cannuck

So, please tell us what superpower would be better?

Do we have climate change? Duh, we've had it for several billion years. Is there an anthropomorphic contribution? Are there people living here? I will stand aside and observe as to the magnitude of our contribution and the ability of any change in our behaviour to make any significant difference in outcome. I won't last long enough to conclude the climatic observation (nor will my great grandchildren), but I WILL likely see the evolution of "scientific" thinking on the topic. I regard the current business of climate change work as pop-science. It is occupied by those rushing in to cash in on the $$$$ to fund their version of belief, so the numbers can be dramatically skewed. Yes, most science has an agenda - and very few scientist have the level of discipline to be truly objective. This fad reminds me so much of the decades long campaign by "scientists" to denigrate animal fat or the similar long standing scientific attack on dietary cholesterol. Studies were done, papers were published and peer reviewed, textbooks were written, the science was taught. It was pure BS. Trump? He is only here for a short while, so what he has to say may have a short term consequence, but in the long run, we will have to see how well the "science" involved in many of these controversial causes will hold up.

Eyeball: I have to agree, I should have listed the gateways in order as nicotine, alcohol and THC. You are absolutely correct in that it is acceptance of one little step that takes a user and society a little further over the edge, then another, and finally too far down the slippery slope to climb back up. I think we are there now.

I think you may be confusing the ideology of socialist revolutions with the reality of the reasons why. The business of government in any system or country is to dispense privilege. That is diametrically opposite of what a genuine Marxist economy would ideologically be. In fact, if you remove privilege, it really doesn't matter WHAT system you install, it has a very good chance to succeed and be sustainable. What is unique about most of the socialist proponents, is that they see the even distribution of misery to the population a mere side-effect of granting them the huge privilege of gaining access to the resources of the country - to their own benefit. Russia, Nigeria, China - you name it, this is the status quo of dictatorships and pseudo-elected socialist governments. Kings and Czars have known this for centuries, and these guys and gals are just learning a lesson from history. Maduro learned from Chavez (all understudies to the current champion Uncle Vlad) to reward your minions well for carrying out your orders and putting in place the infrastructure to make you a VERY wealthy individual. Where these two goons failed was in leaving in place enough of the hated capitalist businesses to feed the people who they are robbing blind.

That is a very good analogy. Problem is: what to DO about it. Personally, I am very comfortable when I get off of the plane in Riyadh and I see the sign warning the penalty for dealing drugs is death. I would love to see that here, but we are such a spineless society, we have no backbone to do what is right. With a government that is going headlong into legalizing yet another gateway drug (alcohol being the first) it would seem laughable to suggest that better "education" is somehow going to stop addicts from shooting up with fentanyl. We have become so accepting of massively over-prescribed meds, OTC meds and recreational intoxicants, how do you then tell a mind fried on booze, bennies and benefits that these miracles of modern chemistry are great up to the limits of the ski zone, but fatal one toke over the line? I would like to say we should just let them kill themselves if that is what they choose to do (and make no mistake, that is in fact THEIR choice for whatever reason), but how would you (or I) feel if it was OUR kid sticking that needle into their arm? Wish I had an answer instead of just another frustrated question.

Proud of you guys and gals. Overpopulation is indeed our #1 problem. 700% increase in the last century. As to rewarding reproductive irresponsibility: I have a simple solution - same one for the Human society as the Humane society - you want to be a ward of same, a little spay and neuter clinic is your contribution.

because Roy Romanow was asked to help write it.

It is a lot worse then Maduro buying time and hoping something works out to keep Chavez's Bolivarian republic dream alive. The outgoing band of thieves are busy looting what little remains of Venezuela's liquid (both figurative and literal) assets directly into their own back pockets. Bolivars are supposedly worth the published exchange price, but in the real world, they are nearly worthless - and anyone holding them will do ANYTHING to dump them before the final and full collapse that is inevitable. PDVSA invested a large fortune upgrading the Puerto la Cruz refinery, that is now up in full operation, but the products are simply being stolen by the Generals and bureaucrats loyal to Maduro. Sadly, there is a cadre of people genuinely concerned for the future of Venezuela trying very hard to restore order to their #1 business (crude mostly, but some refined) who are routinely thwarted by the "bad guys". Doing business there is extremely difficult right now.

1) that pretty much defines what IS the rule of law - even if that law doesn't fit OUR idea of morality, sovereign states are just that, sovereign states and have the right to do whatever the government in power wishes to do. In the case of Venezuela, though, Maduro is operation what as I understand it is OUTSIDE of the rule of Venezuelan law - but has the courts all of the way to supreme level do his bidding, no doubt due to the benefits conferred upon justices. 2) I think we are both on the same page as far as the function and value of corporate structure in North America in general.

