cannuck

Uh...it was never IN the window from day 1.

My greatest fear is that you may be right on all counts.

oops, pushed the wrong button. At least I didn't lie about it. Guess I can't get a Liberal membership.

The problem is people who do not expect and are not expected to take responsibility for the decisions they make.

I could cut some of the classic artsy subjects a bit of slack IF once again actual academic requirements to get in were strong and graduation was based on actual academic achievement at a high level. I can NOT however, endorse any sort of the really flakey stuff under any terms at a University. Do that kind of crap in the private sector, and if lifestyle studies, etc. are all that important to someone, let them pony up the cash to do so.

because booze is the drug of choice for society in general, it gets a big pass in courts. A-G has been around the military long enough to know it is the drug that is used to promote esprit-de-corps. When you see a parking lot full of cars behind/beside EVERY bar in Canada every Friday and Saturday night, how can "law enforcement" possibly just sit by knowing a significant number of those vehicles are going to be driven by drunks that very night - and they do little or nothing? Why? Because their off-duty members may well be inside too. Drugs are indeed a HUGE problem in Canada, but the idea that booze is somehow not part of that problem is ludicrous. I don't care if someone is on the first, second, third or murderous drunk drive: get caught (and let's see a real effort TO doing the catching) and you are a pedestrian for life. Get caught driving after that and off to jail...for a long time. Kill someone driving drunk and it is federal time, none of this namby-pamby "high school of crime" provincial holiday, but find out what a murderer's life SHOULD be like. BTW: I think the number needs to be closer to 0.2% than 0.8.

Sorry to take so long to reply, getting in a panic to get things done around farm and shop before we lose this summer/fall weather. I object to paying for basket weaving courses, and I don't appreciate paying for someone who is there just to pass tests and get a degree. I will gladly pay for someone to actually learn useful subject matter, and understand the subject at hand - and believe they have no business being graduated until demonstrating mastery of the subject matter and concepts. I REALLY object to paying for the exceedingly politicized part of today's Universities. Outside of policsci, there should be no place within any educational institute with public funding for politics of any kind.

Navarro's ignorance is only offensive to conservatives, so actually a big boost to what is in power now. BTW: I actually DO appreciate our resident Can/US troll for bringing up and out a lot of good points and a different perspective.

At the risk of feeding our resident Can/US troll: It is far worse than you could ever imagine. Liberals (and this is regretfully a "Liberal/liberal" country by and large) were already soft on defense when Paul Hellyer (Minister of National Defense under Pearson) issued his White Paper in 1964 that wiped out the three independent branches of the military in a move to reduce costs by "unification". Now, bear in mind this guy believes in UFOs and alien invaders, crossed the floor to sit for a while as a "Conservative" (where his views were considered "too right wing"!!!!!) and back to the LPC, but I have a feeling his hate of the military came from being denied as an RCAF pilot candidate (when he already had a degree in aeronautical engineering, experience and was a private pilot) during WWII. Fruitcakes don't age well in an environment of rejection. When the Big Tur...uh...I mean TRUdeau came to power as PM in 1968, policy switched from just anti-military to firmly anti-NATO. But, what do you expect from an idealistic rich kid educated at the Sorbonne while tightly clutching his Communist Party card while (in words from the DnD investigator doing his background checks) on "walking trips through Eastern Europe". As you might imagine, no American President could be all that thrilled to have this kind of crap going on along the longest undefended border in the world right in the middle of the Cold War. I was a civilian employee (and reservist) at the start of all of this on a base where I had spent my teenage years. It was clear to see the "social engineering" intents of PET to change the military into some kind of "peace corps" with all of the minorities balance (and in particular Quebec content) that could support efforts to entrench the Liberal government for decades to come - which is what happened. Today, we have next to NOTHING in the line of defense preparedness, mobilization plans (that need to extend far beyond any current military structure) or much of anything else. What the military knows and Canadians care so little about is that Liberals and liberalism HATES military anything with an idealistic fervour beyond belief. The counterside is that a "Conservative" in Canada is not very conservative at all (note recent leadership race results for reference) but is the only hope at all for military survival, never mind adequate equipment and resources.

