Hot - Charlottetown candidate Tom Deblois, for shaving off his beard. Party operatives tried to get him to do it for the last election, but he thought it disingenuous. Now all they need to do is shoot a new official photo: the current one has him looking, literally, like a deer caught in headlights.

Not - Conservative leader Stephen Harper, for his shallow explanations as to why his party refuses to allow the Green Party into the televised debates — “She is his candidate in Central Nova, and I think it would be fundamentally unfair to have two candidates who are essentially running on the same platform in the debate.”

Not - The consortium of Canadian television networks for agreeing to cave to the Harper Conservatives (and the Layton NDP, more passively) and hold the debates without the Green Party. The Green Party has met all reasonable conditions for participation in the debates: the networks should have held their ground. Extra demerit points for the CBC’s paucity of coverage on this issue: The National’s story on the issue last night included a 5 second video clip with a representative of the consortium and excerpts from a their printed release.

Hot - The Liberal Party for taking a risk that Canadians are intelligent enough to understand their carbon tax plan. And it’s a big risk, as Canadians may actually not be intelligent enough to understand their carbon tax plan.

Not - The Conservative Party for running crass television commercials that assume that Canadians are stupid and will easily fall prey to exagerated scare tactics about the Liberal carbon tax.

How do you say “no longer owned by Tim Banks” without actually saying so?

With a Canadian federal election called for October 14th, and US elections on November 4th, as a dual-national my autumn will be rich with democratic expression.

The US half of me votes in Monroe County, NY, which is the county where I last resided in the US (in 1966, no less). I’m in the 28th Congressional district, the 56th Senate district, the 133rd Assembly district, the 27th Legislative district and City Council Ward S. On my ballot I’ll be voting for:

• President
• Federal Congressional Representative
• State Senator
• Member of the State Assembly
• County Court Judge
• Family Court Judge
• County Clerk
• County Legislator

Federal Senators in the US are elected to 6-year terms, and neither of the current Senators, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, are up for re-election this fall.

My Canadian half, in the Charlottetown electoral district, will only have one choice to make, for Member of Parliament.

Peter Gzowski interviews John Candy on Morningside in 1991.

Catherine got the keys to her “new” studio space this afternoon — it’s “new” only in the sense that she hasn’t occupied it since 1995 when she last moved out. Before Catherine’s first term, it was Lester O’Donnell’s law office for a long, long time . There are signs of its heritage all over the place; the one I like best is the key to the washroom down the hall, hanging on a hook near the entrance:

Here are the results of Industry Canada’s Auction of Spectrum Licences for Advanced Wireless Services and Other Spectrum in the 2 GHz Range specific to Prince Edward Island:

• Bell Mobility Inc. - 20 MHz - $2,630,000
• Blue Canada Wireless Inc. - 10 MHz - $1,152,500
• Bragg Communications Inc. - 20 MHz - $3,040,000
• Bragg Communications Inc. - 10 MHz - $1,670,000
• Globalive Wireless LP - 10 MHz - $291,000
• Rogers Communications Inc. - 20 MHz - $2,550,000
• TELUS Communications Company - 10 MHz - $1,870,000

What was announced last week as a product called “lifeviNe” seems to have been renamed, this week, to NokiaviNe.

Catherine and I survived the television drought of summertime by re-watching The West Wing. Every night at 8:00 p.m., Canadian Learning Television aired a new episode, starting from the very beginning and running right up to the Leo dies on Election Day episode that aired last Friday.

The series stands the test of time, and I’ve enjoyed the symmetry with the actual U.S. election campaign.

Alas they cut the series off with only six episodes remaining starting yesterday, choosing to air Judging Amy instead. So we devoted viewers, who have watched enough “Proactiv Solution” commercials with Jennifer Love Hewitt to become convinced it must actually be a magical elixir, are left hanging, never to know who won the Santos-Vinick election, never to see Leo’s funeral.

You think they could have hung on an extra week and let the series finish…

I’ve made a small update to the m.thebus.ca mobile transit schedule this afternoon, adding the “next stop” times for each stop, for both outbound (↑) and inbound (↓) runs right on the first page.

Charlottetown Transit is dramatically increasing the frequency on its main University Avenue route today, September 2, 2008: on weekdays there’s a bus leaving the Confederation Centre of the Arts going uptown every 30 minutes from 6:45 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., with buses continuing every hour until 10:00 p.m.

With frequency like this, gone are the days of the “can I afford to kill 90 minutes at Indigo waiting for the bus?” decisions.

I’ve updated the Charlottetown Interactive Transit Map with the new schedule, and I’ve taken the opportunity to roll out web-based scheduled targeted at mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch and the Nokia Browser. Visit http://m.thebus.ca from your mobile device, and you’ll see something like this: