Craig Read

The US has withdrawn its troops from SA - one of the reasons why Iraq was invaded. So what is Bin 'I need to get' Laiden's excuse now ? Oh let me see, Andalusia 1492 or maybe Saladin 1183 or perhaps Vienna 1683, or Palestine 2003, or is it when he was rejected by a Jewish babe who laughed at his penis size in 1978 in Tel Aviv ? Militant Islam is the enemy, they are destroying people and assets the world over. I don't buy into the Islam-is-peaceful concept. Little proof exists that an ideology which fuses state and church together and which is ruled by power hungry hypocrites preaching blood and sword is peaceful. In any event the outcome is certain, the only difference is how long and at what cost.

Eves is maybe not a knee jerk liberal, just a jerk. This is the man who refuses to reform anything. Increase budgets, increase spend, don't privatise, don't deregulate, break the Tax Payer act and forget how much all the election promises are going to cost the tax payer. He is a clown and certainly not a true Conservative. I have no faith in his ability to handle or reform any of the pressing problems in Ontario. He will just milk Toronto, extract the many billions the city provides and buy votes elsewhere with said funds. No real tax or debt relief or system reform will occur with Uncle Ernie and the knitting crew in power. Speaking of power, bet on another black out too.

Obviously you are such a genius you can enlighten the Americans on policy. Left liberals always resort to the argument 'you are dumb'. Really? Shall we do through history and see who was right on major foreign policy affairs ? Not the Libs let me assure you. Take your attitude and go live in Yemen.

All 3 of these guys are left-liberal jokers. Uncle Ernie with his tearful, do-nothing, don't reform and hug a seal, conservativism. Howdy Doody McGuinty with his tax and spend nonsense and his wage, and price controls replete with increased gov't size and interventionism. And Howie Hampton with his Marxian handbook on economic class warfare, exploitation and the need to have a fascist one people, one state, one leader approach to societal organisation. What choice is there? I don't trust Eves on his tax cut promises. He will never implement them post election. In fact he broke Ontario law [Taxpayer Protection Act which he amended] with a tax increase without a referendum when he delayed the personal and corporate income-tax reductions that the Progressive Conservative Party promised to deliver in the 1999 election campaign. And, Eves froze the education tax credit for private schools. I simply don't trust Uncle Ernie. So I will write Mickey Mouse on the Ballot and hope that he wins. Mickey is certainly in the same league as Uncle E or Howdy Doody.

Makes me laugh when i hear people whining about the lack of a true coalition. Er, could the reason be that the only nations with projection capability are the Anglo-Saxon powers sans Canada, who in 1970 officially joined the EU/French club ? Japan has military capability but like Germany is constrained by history and its constitution from participating. The French lack transport and other communication essentials, as well as a desire to engage the world in the war against terror forcefully, with conviction and valour. They are also not as mobile, integrated, nor as advanced in weaponry as the US. China is an unknown and reports of Chinese invincibility are greatly exaggerated. So who can offer what ? Some token tanks, ships, guns, men and handkerchiefs ? The world free rides off the US. Instead of disparaging their efforts like some clowns do on this web site, maybe faineant, wimpish nations like Canada should grow up and develop a proper military.

Fleabag, as a Canadian i find your ravings pathetic. Get off the board if you have nothing intelligent to say. I quote you: "With the US being trillions in debt, and their largest export being people playing 'make believe'" Actually the US has a lower per capita debt [far lower] than Canada. US gov't spend is 12% of GDP lower than Canada's. US exports are lead by heavy manufacturing goods such as heavy equipment, airplanes and technology intensive goods such as computers, software and networking equipment. The US accounts for over 40 % of world GDP and about the same of world high end manufacturing. Services trade is important but not the major reason for US economic power. The US is wealthier per capita than Canada and its GDP per person is $34k USD vs. $21 K in Canada. Canada in fact is falling steadily behind in income and living standards, and its productivity rate is 1/2 of the US level in 2003 and consistently 1 % behind that of the US in the past 10 years. For your income to double you need GDP growth per annum of 3%. It is apparent that Canada will have severe problems compared to the US in meeting such a target. High taxes, high debt, gov't interventionism and low productivity conspire to create a poorer society. So the only thing small minds like yourself fall back on is racism. Instead of reform you insult and lie. Slander is the chief weapon of the left - much easier than action or thinking. Stop your moronic monologues and join in adding some value. If you can't - get lost.

Americans don't even think of Canadians and why should they. Trade between Chicago-New York is greater than the cross border US-Canada trade. The Chicagoland area has a GDP the size of Canada's. Not one Canadian i know can name the Governor of NY State. But what passes for Canadian comedy is some arse like Rick Mercer with a microphone in NYC trying to find out if people know who the PM of Canada is. Wow that is comedy for you, Canadian style. What a laugh ! Maybe some witless American comic can do the same in Toronto and ask people to name the Governors of Cali, Illinois or NY, all of which have more economic and even military relevance than Canada. Maybe people living in Toronto should know something about their border state neighbours since 2/3 of Toronto's trade is with the US ? Or is profound ignorance an American only trait ? I doubt it. Not when i hear some sanctimonious nitwit interviewed on the streets of Toronto about Bush's speech last night stating that the US should pull itself out of its own mess. Great analysis genius. The fight for freedom is being born almost soley on US backs and money, and this dork offers nothing but the usual anti-American palaver. And this is broadcast as 'news'. Why should the US care about such a country with such a pathetic 40 year history of cowardice, military decomposition and virulent anti-american racism ? The US is protecting our sorry asses for Christ sake, maybe it is time to help them and ourselves. Then again, Hitler was 'a man we can do business with' and manage. Er yeah right on.

Yes the greatness of Islam. Let's see: -Women are treated like dogs -A plurality is illiterate -the Leaders live like drunken millionaire sailors -Int'l funds are used to buy weapons -Refugee camps are used as pretext's to brainwash -Killing citizens through state sponsored terror is common -Supporting anti-Western terrorist groups common -Nescient ignorant pronouncements against modernity and freedom promulgated weekly -Poverty is rife Other than that Islam has been a roaring success. Guess what ? For left-liberal Islamic apologists, put on a bedsheet fly to your Islam state of choice and join the fun !! Live what you preach. Sanctimonious hypocrites.

DNS, I agree, i laughed my ugly little head off when i heard on a news radio station that myself and other tories 'love' Uncle Ernie. I DETEST Uncle Ernie. He is a fraud. Any time a Conservative talks about being 'compassionate' you know that you are dealing with a Liberal who just wears a blue Tory tie. Eves is the epitome of the ineffectiveness of the political infrastructure that is strangling society. -No reforms in Health, Education or Energy -Budget spend goes up 10 % each year -Health Care spend goes up by 10-15 % each year -No tax reductions at all except for his promise to rebate $2 per house for mortgage interest deductions !! Wow !! -No infrastructure improvements -Continued subsidisation of the energy system -Continued corporate welfare -Tacit support of Kyoto -Tacit support of Gay Marriage -An unwillingness to allow Toronto to keep its money to develop its economy Uncle Ernie and his knitting group of women who should be home baking cookies do not deserve to govern. His only ace card is Howdy Doody McGuinty. A woeful actor who will soon be wearing knee pads to beg for votes.

Bush and his sensible economic plans will win. Period. The Dumbos are unfit to govern. Every clear thinking citizen knows this.

Now yet another ruling by the NAFTA panel, this time condemning the level of US tariffs, and stating that subsidized lumber in Canada does not harm US lumber interests. It might or might not, the real issue is however, Gov't subsidies in the Canadian lumber market. The NAFTA panel has not declared on this, but focused solely on US lumber welfare. This is bizarre. ================ .....Bush administration could be forced early next year to abandon the 27.2 percent punitive duties on Canadian shipments of spruce, pine and fir and refund to Canadian companies, with interest, billions of dollars collected by the U.S. government since 2001. Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew praised the NAFTA panel decision. "I don't think they could have been clearer," Pettigrew told reporters in Ottawa. "We will continue to fight our case. But I can tell you one thing -- we are more confident than ever about our legal case." ============== Yes but Cdn lumber is subsidised.........come on reform it.

Security through pre-emption is valid. Waiting to get terrorised is pathetically supine. The Middle East as Ned says is a sewer and to clean sewers you need to get dirty. Canada and the EU and the UNO, do not have the tools or the courage to get dirty. They would prefer to wait for da proof of da proof dat is proven, in the incoherent jibberish of the Cdn PM, so that a smoking nuclear blast somewhere confirms our suspicions that the Militant Islamists really did not like us. Then the UNO will dither over a resolution resolved to put forward another resolution to look at resolving the crisis. Good Grief. Action is paramount. Leaving innocents to be murdered is unthinkable. The Middle needs to be cleansed - as Churchill said of Nazism, 'we will not rest until Hitlerism is sponged clean from Europe'. Indeed. The same applies to Militant Islam in the Middle East.

S.A. is a US creation and must go. Either the regime is replaced or the country needs to be dismembered. SA is the mainspring of funding for the Islamic Jihad. Iraq was a menace, but SA is a close #2. Iran will be #3. Bring on the crusades, the only impediment would be the Western liberal media with their hysterical revisioning and casting of Islam as a 'noble and peaceful philosophy.' Hooey. If Islam is peaceful than Hitler was a kind hearted man who loved minorities.

Well having pride in a country with Post Modern PC nonsense is very difficult. Hard to have pride in your country when your PM can't talk properly or is a crook with 11 RCMP investigations going on in his riding. Or when your military breaks down after a troop deployment of 4000 soldiers to corral goats in Kabul. Or when socialised health care is your defining identity - a bankrupt idea taken from Europe. Or when your income levels are 30 % below your major trading partner. Health Care is the epitome of a poorly run, thought out and inefficient wage and price control system. Wage and price controls ALWAYS fail. There is not one example of such policies ever once having worked. So where is Uncle Ernie on Health reform ???

KK, i agree, many interesting books out by for instance Landes and others that point out that due to cultural inertia, religion and access to easy trade, or resource money, many potential vibrant areas of the world are deadweights. Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong [until recently], and other nations less well endowed [think Holland, Ireland, yes even Canada to some degree], have done much better. Easy money and bad politics is a dangerous mix. It allows Islamo-Fascism to breed uncontested. I agree, about your 'winners' comment. I am tired of hearing apologia for a failed philosophy. Hey boys in the Arab world - the Crusades are over, the Ottoman empire is extinguised, Mohammad is dead - get over it and join the modern world.

I don't subscribe to the liberal media's fascination that the peace in Iraq was not planned. Any cursory reading of history will inform you that winning a war is extremely difficult and planning a peace in detail before a war is won almost impossible - the variables and pressures will change given the circumstances created by the war. Only a set of frameworks, basic plans and concepts can be planned out. Having said that the US should have had more civilian police and control of key buildings and infrastructure assets. But being wise after the event is easy. Bush went to the UN to share costs. The Iraqi occupation will cost - as the Administration stated before the War - $100 billion per year, minimum. Since other countries will benefit from the Iraqi occupation they should share the costs. This is natural. I don't understand the left-liberal position that the US should bear all the costs. But then again didn't the liberals say; 'war is about oil' [price has gone up hasn't it], 'infrastructure will be destroyed' [JDAMs anyone ?], 'it is another Vietnam' [it isn't and that was a Liberal war lost by Democrats], 'democracy won't work there' [see post WW2 Japan and Germany] and 'millions of babies will die' [good prediction, considering Hussein was murdering 20-50.000 people per year]. What a bunch of losers. Canada and other nations will benefit from this important step in remaking the Middle East.

