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Tuesday, November 04, 2008

is ed stelmach stealing sarah palin's talking points?

I kid you not, this is from an exchange between Liberal Leader Kevin Taft and PC Premier Ed Stelmach during Question Period at the Alberta Legislature on October 22, 2008:

Dr. Taft: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This government can’t control the price of oil, but it could have controlled the rampant increases in costs by simply managing growth. Will the Premier admit that by ignoring industry requests, requests from former Premier Lougheed, and just about everyone else to manage growth, this government has made a serious mistake?

Mr. Stelmach: Obviously, now we see the true colour of the Leader of the Opposition. He sure as heck isn’t a capitalist, talking about managing growth through the government. Sounds more like what they were doing in the former Soviet Russia.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

And if we've learned anything from Sarah Palin, it's that now is NO TIME TO EXPERIMENT WITH SOCIALISM.

Yep, that kind of winning message is going to carry McCain and Palin to the Whitehouse tonight. Oh, wait, fuck!

Anonymous said...

Peter Lougheed is a communist? There is absolutely no logic behind Stelmach's response, it's just ramblings.

Anonymous said...

My friends , ol' Steady Eddie is just a straight talkin' maverick-y hockey mom. Dontchyaknow?

Anonymous said...

Daveberta is a Socialist Marxist Elitist Extremist.

Anonymous said...

Is Ed Stelmach an ariel wolf hunter?

Anonymous said...

Wow - the content on this site just gets deeper and deeper ...

Anonymous said...

I wish I had as much free time as you do. To pick through reams of Hansard a quote to spin into an entire post.

I'm thinking Lougheed has a better opinion of Stelmach than he has of Taft. They certainly speak frequently.

Here's an idea for a post. Plot the attendance record of the Alberta Liberals this session. It won't take long... the highest you'll have to count daily is 9. From what I hear, about a third of Liberal MLAs are missing daily. Nice to know the Loyal Opposition is working for Albertans.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear about a floor-crossing before the end of session. If Swann wins the ALP leadership, count on it.

Anonymous said...

Wow. This one actually surprised me, quite frankly. Being a fiscal conservative and someone who had held out some hope for Stelmach, let me just say that this drops him a lot in my estimation.
The sheer audacity to label planned or restrained growth as Soviet Communism is something I expected from extreme Republicans, but not a reasonable guy like Stelmach.

I should probably point out at this juncture that the US does immense amounts of planning for growth, despite being conservative capitalists. We just fail.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, the content on this site is getting almost as shallow as Ed Stelmach's deep thoughts.

Ryan said...

Holy friggin' crap. Isn't it funny how this whacky stuff goes on behind closed doors rather than in public? Of the legislature! No one knows what happens behind the doors of the legislature!

daveberta said...

"I wish I had as much free time as you do. To pick through reams of Hansard"

I wish I had that much free time. Actually, most of the Stelmach QP quotes that are posted on this blog are sent to me by readers. This one was sent to me by a former PC supporter.

Anonymous said...

Anyone see what Greenspan said about capitalism last week...?

It doesn't work...

Anonymous said...

Sarah who? ;)

"No one knows what happens behind the doors of the legislature!"

As inferred already, the Hansard can be more a hindrance than a help in trying to figure out what's being said on the floor of the Legislature.

Do they even televise the goings-on in the Legislature, anymore? Used to be on Access Channel....

Anonymous said...

Stelmach is on Twitter. Seriously.

Alexander Soley said...

I watched the Alaskan 06 governor debates and she didn't sound like her 08 self at all. It probably helps that she gives a damn about Alaska.

So what's Stelmach doing? Didn't you call Alberta a post-democratic state or something- a dictatorship? Or did the Liberals actually find a winning strategy and he's actually scared?

If it's the latter: THANK GOD.

Dane said...

In Soviet Russia, blog post YOU!

Anonymous said...

For anyone actually paying attention, Taft raised a great point in the Herald today:

"I put in bills all the time on serious issues and nobody pays any attention," he says, "but I put on a cowboy hat and it's front page news."

Says quite a bit more about the state of the media than the rodeo motion.

Anonymous said...

He and Palin both learned the founding principle of "The Idiot's Guide To Staying Alive in Politiics: "If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance..."
P.S. Nice work, Dave, by the way, catching that exchange.