SpankyMcFarland

I'm a lot happier celebrating the heroes of 1812 who united to save Canada from oblivion.

It was certainly an event of firsts but the moral landscape was a lot foggier than WWII. We supported our team is about it really and that often has to be enough of a reason. You can't say Britain, France and Russia really looked out for the rights of small nations or treated the subjects of their Empires better than the Germans and Austrians did theirs. My grandfather was in the Inns of Court regiment but had the great good fortune to start training in October 1918.

This is a pitch I have not seen before: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/boring-gets-the-job-done-tory-candidate-andrew-saxton-releases-defiantly-pro-boring-youtube-video But there's something Canadian about it. Who would object to Saxton in the job?

How does this topic have anything to do with Canada or Justin Trudeau? Talk about thread derailment.

A bit of a storm in a teacup really. We know what he was trying to say and Mattis said it later: Hitler didn't use chemical weapons against military targets. The underlying problem is that Spicer lacks the verbal skills to manage this delicate job.

That's not true for globalization, automation or immigration. If a buck can be made, conservatives will support change. In the US, Republicans have played a double game on immigration, protesting about it publicly and facilitating it privately for their wealthy donors. Democrats have supported it for other reasons but at least they have been more consistent.

Canada's relationship with the US is fairly typical of a small (by population) country next to a larger one that speaks the same (or similar) language. You'll find the same anxiety of influence in Ireland, Belgium, Pakistan and New Zealand. BTW HP is originally British, not American, although it is now produced by Heinz in the Netherlands. I am an avid consumer. Superficially, the two countries are very similar but Canadian values are not as far out on the individualistic and religious side: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness versus peace, order and good government. We are closer to Western Europe when it comes to religion, taxes, government etc. Broadly speaking, you can see a similar, gradual change in US values as you move north and to the east and west coasts. Lord knows what the global smartphone/internet experiment will do to both cultures.

Any decent map for schools should make Australia look a lot larger than Greenland and exhibit the fact that Borneo and New Guinea are the next biggest islands in the world. Mercator fails abjectly here.

Probably debated before here somewhere, but Mr. Gilmore does not like the F-35: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/03/gilmore_farewells_trump_government_slamming_the_f35_again/ http://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2016/pdf/dod/2016f35jsf.pdf

I guess I would like to see us closer to the middle of the pack on per capita opioid use. We don't want to be number one in this league table. I also agree on responsibility. The thing is that humans need help to make the right choices. Doctors have led a lot of people astray by overprescribing these drugs and underestimating their danger. The supply issue has to be looked at too. Right now, the Chinese are ignoring mass production in their back yard. Our customs people need to be examining packages of every size. Obviously, cutting supply from China is by no means a solution as the stuff can be made anywhere, but it would be a start. We Canadians have responded slowly to this crisis and in a disorganized, literally provincial, fashion. This isn't about beer taxes, though. If we let this take its natural course, everybody will be affected one way or another.

I think we need to toughen up In this country. By some estimates, we are the worst in the world for prescription opioid use already, certainly near the top of the table. Not every pain needs a drug; not every bad pain needs an opioid. These drugs should be feared.

A good article on Canada's plight: https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/investigations/a-killer-high-how-canada-got-addicted-tofentanyl/article29570025/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com& BTW the drug that killed the young Australian mentioned here (the son of the man who travelled to China), N-Bomb, is widely available in Canada and can be ordered over the Net. We have seen a death in my relatively remote community. It is far more dangerous than LSD.

The potency of various ACh esterase inhibitors is something you'll have to take up with somebody else. The general appearance of the injured seems more consistent with a gas of some sort than blast injury IMO.

I am not the disappointed one today. And I didn't recently mention sarin specifically either BTW. Assad had it coming.

I get the feeling there are those who will support whatever Trump does. Get ready for some acrobatics, folks.

It's may cause a problem for him with his alt-right support.

This is hardly the first time that chemical weapons have been used in Syria. Trump's previous opinions on intervention are a matter of public record.

Trump has just done a massive U-turn without any proper explanation e.g. previous tweets on Syria.

It will be a while before any definite determination can be made. There are some reasons to suspect Assad did it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/07/syria-nerve-agent-attack-why-it-made-sense-to-assad

It is hard to square this action with Trump's previous pronouncements on Syria. He could have waited for the evidence to come in and issued a warning this time. One curious aspect is how he mentioned the TV images of the children, moving no doubt but hardly the basis for a coherent policy.

The evidence is pretty strong that Assad's crowd did this and he deserves punishment. After six years of unspeakable atrocities and a flood of refugees across the world, he can hardly be considered a force for stability.

This may be my problem but I always feel Alexander is talking down to me. He lacks the common touch.

The alt-righters are none too happy about this. There be a tweetstorm out there about cucks and globalists.

They are the largest denomination but less than 50% of the population, so they are in the minority. Like most Christian brands, the number of actual churchgoers is a lot smaller than the total. I was surprised to find out that Clark and Turner are Catholics.