Here's the newest evidence that Ralph Klein has lost touch. Today, in the session of the house, he was smacking around a page.
For those not in the know, a page is one of those teenagers who carries notes and stuff between the MLAs during the sitting of the house.
The big issue of the current sitting of the house is Klein's "Third Way" of healthcare, which is a two-tiered, privatized system. As it was being debated in the house, Klein said that if the Liberals had a better idea they shoud send it over. So, Liberal leader Kevin Taft sent a copy of the Liberal Healthcare Policy Manual over to Klein. When the page presented the book to Klein, Klein threw it back at the page and said something along the lines of "Don't give me this crap!"
Klein did apologize to the page, and explained his outburst as "frustration over healthcare."
To me, this is just classic Klein. Klein is the kind of politician who does not like to be questioned. He often dismissed the opposition parties with "No one elected you...to run the government." Alberta has the shortest sittings of Parliment in Canada. (On average, a session lasts for about two weeks.) And, when Klein came to power, he passed all kinds of "emergency powers" that allows him to spend public money without debate in the house.
This guy has got to go.
Here's the original article.
So, we're in the fifth and most likely final season of Justice League Unlimited. You can tell the writers believe this to be the final season. Gone are the well-thought-out plotlines and well-developed characters. Replacing it is, "Let's do all the cool stuff we always wanted to do with these characters!" Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Tonight's episode was a prime example. It was called Flash and Substance. Central City is honouring its favourite son, the Flash, with a "Flash Appreciation Day." The grand finale of which is the opening of the Flash Museum. Naturally, four of the Flash's nastiest villains - Captain Boomerang, Captain Cold, the Mirror Master, and the Trickster - decide to destroy the festivities. So, Batman and Orion decide to show up and give the Flash a hand.
Of course, the biggest and most obscure geek in-joke in this episode was casting Mark Hamill as the Trickster. Ol' Luke Skywalker actually played the Trickster on the short-lived live-action Flash TV show. And I tell ya, the Trickster was the funniest character on the show. Mark Hamill is definitly a comedic talent waiting to be fully tapped.
But, it was truly a great episode. Catch it if you can!
Oh! And my latest library book came today. It's a graphic novel I've been dying to read. Green Arrow: Quiver by Kevin Smith.
You know I love the works of Kevin Smith. And, comic book geek that he is, he's now written a few comics. Way back in 1999, after he got some serious comic book street cred for writing Daredevil: Guardian Devil, he marched into the offices of DC Comics and said, "PLEASE let me write my favourite superhero...Green Arrow!" Smith, of course, wanted to resurrect the original Green Arrow - Oliver Queen - who, at that point, had been dead in the DC universe for about 5 years or so.
The end result was a storyline called Quiver, in which Oliver is found roaming the streets of his hometown Star City, and he doesn't remember the past 10 years of his life before his death. So, he eventually teams up with Batman, and they set out to learn how and why he's back from the dead.
Now, this book got a lot of grief because it is very immeresed in DC continuity. You've got to be a real fan to understand a lot of it. Lots of minor heroes and DC characters help fill in the gaps. Hell, even Neil Gaiman's Sandman pops up.
In essence, it was written by a geek for a geek. And that makes it really groovy.
Oh, and Smith actually wrote two Green Arrow storylines. The second one was called Sounds of Violence, and focused on Oliver Queen reconciling with Connor Hawke. Hawke is Queen's long-lost son who, up until this point in the comics, had been acting as the new Green Arrow.
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