1. I can see some marginal increment of this being valid, but when you have especially tech stocks trading at many, many times book value, the argument becomes nonsensical that such values have any relationship whatsoever to economic or accounting reality. I am biting my tongue over bringing something REALLY ridiculous in such as Tesla, but I think you can get my drift. 2. Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. First, we need to recognize what my definition of "investment" would be: i.e. the placement of capital into an entity for the purposes of adding value and creating wealth. There are only two ways you can create wealth in an economy: #1: add value to a resource and #2: deliver a service ins support of #1. Anything else you do is merely re-distributing wealth, not creating it. Once an IPO, PO or private placement is in place, the capital flow around the equity is no longer directed towards the actual company, but used merely to speculate on the value of said equity. The Street has learned how to make not billions, but TRILLION$$$ by manipulating greed of its clients to play speculative games (i.e. casino capitalism - that is distinctly NOT capitalistic in my definition of investment. What it is is an inflationary force, since all of the increase in money has to be facilitated by increasing the money supply. In that vein, a country is somewhat like a country and has both a real and imagined finite value, and increasing the amount of money supply simply divides the value by the amount issued. For most countries, that inflation is relatively real time, but in one very special case, the private member banks OWN the central bank of the largest economy in the world, and can dictate monetary and fiscal policy with abandon - mostly for their own benefit. Bank/finance doubles money supply to cover 100% increase in digits due to speculative gain, central bank increased money supply to twice index, result would be drop in value of said currency relative to all others...except that every other country in the world holds trade accounts, debt and equity instruments, etc. all denominated in the currency of the hegemon. Thus that currency starts to slide and every OTHER central bank on the planet has to rush in and prop it up - or get their value diminished proportionally. Sweet deal if you can control and benefit from it - which would require owning and controlling the central bank and controlling monetary and fiscal policy...which they do. The end result is that you drive "investment" money out of investing in the wealth creating component of the economy and into the speculative, wealth re-distribution component (i.e. the Casino). That corrupts how and why IPOs are placed, no longer to fund productive increase in a company's book, but for players to cash in on the bloated value of a Street promoted play. Watch Bumble: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dating-app-bumble-preparing-6-005525985.html to see what I mean. The $6-8 Bn "valuation" is all about the hedge funds, etc. cashing in on the speculative activity as clearly there is no need to fund a company that is already fully developed (and I assume profitable). Not sure of its book value, but I doubt there is real $Bn anywhere in genuine equity. All of that is what pulls money out of real investment. Derivatives are yet another thing, but look at things such as book vs. market for anything that the Street hypes. Microsoft being a good example. Well over 10x https://www.zacks.com/stock/chart/MSFT/fundamental/price-book-value#:~:text=About Price to Book Value,much a company is worth. and almost 15x = 1,500 %. You need to consider that real wealth created and paid out as dividends as what SHOULD define value, but is down in the 10% range. Pales by comparison with the 1,500 % of riding the speculative gain of a "winner". Sorry for the rambling quick post, but have to get back to doing some more capitalist pig stuff.

That's making quite a jump in assuming her degrees are "useless". She didn't get them for vocational reasons, but because she wanted to learn. Her grad studies/theses established some key reference points and understanding of the applied science side of that discipline that are the foundation of much more to come in a useful and environmentally important way for many industries. Her last degree was in education since she wanted to enhance her teaching skills while raising her own children. She will probably return to academia later in life as there is a lot more she can and will accomplish that will no doubt be quite useful and beneficial to many. She passed on the many commercial offers while she was there before since she did not want a career to take her away from her research and her family. Not only do I fully appreciate the public funding of her extensive education (and the much larger commercial sponsorship of her research) but I hope you can appreciate the financial sacrifices she and her family have made in pursuit of work that will benefit many others - but not likely her bank account. Meanwhile, she is now probably the most over-qualified and underpaid pre-school teacher to be found. She feels her teaching today will be far more beneficial to society than tolerating a room full of bio-chem students who have no other interest than passing the next test or exam. What I hope you can take away from this is that our secondary and post secondary education system is badly damaged and no longer a place of learning where learning is valued. It has instead become something else - much of it due to the politics being dragged into the equation overpowering the academic standards that once existed.