I have my own opinions of the whole matter of IP, but let me just say if the situation you identified was the case, yes, it is perfectly fine IMHO to violate that privilege granted by law - as long as it is done under the rule of law. I can tell you about the Canadian situation, but not the US one (in spite of being director of a few US companies). Here, environmental law easily pierces the corporate veil, and directors can be held liable for environmental damage, as I posted. You are right, though, once dividends are paid to shareholders, that money is "gone" from the company's balance sheet.

there are a lot of questions/issue here, so let's try to deal with them one at a time. Personally, I abhor the idea of government simply stealing the assets of an individual or company outside of through legitimate taxation, but that is the view of someone who lives in a democratic society that respect such concepts. But, Venezuela today is NOT that kind of state, but a "Bolivarian republic" - which is to say a Marxist style of socialism. Within that frame of reference, all assets should belong to the state, so it is open season on all property. Just so happens, that Chavez used the USA as the ultimate foil for his megalomaniacal rampage. The "cure for cancer" analogy is completely out of context. Sick care is (or SHOULD be) a social service, not a business. This is what defines the very difference between the USA and the rest of the G7. While in the rest of world it would be perfectly acceptable to intervene, it would not fly in the USA. It would meet some resistance in Canada, but IMHO would be done. BUT: GM cars are hardly a social service, There is simply no way outside of a genuine Marxist country that you can justify such a thing as "for the public good". This marks another milestone in the loss of rule of any kind of law in Venezuela. Personal morality DOES scale up - in a genuinely democratic society. Well, in most anyhow. Venezuela long ago ceased to be such a state. I think you fail to realize what a "corporation" is and what "limited liability" in that sense means. A corporation is a "virtual person" and is indeed completely responsible for everything it, and its employees have done. The limits of the virtual person's liability is the assets of the company, not its shareholders. Directors are a different thing, and while not liable for commercial things, are indeed generally personally liable for environmental, legal, criminal and payroll obligations of the corporation they direct. If you are thinking of the the term LLC, that is far more of a tax construction than anything else. It allows a company to behave differently, more like a partnership or owner-operator, but in no way limits the company's liability for its actions. It does set up a veil over the assets of the shareholders, as does any other corporation.

The only reason that the literal center of the world's financial malfeasance...er BUSINESS - is that ONLY one central bank in the entire world belongs lock stock and barrel to its private member banks. From that position, it is so cheap and easy to buy each and ever successive administration for a pitance. Thus, the laws and regs to allow the unbelievable greed, avarice and recklessness disregard for ANYONE else on the plant to have their way with the world are written by and for those very same people who own both the central bank and the administration. Only in America, as they say. And, NO, I don't think things are all that much better with banking in this country.

That guy is simply spouting the same line of absolute BS that banksters have perfected. "Now we come to the big and nonobvious number: the excess profit that the Federal Reserve has made from the bailout, and given to Treasury. The Fed has added trillions of dollars of securities to its balance sheet as part of its various programs to put cash into the world financial system and hold down interest rates to help the economy. The Fed did this by creating money out of thin air and using it to buy interest-bearing securities. That interest is pure profit to the Fed — and the Fed, by law, turns over its surplus profit to Treasury." This money that the Fed "created out of thin air" is ultimately a liability to the taxpayer. Not only that, but it is a massive pent-up inflationary force. Expanding the money supply without changing the real value of the underlying assets is exactly what Casino Capitalism is all about. While this is all going on, the banksters get to line their pockets with the ill-gotten gains of money not earned by creating wealth, but skimmed off of the "money from nothing" that THEIR central bank conjured up. What was needed was for the institutions/businesses that screwed the whole world over with their games was to go TU - as would any other business. Yes, the world's economy would suffer a terrible correction, but the sooner it does that, the sooner it can get back on track to funding Main Street instead of Wall Street.

