that I'm probably leaving the middle class altogether and won't ever be able to re-enter it.

God needs losers. That's why It made so many of us.

[BRAH]

Oil Rig workers who went on a spending spree buying the big house, big truck and the toys to go with it are obviously suffering while the ones who were smart with their money are probably going to be okay.

[Gunnair]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

martin14 martin14:

LINO

It's a Conservative Party. Gunny won't agree, but that's the reality.

BC politics is almost as bad as Italy.

I said almost.

Yeah, I don't know how they came up wirth the name Liberal, but they are not philosophically similar to the Liberal Party of Canada. They tend to be social liberals, fiscal conservatives.

As for BC politics, there's no shortage of farce, but I do have to say that we've progressed from the bad old days of Willie Woodenshoes, Joe Clark and (facepalm) Moe Sihota.

There are some similarities - both achieved surpluses by pushing costs down to lower levels of government.

[Gunnair]

martin14 martin14:

LINO

It's a Conservative Party. Gunny won't agree, but that's the reality.

BC politics is almost as bad as Italy.

I said almost.

They are a liberal party that is rather fiscally conservative. Oh, and socially conservative...and they dislike unions, pay lip service to the environment...

Wait a minute, they're conservative!

[martin14]

[JaredMilne]

bootlegga bootlegga:

How did I prove your point?

I'm an Albertan myself and one who loves it and wants the best for it - and doesn't feel that the right-wing parties in this province fit the bill any longer. I'm not someone from Ontario or the Maritimes or B.C. or wherever you believe the 'Alberta-haters' live.

If I'm not allowed to criticize the province I live in, then who the hell is?

The fact is Alberta is verging on Einstein's definition of crazy - we've elected right-wing governments for more than 70 years in a row and somehow the Henrys & Marthas of this province are surprised when they screw things up like the planning for the boom/bust cycle that has been part and parcel of this province almost from the get go.

And if you're going to quote me, at least do it correctly - that mishmash of quotes is a haphazard cut and paste that isn't close to accurate. My Made-in-Alberta arrogance comment was in reference to Thanos' comparison of Alberta Liberals as being exactly the same as McGunity/Wynne (even though a Liberal government has run this province in over 90 years), not because he voted for the Wildrose.

What I meant to say, and was undercut by my sloppy quoting, was that you proved half of my point, namely the one where there's a lot of valid criticism to be made of how we've managed our resource revenues. And as an Albertan, you have every damn right to criticize the way things have gone-and other Albertans like Brent Rathgeber, Peter Lougheed and I all agree with you.

Thanos touched on the other half of my point, where we're often made to feel like we're somehow selfish, narrow-minded or un-Canadian for our electoral choices, even when we only support them because we consider the alternatives worse. Granted, that might apply more to our supporting Stephen Harper than our supporting the Tories, but it's still valid. But even if one leaves aside any comparisons to the Wynne Liberals, the Rae NDP or whoever, have the alternative leaders been all that impressive as politicians? I don't know if you've ever heard David Swann speak, but the man makes Ben Stein sound like Tony Robbins-and Raj Sherman strikes me as one of those politicians who would make a far better Cabinet minister who gets elected and concentrates on what he's good at while the party leader fights in the political trenches. As for the NDP, Brian Mason sounds like he was a pretty nice guy, by all accounts, but he couldn't seem to sell the party outside Edmonton-and if you asked anyone who Raj Pannu was, nine times out of ten you'd probably get a blank stare.

Peter Lougheed struck a brilliant balance between economic development and also appealing to the common bonds we share, but for the most part few Alberta leaders have been able to live up to that legacy. How is it that Lougheed could not only be lionized by the political right and the business community, but also by progressive sources like the Tyee, which praised his "radical legacy"? Of all the more recent Alberta leaders I can think of, only Lawrence Decore really seemed to come close, and he probably would have won the 1993 election if Ralph Klein hadn't stepped in to save the PCs' bacon at the last minute.

Even so, I've come across examples of how the likes of Ralph Klein and the likes of the Wildrose taking actions that one would consider more progressive. Even if they, especially the Wildrose, didn't intend to act on these words, the fact that they found political value in saying them in the first place is telling. Nor did these steps hurt Klein, especially. The Byfields bitched and complained about the gay marriage issue, but the rest of us just shrugged and went on with our lives.

And again-my apologies for my sloppy quoting.