Yes, price speculation in equities trading is an extremely bad thing. Once the IPO is placed the equity has nothing to do with the company other than be the landing place for dividends. When you see market values 10x, 100x even 1,000x book value, you are seeing capital that is NOT available to be invested on Main Street or the next IPO. A good company could pay a 5% dividend from actual profits, and a great one maybe 10%. The promise from the casino capitalists of making 1,000% or more drives capital into the casino and out of the market for actual investment. You MIGHT choose not to invest in that way, but when you have every hawker in every brokerage sucking you into equities, there is next to zero effort in putting money into productive use from POs or private placements in actual business. All of the speculative gain (mostly on a free ride on the taxpayer's back) increases the money supply - that is a massive pent up inflationary pressure that will crash the Greenback if and when it looses hegemony. That wealth re-distribution results in a disproportionate increase in tax burden on the middle class and much of the 1%. Yes, insider trading may well be illegal, but it is what almost all of the large deals on the Street involve in some way. The Secretary of Treasury of the last many US administrations have been Goldman Suck alumni. The only master the administration has is the Street. Bailouts of those "too big to fail" were engineered directly by Hank Paulsen - former CEO of Goldman. There is even a docu-drama about it entitled: "Too Big to Fail". You are right: bailouts are not part of capitalist ideology, but they are very much the work of casino capitalists - who are nothing but wealth re-distribution.

2. Would love to have the time to collect data and citations, but unless someone is paying my bill that isn't going to happen. 3. Some do, but from what I understand many have great difficulty getting what they consider adequate and/or appropriate placements. One of our kids did vetmed, so had no trouble doing exactly what she trained to do. The other has four different degrees, and has never had to apply for a job (always sought out) until now that she is way overqualified for just about anything and works far below the kinds of offers she got from the science community. She was a campus counselor for many years, so heard a lot of the employment frustration from a broad spectrum.

The ONLY benefit to the economy from equities is an IPO or a PO. The vast majority of what Wall/Bay Street does is merely speculating (and driving speculation) on trading equities that have by that point in the cycle NOTHING to do with the company (except, of course, in the compensation package of execs who then proceed to rob real investors of their equity position). Every inflation of the market value over book value removes investment capital from Main Street or another PO. It is what has destroyed our economy and built massive inflationary forces into our currencies (particularly the Greenback). Allocation of capital by cronyism is no different from central planning. The greed involved is no different from some tin pot dictator's version of corruption. You are taking money OUT of productive hands and putting into hands of those who have manipulated the law/system/markets by the privilege of access to do so for their personal benefit. Don't even get me started on synthetic instruments - they are 100x worse than mere equity speculation. You represent yourself as an intelligent, thinking person. Try taking a careful look at what is actually going on around you and realize we have done a 1929 - but managed to avoid the aply earned correction by the power of the Street to manipulate government into bailing out their greed, corruption and excesses. "too big to fail" just means the fall will be far more damaging when it inevitably comes.

That is testimony that the rest of the country has little to no regard for our post-secondary academic institutions. They have politicized themselves into obscurity, but we as idiot taxpayers get sucked into funding the massive social engineering project of the left. Answer: cut off funding for this kind of BS and require actual academic merit to become a student. A BA and often BSc is no longer much of a value in the workplace, but should not be dismissed as of value to broaden one's horizons - but why do you expect me to fund that??? Perfect example of fiddling while Rome burns.

During SIL's Afgan workup, no trips to US (for that reason, but others). My Father spent probably 30-40% of his military career either in the US or training Canadians in Europe to use US weapons systems. Our military has always been as integrated as our economies, and as it should be.

I was referring to "work up" training, not battlefield support. SIL was the liason officer between Canforce and US, and I can agree that US air support was good for effectiveness when they weren't killing Canadians. I can't print the words I have for Canadian governments regarding benefits and support for returned veterans.