There is some good threads on immigration elsewhere on the site. 310.000 is the quota. 60 % are not screened. 40 % don't speak english or french. 2/3 or more do not have skills that our job market demands. For family programs the sponsor period is 3 yrs though in reality most access welfare programs long before this, in fact under the Charter any immigrant can demand access. Health care is the classic socialist wage and price control monstrosity. Hold down wages for doctors and nurses, ensure no investments in technology and infrastructure are made, import drugs from the States and hold down prices to buy senior votes, ensure equal access regardless of what you have paid, ensure long line ups to services and importantly ensure that no costs are contained or rationalised. It is the worst possible combination of wage and price controls and free riding. NO one has made a credible case as to why the current Health Care system should not be changed. Emotional arguments do not suffice, the system has to be economically viable.

I would agree - Cheek 'Bust a move' won't win, Arnie will, but Arnie as a businessman must state his case more clearly. 1. Lose Buffet, okay so he's rich, smart, and from Omaha [good christ], but that does not mean that tax and spend economics are smart. 2. Lose the Liberal mushy wushy. Be tough on key moral issues, stop pandering to soppy Libs who cry over the poor and trees. 3. Support business. Cut taxes, premiums, insurance and red tape. Get busy. 4. Cut spending and gov't employees. Target wasteful programs and fire 30 % of gov't 'workers'. Would be a good start and a good message. In general, start acting like a real reformer.

Black dog as usual is bleating his lie-beral tripe. Islam is not some nuanced, difficult to comprehend and superior form of social organisation or some mystical force that is relatively equal. It is an utter abysmal failure. B. Lewis and other scholars including Feldman's new book 'After Jihad', make the crucial point that modern Islam has fused National socialist ideology with religious narrow mindedness. This is why in part, it has failed in the current era. Looking back beyond the Fascist influence to the early modern period, the despotic, anti-modern, anti-democratic urge in the religion is everywhere apparent. A lack of curiousity, a lack of interest in worldly affairs, an arrogance that they are the chosen ones, a sad indifference to political representation, a mindset that brutalises women and the weak, and a racism that is used to quell societal discord and direct anger towards the heathen. All of these limitations and immoral attributes of Islam were well in the ascendant even during the times of the Crusades. Islam has shown no interest in living in today's world. None. And this is why it must be reformed or confronted and defeated. Its demise as a viable social option is clear. The only question is - does it want to reform itself ? Iraq is clearly a critical test of this question.

The world is at war. Either you understand who your friends are or shut up. Canada is becoming a cowardly sect of the EU fan club. Not a group that is particulary endearing or intelligent. Canada is a large modern industrialised country with a puny military and anti-American/anti-jewish racism abundant in its leadership, media and population [propagated by Marxist teachers and professors, who have, astonishly, never worked without being paid by the tax payer]. Time to stop free riding and pay our way. Or is that too adult for you?

Yes Hugo, the fantasy world of the left wing Liberals. -Gay Marriage is good, after all we are all queer in some way. Church - State separation ? Come on that is so pre-Post Modern. -High taxation - where 48 % of your income disappears is good, since you are 'equalising' society, though the money tends to be abused and misused. Case in point, the average politician will collect over $2.5 million during his lifetime just in pensions !! Man is that sweet !! -Unfunded liabilities: Run up the tab - it is off balance sheet [tee hee hee hee]. Hey, hold on, shouldn't the World Com and Enron execs go to jail for this ??? Hold on something is wrong here.....hmmm let's say off balance sheet good for gov't, bad for business, oh yes, now i get it. -Military: Gee that is so atavistic. Love fests, Johnny Depp and Tim Robbins political sloganeeing and the Dixie Chicks are the way to go man. No force is needed when so many Muslims love you. Peace dude. By the way can you ask for your lobotomy on the way out ? Cool. -Social systems; Health, energy, pensions, agricultural, business subsidies, job training, public real estate projects, telecoms, and so on. Great systems - efficient, modern, and tax friendly. No need for change here. Er, why is my telephone bill 5 x higher than it needs to be ??? Yes all is nice in Orwell's 1984

