Danielle Smith was elected to the leadership of the fledgling Wildrose Alliance party in Alberta last night as members flocked to an Edmonton hotel from across the province.  Oddly enough, the ballots cast in the leadership race were destroyed immediately after they were counted as Smith’s rival conceded defeat without any hesitation.  But leave it up to a bit of good googling about and you may be able to find the answer to how many votes Danielle Smith won by.

Yes, in a rush of excitement no doubt, the Executive Director of the WRAP, Jane Morgan posted the results yesterday on her blog at 4:57PM.

For posterity’s sake, here’s a screen shot of her post which you can click on if you wish to view the full sized image.

The post indicates that Smith won the leadership contest with an impressive 75% of the almost 8,300 ballots cast.

I’m not sure why the WRAP decided to keep the ballot count a secret but some one obviously didn’t get the message any how.  While I’m quite glad for Albertans that they now have a choice of electing Danielle Smith as their premier in a way, I really am made to wonder why they decided to try to keep the ballot numbers from the public.  The leader was strongly endorsed by the party obviously and the opponent didn’t seem to have any beef with the way the contest was run…so why the secrecy?

I have a lot of hope that Smith will stick to her libertarian principles in Alberta and see the province return to prosperity.  The economy could use a lot of diversification over there and that happens to be one of the many goals of Danielle Smith’s team from the sounds of it.

How is it that a meet and greet with the great Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report is currently being auctioned at only $425?  If I had the time to boot on down to New York, this would be a no-brainer.

Could this be true?  Could it be that the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) in the United States has successfully pressured FOX into edging out the pill popping side of Hugh Laurie’s character, Dr. Gregory House in the hit show House?  According to commenter Bruce at the TV Squad, yes indeed, it may very well be so.  In part, he says:

The DEA has been writing letters to Fox complaining about House’s “flagrant use and abuse of narcotics without consequence” for years now, and finally the network, writers, and producers all caved in to the government’s demands… in the worst possible way. They decided to make the vicodin House had been taking for over a decade into a sudden hallucinogen, causing him to see dead people. They showed him going through the painful detox, and now he’s just fine and dandy, no reference to his pain at all. And there won’t be any further reference to his pain, other than “it’s all manageable.”

Now, rewriting a character can be done and characters do change from time to time.  I don’t have a problem with facing changes, I just have a problem when they’re unreasonably forced on anyone.

It’s incredibly ironic that the DEA harps on the Vicodin addiction of Dr. House when there is flagrant use of sexual innuendo, coarse insults thrown back and forth between characters, blood spewing from various characters and of course, a bisexual and promiscuous prominent character.  Heaven’s to murgetroid, what ever will we do about this horrid show?!

The answer to the government being uncomfortable with House’s drug addiction seems to be to rewrite the character at the behest of government.  This is flatly ridiculous to me.  If a television show’s writers are going to reshape a character, they should be doing it for creative reasons and if society has a problem with an aspect of a show, they should tune out.  Caving to the demands of the Drug Enforcement Agency (not an arm of Hollywood so far as I understand it) is just a cowardly defiance of creative freedom.

I guess all I’m saying is that I really hope the DEA doesn’t destroy House because they’re all a bunch of stuck up squares with a god complex.

I went to see Inglourious Basterds a while ago and all I can say is that it was one of Tarentino’s best films to date.  Those that can’t appreciate the style of this director may not like the movie but anyone with an affinity for Pulp Fiction should understand where he’s coming from.  But the reason I’m not commenting further is because that’s it…it’s a great movie and I don’t feel compelled to say anything beyond that.  There are however three other movies (two I would call films) that have struck me in one way or another in a much more profound manner.

THE CAPITALISTS:

Michael Moore’s new exceptionally biased flash of idiocy to hit the screen, Capitalism: A Love Story is all about a capitalist who complains endlessly about capitalism.  Not only is Moore hypocritical in this movie, he also fails to own up to his hypocrisy.

That aside, he rails against corporate interests which have ruined his nation and does an incredible job of it too.  He outlines exactly what kind of corporate influence not only works on Washington today, but how it has managed to engineer financial calamity to its own benefit and continues to do so.  The movie lays out in a clear manner, how the little guy is screwed over by the big guy and government.

Moore also reveals a little known concept about “dead peasant” insurance that while not necessarily creating a victim, is pretty darned creepy.  I’ve known about this for some years and frankly, didn’t really care about it but even I have to admit that a company having a life insurance policy out on me without my knowledge is kinda creepy.

Where Moore falters is blaming corporate interests for the failures of government.  Even dead peasant policies wouldn’t exist had government not created a tax break ensuring their existence.  In his stinging indictment of corporate greed and capitalist enterprise, Moore fails to incite the population into taking their government back from the corporations it has been given away to.  In fact, without realizing it, Moore isn’t even railing against capitalism as much as he is very effectively indicting fascism in his own nation.  Moore fails to convey that all the evils he spells out could not have been achieved without the cooperation of government.

Finally, on a number of occasions, Moore appeals to figures from the Catholic Church to explain the sin of capitalism.  I’m not sure if Moore has looked at the Vatican recently, but it’s no Hebrew hovel, that’s for sure.

Moore continues to tell half truths and engage in disingenuous arguments to fatten his own wallet whilst engaging in an entertaining style of story telling.  It’s what I expected.

6/10

THE NAZIS:

I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of the 1942 Wannsee Conference reenacted in the 2001 movie, Conspiracy; but if you haven’t, it’s a very important historical event that set in motion, a series of events that would change the entire world forever.  These events, collectively, are often referred to as the holocaust.

In 1942, fifteen high ranking German officers and bureaucrats sat around a table and in unapologetic, plain spoken language, proceeded to work out the details of a plan to eliminate my ancestral roots from the face of the planet.  It was a meeting held in secret, but treated as simply another important order of business for those in attendance.

In this meeting, the attendees express dissatisfaction with field methods of killing Jews, laughed at how gas turned the bodies pink, went to great pains to determine how to segregate Germans with dominant Jewish blood and aspired to killing tens of thousands per day.

What struck me so incredibly about the movie was not the connection it has to my own background as an ethnic Jew, but rather the sheer humanity of it.  It’s easy to call those who attended the meeting monsters or to think of them as evil phantoms in history; but they were very simply flesh and blood human beings who did terrible things.

In this startling glimpse into the past, it becomes so terribly apparent that what can be done in the name of civility and progress, can so easily be twisted into regression and barbarism.

I could have done without the British accents.

9/10

THE QUEER FOLK:

Milk is an incredible film and I have to admit, I almost teared up at the end.

there are any number of stories out there about the gay struggle for equality and acceptance and one of the most fascinating among them is the story of Harvey Milk.  The employee of an Insurance company who becomes a hippie in his 40′s, he achieves the first election victory of any openly homosexual man in the United States ahead of a massive culture war led by Christian organizations seeking to snuff out homosexuals rights.

What’s incredible about the film is that there is no apology offered for the faults of Harvey Milk and seemingly not attempt to white wash his life.  As some one with a touch of political activism in my own way of life, it’s incredibly gratifying to see some one who is so normally and beautifully flawed to successfully fight such an incredible battle for so many who deserve to be treated as human beings.

From beginning to end, Milk expresses so much feeling and I can’t help but feel an incredible amount of empathy for homosexuals in our frighteningly recent history who were treated so terribly.  I hate seeing inequality and I despise government enforcing antiquated moralistic judgments on people who simply want to live their lives.  Harvey Milk seemed to have a distaste for the same thing and though he was a left wing liberal hippie, I think I would have enjoyed having a chance to meet such an incredible giant of history.

10/10