This compliment may come out sounding a little more backhanded than intended, but the Alberta Legislature could have done a lot worse than choose someone like Gene Zwozdesky to wear the Speaker’s three-cornered hat, as its MLAs did yesterday.

This concludes the principal business of this otherwise silly six-day legislative session: naming a replacement for former speaker Ken Kowalski, who is no longer a member of the House and whose influence, rest assured Premier Alison Redford long ago concluded, needed to end forthwith.

Oh gosh, here we go again! When in doubt, blame those Eastern bastards!

Alberta may be the richest, biggest, loudest kid in Confederation, but at the first sign of opposition to anything we want to do, we turn whiny and defensive, noisily blaming everyone else for all our troubles.

We've seen plenty examples of this in the past couple of days -- ever since federal NDP Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair dared to connect the dots between the breakneck pace of Alberta's oilsands development and the deleterious impact the resulting strong petro-Loonie is having on Central Canada's manufacturing sector.

Few people would argue against making environmental review processes and regulations more efficient -- as long as they're effective. But changes announced in the recent federal budget don't do that. Instead, they make it easier for the federal government and industry to push through projects that could harm the environment and the economy, and limit the ability of ordinary Canadian citizens to have a say in matters of national importance.

If you have any doubts left there are only four more sleeps before the end of the Progressive Conservative Era in Alberta, look no further than the video and website called "I never thought I'd vote PC."

Whether or not the PCs under Alison Redford had anything to do with this vain effort to encourage hip, edgy young people to vote for the clapped out Conservative party in a last-ditch effort to prevent a Wildrose Apocalypse, there could be no surer sign of the imminent demise of the once mighty Tory dynasty.

The Big Guy has spoken. And he says: "Vote for Alison Redford."

I don't mean God. Bigger than God … and with a way better reputation around here. Look up! Look waaaaaaay up!

I'm talking about Peter Lougheed.

Peter Lougheed, the first Progressive Conservative premier of Alberta, who started it all 41 years ago, has entered the fray, coming down from Mount Olympus in Calgary this Friday the 13th to endorse the troubled candidacy of Alison Redford.

There's not much need for scare tactics by supporters of public medicare: Yesterday the Wildrose Party laid out a pretty clear plan for privatizing health care in Alberta.

Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith's news release touting the idea of a "wait-time guarantee" for medically necessary treatments and procedures is heavy on glittering promises ("Alberta families will have peace of mind") and short on technical details, but it boils down to a three-part plan for privatization:

1)    Starve the public system of funds.

2)    Pump public money into for-profit private health care corporations.

Yesterday's media wisdom: "Everybody's ready for Monday."

But is Alison Redford?

You can take that question any way you like.

First, if the Alberta provincial election call does indeed come later today -- as apparently every political observer in Alberta except this blogger is certain it will -- there’s an opinion out there that Premier Redford is far from ready to contest this election.

Can it be only four years ago that Ed Stelmach was loudly bemoaning the incivility of those notoriously unsuccessful anti-Tory attack ads, the ones that whispered how the premier of the day had "No Plan, No Plan"?

Alert readers will recall how the province's commentariat was unanimous in the view Albertans just wouldn't stand for that sort of thing.

Well, never mind the "Albertans for Change" campaign of 2008. That was then and this is now.

It was either the best of Throne Speeches or it was the worst of Throne Speeches. Heck, maybe it was both at the same time.

Yesterday being the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, maybe there's something powerfully symbolic in that assessment of the first Throne Speech by the Progressive Conservative government of Alison Redford.

Does the kind of man who would call immigrants to Alberta from Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada "bums" and "creeps" deserve the Order of Canada?

Surely one would think not! But anything can happen in the weird and wacky world of Canada's "honours system," so one supposes that, with a noisy campaign under way by the corporate media and various far-right bloviators, an Order of Canada for Ralph "Katastrophe" Klein is a virtual inevitability.