I will have to ask him how much "support" was from US sources (I strongly suspect very, very little). "Modern" is you choice of words to try to spin this, I made no such suggestion. What seemed to be very different is how quickly Canadian workup training evolved whereas it seemed that the much larger and far more rigid US forces lagged behind in evolving effective tactics. Equipment, though, was a very different story. Even the so-called "Conservative" governments lagged far behind in what was required in equipment to keep our troops fully effective and safe.

Not quite true. One of my sons-in-law was cited for "leadership and conspicuous bravery under fire" in Afganistan. We don't give out Purple Hearts for vaccinations but we actually DO recognize significant military achievements. Through his rather expert eyes, I can tell you there is a huge difference between the quality and flexibility of Canadian training and tactics vs. the far more rigid and out-of-date US preparation of soldiers for that conflict. I can also say that most US veterans who had to interact with the Canadian forces there to aid and support our closest ally fully appreciate the dedication and personal sacrifice of Canadian forces deployed in that theater.

You should be able to appreciate that ideas are hardly the same thing as ideology - in spite of the etymology. I have a fair bit of experience with people who have entered academia to pursue academic excellence and expand the base of knowledge and end up running away from the extreme leftist political environment that destroys any academic ethics that might be trying to survive. This is hardly a new thing. My wife encountered ultra-racist academics over 40 years ago in a faculty of education where aboriginal students were given a pass on the academic requirements for both entry and graduation - ending up with the same qualifications as those who actually DID the work and legitimately passed the exams. An engineer who worked for me became a good friend, and his wife (a genuine maritime liberal) insisted that our views on that subject (after we had lived in the North for a decade) were very racist, so she enrolled in a class at our nearby university in aboriginal studies. She was (is) a "type A" personality/student and was stunned to see her marks come in middle of the pack when she knew fully well she had aced the course content while people who should never have been given a passing grade were granted top rank. She was a lot less liberal/Liberal after that experience and her prof went on to become an NDP cabinet minister. Fast forward a couple of decades and our eldest was teaching and in grad school (sciences at same institution) and was the ONLY fluently anglo (her second language) person in her group and required (by faculty supervisor) to review all papers published in her department as the English was so bad that it would reflect on the ratings of their faculty. In reality she found that not only was the English unacceptable, but the science wasn't all that good either. The political component of the failure of our academic, cultural and economic world is very significant and very real.

You win the cupie doll. Our biggest problem (worldwide) is that we give speculative gain a free ride on the taxpayers' backs so investment is driven into the casino capitalist world to be redistributed and inflated inequitably and out of the capitalist world where Main Street can create the wealth it takes to sustain the real economy..

CAN be very expensive, but not necessary to be silly if you choose the right kind and classes (or want to attract sponsors). Best bud does polo and make my hobbies seem very cheap (and relatively speaking they are).

You got it. The issue is not so much with taxation, but SPENDING. Ultimately, we (or more to the point our grandchildren) will have to pay it all, but what is terrifying is how complacent and ignorant Canadians are about the spending that happens. l always come back to the same solution: NO DEFICITS ALLOWED - you would have to tax the people during your term of government to pay for your largess.

Having spent a decade living in the North, and many more working in and out of there, you can not imagine just how accurate and common this is. I was once called to land for a medivac from way up North down to Winnipeg for a mother and child who I learned from discussing enroute were just going for a surprise to visit her husband. I could write a very large book on how deeply the first Trudeau changed life in the North with social engineering exploiting the aboriginal culture for votes. All at massive cost to taxpayers and individuals in business. Most Northern air services exist strictly on this basis. It is so large and pervasive, we used to refer to such things as the "Indian Industry". That was the learning ground for how to do the immigrant and minority stuff today. The right answer is not if such-and-such a government post should be filled by merit or privilege, but why the frick does that job exist at all in the first place. Eric Nielsen had those answers - and it cost his political career.

I have business in several countries and a farm of my own, plus farming with my friend. Our hobbies are all motorsport related - but we DO them, not watch other people doing so. My children and now my grandchildren take up 100% of my hobby time, as well as some of my business time.