One outcome of the possibility that Poilievre finds success in a federal election, is that rhyming and nickname politics will become the norm. Among other things, a CPC government will be tiring and annoying.

I think we'll have to do some soul searching as a nation if the CPC gains any ground in this election. Like you, I struggle to understand how people don't see Poilievre as comically idiotic, both from a policy and rhetorical standpoint. He's such an insincere goof. Though I guess, maybe we've been conditioned to insincerity from Ottawa over the past decade.

Great, a provincial special interest party now holds the balance of power in the nation's Parliament. A crappy day for Canadian democracy.

Much as I dislike the BQ, it has to be said, Blanchet has cajones

"I am happily assuming that if and when the Bloc will bring down the Liberals, Mr. Legault will support the Bloc Québécois"

This isn't getting called out as the crisis that it really is. Imagine the narrative if any other single province had the influence that the BQ is right now exercising. News outlets would be spinning up the sirens.

You're right to point out the difficulty of preparing installation media.

Also, for the average person, friction will probably happen during installation - possibly having to circumvent safe boot to install and run a new OS (knowing how to enter the bios, feeling comfortable playing around in the bios, knowing how to even disable safe boot once you're there, not exposing your device to security vulnerabilities by having safe boot disabled), the need for an existing understanding of how partitions work and how the partitions are structured on your specific device in order to test the waters with a dual boot setup on a drive that has data/functionality you want to preserve. Needing to know the 'what' and 'why' of swap, /home, and /root partitions. These points all came up on a recent installation, and I'm sure they would scare some people off.

Installation will be easy if you have the time, motivation, existing knowledge and/or bandwidth for a learning curve. But not everybody has that.

And that's just installation, to say nothing of the actual use of the desktop environment, which is not as intuitive as its often claimed to be.

That's fair. Actually I don't think you're nit picking, you're pointing to something that gets to the heart of a critical issue with politics.

The AB NDP aren't far enough left for my taste, and I wish they would have made more meaningful investments and reforms to the education and healthcare systems to make those systems more robust, inclusive, and responsive to the people who use those systems. In not doing that to the degree that I think is fair, I believe they caused harm.

I'm not a policy wonk, and I know that only so much can be accomplished during a single term in office. And as we've seen in AB, much work can be undone by a new administration. But in Alberta, to still have private schools that receive public funding, household declarations allowing tax dollars to funnel into special, separate schools where religious dogma is part of the program of studies, and class sizes being what they are - all these things, according to my values and interests, cause measurable harm. Allowing monopolistic privatized telecom and insurance industries who collude to keep prices high, makes it harder for struggling families to eat and live. Going further, it's arguable that not having a provincial sales tax that directly funds hospitals to improve their ability to efficiently administer emergency care, leads to unnecessary suffering and death. Yet, I have to accept that other citizens with different values and interests than mine will have different, yet still rational and reasonable views about these points.

I don't mean to sound like I'm 'both sides'-ing. I'm just making a comment that political choices are complex. I don't think it's fair to look at 54% of the votes cast for the UCP, and use that as a justification to make sweeping statements about the mindsets of those voters. The petitioners in Barrhead are a good example of the fact that even in a hardcore conservative area, anti inclusive mentalities remain a minority view. I think it's troubling that there are 712 people in Barrhead willing to sign their name to a petition to eliminate pride crosswalks. But the fact that there are only 712 is honestly a relief, in the bigger picture. But the media takes a different angle. And then people say "fuck Alberta, that place is full of crazy people", when the evidence actually suggests that Albertan citizens might be more caring and inclusive than they get credit for. That's all I'm trying to say.

I think the less we write each other off, & the more we actually talk to each other in good faith about issues, values, and ways forward, the better we can be as a society. Political parties are designed to grind whatever axe they think will get or keep them elected. But, every citizen can and should be doing the hard work of honest discourse, regardless of their political stripe.

The town of Barrhead has a population of 4320 people. Only ~~10%~~ (correction, 16%) of the town petitioned for this as-yet-unpassed bylaw. Those individuals don't even represent the town of Barrhead, much less the entire province.

I don't mean this personally - I'm surprised that someone who is as vocal about proportional representation as you are would be insensitive to the demographic facts of this matter.

Poilievre is making a string of very strange political gambles. Doing the rhyming nickname thing, trying to look like a cool badass, going on a string of unusual, foolish-looking, public attacks against rivals.

If the Conservatives don't do as well as expected in the federal election, I wonder what's next for them, from a leadership, attitude, and policy standpoint.

This will be Gen Z's first real federal election to participate in. I'm very interested to see their impact. Convention is to assume that the young won't vote, but, life and livelihood for the youth in Canada has never been worse, at least in my lifetime.

This is not news to be calm about. A bipartisan intelligence committee has released a report that details exact and specific instances of MPs working wittingly to assist foreign state actors in meddling with the Canadian government. Freeland did not commit to expelling MPs who acted in this manner. This is a crisis.

"If there's any evidence that somebody knowingly worked with a foreign government to influence our democracy, they should no longer be a member of Parliament," Singh said.

Why is this impossible for the Liberals to say?

This is insanity. Any MP who is proven to have aided a foreign actor in interference operations needs to be removed from Parliament immediately, and prosecuted.

Not going to steal, but definitely will boycott for the month of May.

As a millennial with a not-amazing but decent paying job, the notion of retirement at all is laughable. What incentive do people like me have to save, when inflation and cost of living are on the trajectory that they're currently on? Putting money away at this point just means less money for groceries, rent, and enjoyable things. And in 5 years, that saved money will be worth less than it is today.

Man, fuck these UCP idiots.

Provincial governments need to work closely with the federal government. The provincial government actually has a responsibility to establish and nurture that relationship, and not simply throw temper tantrums when the relationship isn't what they want it to be. When the UCP chooses to be oppositional and obstructive like this, it hurts Alberta citizens, and makes life worse.

There are a lot of things I love about Alberta. But if the next provincial election shows that a majority of the citizens truly want a provincial government that behaves like this, I'm outta here.