cannuck

No question in my mind: these kinds of laws are very much constraint on free speech. If someone's hate speech is causing actual harm from slander or resulting loss, it needs to be addressed by civil suit. Why am I such a hard-ass about this? As has been pointed out, much of our "soft side" law is based upon the culture of certain religion. Well, if you have a look at religion in any form, it sure is a bunch of fairy tales punctuated by some pretty serious rounds of hate (crusades, prosecution of jihad, etc.) I come down more like a Yankee Libertarian on speech. We don't make spewing that kind of BS illegal, in fact we expose our children to it constantly. ANYTHING to do with religion, culture, etc. has no place in criminal law. Political correctness has no place in a free society. Government dictating what we can and can not say, feel, write, etc. is equivalent to living in a theocracy.

By George, I have to agree once more with Monty - it IS the worst time to accept the CPC. The Liberals have screwed this place up so badly, the wimpy middle-of-the-road CPC won't repair a dent of the damage. We need a genuine conservative party to straighten the mess out and a leader with some balls.

I remember the nuke years very well, as my Father was lead instructor for the 1SSM (1st Surface-to-Surface Missile Battery). Spent years in the US and Europe to learn the weapons, integration within NATO and then teach others the game. I also remember very well WHY we de-nuked on our soil. People so easily forget, or CHOOSE to forget that we elected a Prime Minister who was a card carrying Communist Party membership card (if you ever wonder why I extend the "commie" epithet beyond the NDP to include the LPC). During his Sorbonne years he spent considerable time behind the Iron Curtain. Ever wonder why he was such a close personal friend to Fidel Castro? Yeah, just another "co-incidence" - MY ASS. Canada shifted very, VERY sharply to the left in his years IMHO to host the East's attack on their nuclear opponent just on the other side of our border. Turning the Canadian armed forces from a very capable and honourable defense and offensive tool into a social engineering project went a long way to accomplishing his goals (and hosting GreenPeace, etc.)

Putin's viscousness is well known by everyone in the oil business, everyone in politics, everyone in security and every diplomat out there. You are right, though - MILLIONS of Russians DO love him. It is Russian nature to favour the "strong man" and Putin is a pro at the politics of his country and people.

No, I think Obummer did not count the ones that are there, because they are hardly there legally and openly.

I think the logic is that it is enough of an impediment that attempts to cross will take long enough for CBP to intercept. Fact is: the border is there and it WILL be crossed. AND, it WILL be patrolled. Just how effective you can make detection for the patrol agents is what is at stake/in question.

I agree with you that a simple wall or fence is not the answer. In fact, when it comes to the Canada/US border, would be highly ineffective. We have so much water-to-water border, land would be a waste and air would still be wide open.

Sadly, yes. We are the longest undefended border in the world, and since OUR borders are now wide open - shit, we INVITE terrorists and pay them a $10mm (Cdn, though) reward for every Yank they murder - any handler worth his 72 virgins has figured that out years ago.

Whether you like him or not, or agree with the wall or not, reality is the days of open borders need to come to an end. THAT is what the Demo lefties don't seem to appreciate. While Trump has a rather crude way of interpreting, he is the ONLY President who seems to have appreciated the importance.

The point is you don't know that, you are just assuming. Were I a terrorist handler, it would be my responsibility to use EVERY opportunity to implant a cell.

those numbers could be off by 3 or 4 orders of magnitude, according to several other estimates. The whole thing about undocumented illegals is that they aren't likely to be calling up the census or immigration office to report their presence

I might point out that there was "no credible evidence" of terrorists coming into the US when they attacked the twin towers and the pentagon.

Putin did not get to be the de facto wealthiest person on this planet from his meager couple hundred bux a month KGB salary! ANY attempt at expressing political opposition to Putin, or ANY attempt to compete with "his" business (mostly Rosneft, but he reaches into virtually EVERY pocketbook in Russian business) will be met with persecution, prosecution, imprisonment or disappearance. He makes Joe Stalin look like a rank amateur in the business or dictatorship. There is/was some documentary(ies) about Uncle Vlad, and they are not even close to how severe he is. One of my business associates had been working at a very high level in the oil business there from early Garby to after Yeltsin. When Putin turned his attention to his client company, he packed up his entire office and staff and got them the hell out of Dodge literally overnight. He explained to me that it was out of real expectation of none of them living through the forthcoming "business takeover" by Putin's people (almost everything he does is through shadow companies theoretically owned by a handful of close friends). This was at the time that the bunch of new billionaire oligarchs started getting involved in politics, but all seem to end up in jail (usually for "tax evasion"), out of business or just plain gone. When the smoke cleared a few years later, there was only one gunman standing (pun very much intended).