Well the Canadian Liberals will tell you that the military is unnecessary. We are building a post modern caring and compassionate society. Drivel. I always ask the old, the aggrieved, the obnoxiously arrogant Liberal and those who covet statism who will pay the bill ? Between 1996 and today there has been a $54 billion drop in direct debt BUT this has been more than offset by increases in other liabilities such as the Canada and Quebec pension Plans, Old Age Security (OAS), and Medicare. These obligations increased $266 billion between 1996 and 2001. The unfunded liability of Medicare alone grew by 37.4 percent between 1996 and 2000. In total, CPP, OAS, and Medicare unfunded liabilities grew by 22.3 percent during to a total of $1.4 trillion. These program obligations are either paid out of general government revenue or have specific dedicated funding sources. An unfunded liability refers to a circumstance where the promised future benefits exceed the future expected revenues. The military has been stripped bare as well. So add into the above numbers the need to rebuild [if such a will exists] the military and this would cost an extra $10 billion over the next 5-10 years or about $50-100 billion in payments to cover rebuilding our international legitimacy. The total debt per capita in Canada including unfunded liabilities is $172 K !!!! So the snotty sneering liberals, my question is again - who will pay and is this moral ????

Well look at Israel compared to the Arab world - from nothing and desert they have created an export strong economy and civil society. Sure Israel has its shortcomings and xenophobic zealots. But in general the Israeli's i know are largely secular, working hard and willing to trade land for peace once the Palestinians stop behaving like madmen and start building representative institutions. In 50 years the Palestinians have not created one positive institution, economic product or market or anything other than terror, poverty and hate. All with UNO blessing of course.

Right on KK. Great post. The left libs and UNO'ers love to understand 'root causes'. How about narrow minded religious anti-modern, Saudi funded violent anti-Westernism as the root cause ? In the al Mukmin Islamic school in the Javanese city of Solo a slogan above one classroom reads, "Death in the way of Allah is our highest aspiration." In a boarding school where the alumni includes nearly all of Indonesia's top terror suspects, pictures of AK47's are plastered on the hallways. The homicide bomber from last month's Marriott Hotel blast in Jakarta studied here, as did many of the men now on trial for the Bali bombing last year.Similar scenes exist throughout the Arab world. Root cause? How about a stone age mentality.

Arnold better start to say something intelligent soon. He is sounding more like a Dumbocrud by the day. I hope his rhetoric does not reflect his real policy. He is sounding scarily like a blue tied Dumbo. Bustamante has told Californians to brace themselves for "tough love." By that he means he will solve their problems by making taxation of the rich even heavier -- in 2000, almost 38% of California income taxation was paid by one-third of 1% of taxpayers. And by piling more taxes on those businesses that have not yet fled the state. And, oh yes, there will be cheaper gasoline prices when Gov. Bustamante, displaying insouciant disregard for the U.S. Constitution -- it makes the regulation of interstate commerce a federal prerogative -- imposes state regulation on the petroleum industry. Ken Khachigian, a veteran Republican strategist, warns that Ahknowld should brace himself for what has become the Democrats' trademark tactic - smear and slander, especially since good ol Arnie admitted to orgies, drug taking and womanising during his period as a steroid popping bodybuilder. Bush received such a hit in the final weekend of the 2000 campaign -- the revelation of his drunk driving arrest 24 years earlier. That probably contributed to an unusual development: Late-deciding voters, who usually break against the incumbent party, broke for Vice President Gore in 2000. Get with it Arnie, ditch the Democratic platform and get some real policies.