In my youth, I took a year off of school to become a banker (close to home for family reasons). As a management trainee, I was shoved along at quite a pace, but remember oh so well being clearly told how to sell debt to farm clients. This was in a period of high inflation. Past the level of authority I had at the counter, we were instructed to hustle the sucker...er CUSTOMER...into a meeting with our ag reps. Decades later, I did a lot of work with a group who investigated illegal farm foreclosures, that both the banks and courts were all too willing to execute. I also traveled with a committee of MLAs on a "farm debt tour". Turns out, when we sent them into the ag guys, they were convincing many to incorporate, thus avoiding the whole property coming under the "Homesteader's Act" (sic?) that would have protected some properties from foreclosure. Instead, the landowner got protected for the home quarter and the bank walked away with the land - just as they had planned decades earlier. That, and the games played such as "can't finance that used piece of equipment, but we CAN write a new one (unsaid, or sometimes openly suggested - from the dealer down the road we finance). I could literally write a book on the games that were played, so this is no surprise at all to me. Banks are NOT the same as any other business. They exist and enjoy the ability to do what they do with our money based on their charter and a web of legislation and regulation that grants them certain privileges that are available to no other business. The lessons about how treacherous the world of finance could be was forgotten in the years since 1929, What SHOULD have happened in 2008/9 is that banking should have been cleaned up by realizing that over the years, they have managed to boondoggle the politicians and idiotic bureaucrats into letting them do more and more things that are a blatant conflict of interest. The Yanks REALLY screwed up by rewarding them for their treachery with literally TRILLIONS, ultimately at the expense of the taxpayer (too long a story for here). We didn't miss by that much, banks here are now able to sell insurance, be investment banks and depository institution. Just like the US. Worse yet, they have literally transformed our economy from being based on productivity and creation of wealth to nothing more than redistributing wealth by speculative shell games. THey have betrayed our trust in the most egregious of ways.

Thank you. Coming from where it is, I consider that a compliment.

based on your posts, I'm calling BS on that one.

That is a very good and appropriate question. With the idiotic idea of simply bringing everyone who will likely vote Liberal into the country, the foreign services simply don't vet very well. They are also swamped with the very unrealistic quantities they must process. Even if they did, it is not much different from how some applicants learn the rules of how to get a job or get into an institution of higher learning - you simply lie. Many Asian cultures, for instance, place very little value on what to us is absolute "truthfulness" as the end to them justifies any means. I have business interests in India, and can tell you that the "truth" there is only a pipe dream. China (for different reasons - i.e. theirs is a contextual language) can be even worse. For example: many grad schools simply trash most applications from China since literally every one has perfect scores, perfect references, perfect EVERYTHING - simply because they know that would be preferred - thus those institutions miss out on the genuinely very high quality of the applicants they passed on out of hand. What may help to understand the situation is that our foreign services (and pretty much the entire domestic bureaucracy of Canada) is there to seek out and direct business opportunities to Quebec, not to be bothered with keeping jihadists and drug dealers out.

Let me take a wild guess: you haven't really spent any time there, have you? You certainly have no understanding of their culture. I didn't say it was impossible, I just said "good luck". Japanese are about the most discriminating racists on the planet, but there are several other countries that try the best to catch up.

They are not just "homogenous" they are very much a closed society. You can live there, but good luck on your grandchildren every becoming citizens.

But, that is EXACTLY what every politically correct, globalist Liberal wants to do - CHANGE this country. It happens to be that the majority really IS of Judeo-Christian CULTURE, if not religion. That culture may be loosely based on those religions, but in most of the country, religion is really no longer relevant to daily life. Bending every rule under the sun to accommodate those who DO adhere to religious dogma really does destroy out culture as it stands.

I don't think I am the only Canadian who believes in the rule of law within a democratic institution. I don't really consider myself part of any particular religious identity or culture, nor am I all that fussy about defining myself by race (although what my ancestry is remains a fact). My only concern is that Canadians have a choice in defining what they want Canada to look like and BE like - and that at this point in time is very much dependent upon immigration policy. I can see you actually DID spend time in Japan, as only one with first hand experience would appreciate that the most offensive thing there is to Japanese is an individual (which is why one of my personal heroes is Soichiro Honda). Unlike you, and most Westerners, I am completely at home and ease within MENA, particularly KSA. I can fit in very well there, but the last thing I would EVER expect to do or have them recognize is changing their culture to accomodate mine. So why would I want to change my country to suit them???

I don't live in WWII Germany under the National Socialist Party, and I have no interest in ANY religious BS of any sort.

Who in their right mind? The majority, that is who. I don't remember in my entire life of taking part in ANY "genocide" (I should add: my children are eligible for status but outrightly reject anything as racist as accepting it). Morality has nothing to do with it, plurality does.

I would like to introduce you to a novel concept: democracy. If the majority of Canadians want this to remain a Judeo-Christian, predominantly white county, than that IS very much OUR choice to make. What puzzles me is why it is not alright for us to wish to maintain our cultural identity, whereas virtually EVERY other country is fiercely protective of theirs. Worse than that, we are the "racists" when we won't bend over and take it up the hoop to accommodate foreign cultures and religions within OUR country. Go and spend some time in Saudi Arabia or Japan, THEN come back here and tell me what you think racism is and what is or is not acceptable behaviour here.