Did just fine by what standard of measurement? How effective was air travel and space exploration 10,000 happy years ago? I see the fantastic job that we did of treating the plague due to the fantastic understanding and manufacture of medicine. You can go out and capture a new mate by clubbing her over the head and dragging her back to your cave, but I think I will be much happier luring her with my Beechcraft and taking her back to my manufactured home with all of the sad central heating, air, plumbing and lighting. It was the industrial revolution and working wages that took the vast majority of the people out of being enslaved to landowners and trapped in their situation. All started with watches and the sewing machine. We may not live in a perfect word (far from it, IMHO) but I think almost everyone can agree we live in a far better one than milleniae past. Sad part is: the liberal/Liberal ideas of political correctness, open borders, anti-technology, etc. are trying to drag us back there. Globalism destroying the wide distribution of enterprise will essentially be a return to tennant farmer/landLORD relation between those with the privilege to exploit and those without the means to be independent.

You need to lighten up - a lot.

Universal sick care, welfare, unemployment enjoyment - those are - or SHOULD be social services. Has nothing to do with capitalism per se. Lowering taxes only on the "wealthy"? Well, here is where I don't think you can understand what uses of capital and distribution of wealth really are. You can do many things with money, but the big split is are you going to use it to create wealth (IMHO, what defines "socially responsible capitalism" or are you going to use it strictly to redistribute wealth (which is what social services do). HERE is where it comes down: redistributing wealth should be used ONLY for social services, NOT for use of capital. Let me try to make it simple: you can only create wealth by doing two things - add value to a resource or deliver a service in support of adding value to resources. Doing so creates wealth that is required to run an economy and pay for social services (by redistributing some of that wealth through taxation). Best to think of this as the business of "Main Street" - you know, where you and I live. What we have in pretty much the whole world now is Casino Capitalism, not capitalism per se. The difference is that when money is used for speculative gain, no wealth is created, but vast quantities can be re-distributed. Essentially, what happens with 99% of the activities of Wall Street, Bay Street, LSE, Dax, etc. When you give a free ride on the tax system to speculative gain, and remove regulations that were written to prevent a repeat of 1929, this is what you get. The solution is indeed taxation. But, the issue is not to tax the success or reward the failure of the person, but to tax the ACTIVITY through which wealth is being redistributed. IMHO, there are numbers for that. For a speculative gain, I want to see 99% taxation on day one, 95% by year one, and reducing 5% per annum until the capital gain matches the nominal tax rate. In that way, money moves over to actual capitalistic use to create wealth, instead of feeding the greed and gouge world of speculation (which, BTW is the very basis of inflation). As far as RATE of taxation goes, you can bet your commie ass that I want to see flat tax. Why the hell would you penalize someone for success? What I would give you, though, as a genuine nod to "progressive" taxation is a significant basic personal exemption. BUT, once you cross the threshold into earnings, everyone should pay the same rate on their income - regardless of how much it is (remember, I/we have effectively removed speculative activity from the economy by taxing capital gains appropriately. BTW: where I really have fun with this discussion is opening it up when I am in MENA. Islam forbids interest, and when I ask why, it always comes back to taking a benefit without earning it. Pretty much anyone I engage in this discussion has a fair whack of speculative investment, and it is SO much fun to watch them squirm when I point out that a speculative gain is absolutely no different from interest.

I sort of agree with you, but please let me ask what you think "socially responsible capitalism" is? I have my own very rigid definition, but I suspect since it is based in reality, it will differ greatly from yours.

Just a few things to throw out here. First of all, as has been mentioned, we now have a Constitutional obligation to the aboriginal population. What is not so clear is what that amounts to. We should establish some kind of limits, as the bux are now getting totally ridiculous. Also, the whole business of being paid to simply sit around and reproduce means there are far, far more eligible today and will be tomorrow than the small number of aboriginals that were defined when the treaties were first written - by the British. Personally, I think they need to go see Queenie for their bux and get the hell out of my back pocket. Now, that being said: the money does NOT flow directly to those with a treaty number. Yes, the tiny value of stipend on treaty day does, but the vast majority of the money goes into what we have come to call the "Indian Industry" - an army of hangers-on in government and contractors to government who skim about 70% off the top before any net proceeds head towards the native community. And then, once again instead of being placed in the hands of those who we are constitutionally obliged to support, it goes to band and council. Chiefs and their councils tend to be, let's say a little bit SELECTIVE about where the money goes, and who has access. Head for a reserve (at least on the prairies) and have a look around. Yes, the housing is given to them and is in horrible repair - in many cases (not all). If you have a community with more than 90% unemployment, why the hell wouldn't someone realize that fixing those houses and getting paid by the band for doing so would both keep the homes and infrastructure in good nick and create genuinely useful employment for at least some of the unemployed residents. Doesn't happen and the idiots who take videos of run down housing to show on the evening news never seem to catch on that the stuff is screwed by the very people who are bitching about how bad they have it - when few ever lift a finger to do diddly squat to create, improve or even maintain what has already been given to them - often several times over. It is just not a simple black and white, right and wrong situation. There are a lot of variables but the solution of simply throwing money at the problem in exactly the same way as has already proven to fail every time is hardly the answer.

Canada does not raise money buy BUYING its own bonds, but by selling them. It can only retire them by servicing said debt to the bondholders. But, yes, we have a lot more credibility than Venezuela because our ridiculous socialist experiment gets tempered by genuine electoral reality, whereas the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela has gone unchecked due to military and corruption backed dictatorship masquerading as an elected government. Both are "backed" by massive resource wealth as you can see, it is the international marketplace that decides what is and is not the literal value placed upon same.

It goes WAY beyond "politics" and the "vague" assertion of the "Full Faith and Credit of the United States" is hardly vague at all, but quite real and tangible. However, the US is hardly doing whatever IT pleases re: money supply, but the Fed is doing so largely to the benefit of its private owners and to the detriment of those taxpayers who will ultimately be responsible for the fallout.

uh...no. When a the government and the Bank of Canada need money, they have to issue securities, bonds, debentures, Tbills, etc. into the marketplace to raise that money. The aggregate measures of the money supply are monitored by the Bank of Canada, but money supply changes based on activities of financial institutions. The bank influences (but not controls) these aggregates by its monitary policy = essentially setting the interest rate for loans to banks and thus also influencing the interbank rates. When you say: just print as much as they see fit, you are referring to currency, which IS an obligation to the nation and its taxpayers, but is only a very small part of the aggregate components of the money supply. If any central bank of any country (excepting the USA - a very special case) simply prints more currency the end result is that the real world financial markets simply discount the credibility of such an effort by devaluing the exchange rate of the currency based upon market expectations of the credibility of what is backing that currency. Best current example is Venezuela that tried doing exactly what you feel is possible. The result is a complete failure of their economy. The Maduro government tried to do some magic crypto-currency backed by their imaged standard (the "petro") pegged to some assumed value of a barrel of Venezuelan crude. Here is what happens when a government tries to simply "print as much money as they see fit": https://www.statista.com/statistics/371895/inflation-rate-in-venezuela/ There is the theoretical ability of a central bank to do what the hell it pleases, but in reality the marketplace for forex and settlements will determine the REAL value of said currency, so only a complete idiot (or the privately owned US Federal Reserve) would try to simply do what suits them with impunity. Only the de facto currency with hegemony can get away with that (i.e. the Fed) and even then only within some fairly narrow ranges of constraint.

It wasn't random. It started with the appointment of Paul Hellyer as MND (you know, the guy who pulls his tinfoil hat tight and writes conspiracy theory books) and his white paper. What do you expect when your enemy is USSR then you elect a card carrying Communist who spent his Sorbonne years with "walking trips in Eastern Europe". His mindless son is just carrying out his work.

Excuse me while I LMFAO. Trump is hardly a fan of the National Socialist Party! Your favourite whipping boy Adolph is YOUR fellow traveler, not The Donald's. You seem to have missed my point about infrastructure conditions: We simply don't have very much of it to be maintained, the Yanks do. That is not on any one political party, BTW. A "limited access" road means just what it says. You can't just drive onto it by crossing traffic. ALL interstates are limited access roads.

Finally, a post from you with which I can agree. Merry Christmas.

Well, Monty is a little bit right....sorry, I really meant to say a little bit correct as any thought of him being anywhere but on the left fringe of reality would be ludicrous. Yes, the US infrastructure has a lot more deficit for maintenance and upgrading than that in Canada. Reason? They HAVE a great deal of infrastructure that we do not. Take the interstate system as an example. We don't have even ONE limited access highway that crosses the county. Not hard to maintain what you don't have. The only road we DO have is not at all limited or even controlled access and is a 90kph single lane death trap for most of its length through the richest and most populous province of all. When I have an all-too-frequent brain fart and try to build something in Canada - I am immediately beset by transportation costs that instantly make the product uncompetitive with something I can build South of 49. We're not talking a few percent, but orders of magnitude greater transportation costs here vs. that crumbling infrastructure of the US. Monty's problem seems to be that he is only reading from the Liberal talking notes and has yet to venture out from his Mom's basement.