BHS

User fee... that made me laugh.

\Hmm, would he behave anything like your glorious leader, who is known to fly into red-faced rages wherein he screams obscenities in the face of underlings so that spittle covers their faces? Such a gentleman, that Paul Martin. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> How about Chretien, master of the Shawinigan handshake?

Premier is an English word as well, and is the generally accepted term for the first minister of each provincial parliament. I don't know how you've come to believe that each province is a sovereign state, but you're sadly mistaken.

For those of you unfamiliar with Best of the Web Today, the Wall Street Journal's pseudo-blog updated daily by editor James Taranto, here are three great primer posts highlighting the last five years of it's existence: Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 These are great posts for a number of reasons, and should be at least skimmed over by people of both left and right persuasions. They provide a wonderful historical perspective of topics that we regularly debate in this forum, and concisely illustrate the development of right-ish American thinking from before the 2000 election, through 911, and into the present.

This analogy has outlived it's usefulness.

err and Renegade (re: Renegade's last post): A couple of additional points I'd like to flesh out: err's post appears to imply that the public pays for health care service either way. Renegade's post indirectly opposes this statement, by stating that private health care is paid for out of pocket in addition to the taxes paid to cover the public service. I would just like to reaffirm my belief that Renegade is correct. Nobody arguing for a "two tier" system is arguing that public spending on health care should decrease. The argument against the "two tier" system is that this will inevitably lead to a funding shortfall in the public system. I disagree. Furthermore, I'd just like to emphasized a point in Renegade's post that a major difference betweent the $5 pie and the $8 pie is the wait time. Saving money on pie won't do you much good if you starve to death waiting for it, which is in keeping with the logic behind the Supreme Court's decision in Quebec.

I believe the flaw was in manufacturing, not in design (for the French guns). I have no problem with Canada purchasing heavy lift aircraft, or even going so far as to hire Russian aircraft design teams and building them in-house. It would be a huge advantage to our military either way, as you've pointed out. I think you'll find, however, that the federal government has, since the Trudeau era (including Mulroney), taken the line that military weakness is a virtue. We can't be expected to participate in military action if we don't have a military. I doubt you're going to see anything like these jets being purchased as long as the Liberals stay in power, or as long as events allow us to stay out of the war on terror.

Much as I dislike doing so, I'm afraid I'm going to have to side with Yaro on the Hillier argument. While I agree with the substance and tone of what Hillier said as a Canadian citizen, it is unprofessional for a military commander to comment publicly on a political matter. Sorry Argus. As much as I want our military personel to have a spark of life in them, it should stay confined to their duties. Bottle it up, boys and girls, and unleash it on the country in your post-military political campaigns.

We don't buy all of our gear from the US: French Howitzers (Note: I read the article in paper edition of the Post yesterday or the day before. This appears to be behind the subscription firewall. Perhaps the same story was carried in other Canadian dailies.)

I think the word is Premier, no?

Keep up the good work, guys.

err, thank-you for addressing the question. I'm curious why you distinguish industries by "human necessity" and "luxury". Would not all the arguments you previously made apply to "luxury" industries?. By your argument doesn't a clerk working in the "luxury" automobile industry deserve the same "good jobs" that someone in automobile insurance does? Since you have distinguished between "human necessity" and "luxury" as your criteria for if an industry should be publicly owned, I am also curious how you have come to the conclusion that the LCBO is a "human necessity"? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The reason err isn't concerned about the automobile industry is because it's already thoroughly unionized without government interference. If the big three automakers ever manage to go the route of personal contracts the way Toyota apparently does, you can bet he'll be calling for re-unionization.

So that's it is it? You just want to push your beliefs and morality on other people instead of letting them choose for themselves. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Just getting to know who I'm dealing with... how is that pushing my beliefs... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If you're going to take a joke post and use it to justify dumbing down your assessment of my opinions, then I don't really know if it's worth arguing with you. You clearly have a concrete set of opinions, that in light of your lack of humour aren't worth the effort of responding to. The only reason I'm posting this is to let the other members reading this thread know why I'm not bothering to respond to anything else you have to say about this issue.

I can't follow your logic here at all. I have no idea how you arrived at any of your conclusions. Does anyone understand this, who can help me out here? This is ludicrous. Dropping free trade doesn't mean barring foreign imports, it just means imposing tarriffs that will be matched by whichever countries we trade with, making it more difficult for our own industries to export goods and raw materials. We simply don't have the internal market to keep the companies that benefit from corporate welfare solvent. Bombardier, for example, can hardly sell its jets as things are today. Do you think scrapping free trade will change this? As for the rest of the conclusions you come to, they are as incomprehensible to me as your first paragraph. I'd go over my concerns point by point, but I get the feeling that it would just end up being a waste of my time.

Dude, more liquor stores!

He'll just argue that employers should be forced to keep employees for a minimum period of time after a minimum wage hike, even if it means bankruptcy. Why should he care about greedy business owners losing their lives' works, as long as the unskilled labour get their (overpriced) beer money?

Well, not in his prime. He's had a few cheeseburgers since then.

Despite all of the cuts that Harris made to implement his balanced budgets and tax returns, and despite the fact that the Liberals have their gigantic majority and their mandate to reverse all that Harris wrought, and have failed to do so, I haven't seen a huge increase in former welfare recipients (now homeless) dying prostrate in the streets, cursing Mike Harris with their last breath. I suppose we ship them out to the have-not provinces or something these days. Ontario is still the wealthiest Province, even without vast plains of oil-soaked sand. When the ant-Harrisites can cite specific examples of Harris-inspired mayhem in the province, that are only happening in Ontario and only because they are causally connected to the Common Sense Revolution, I'll create a post in honour of the NDP that you can link back to whenever I bring up the provincial Conservatives.

All of this is tru-ish, other than perhaps the caricature of Mike Harris as some sort of Snidely Whiplash. I don't know that the government exists to act as a source of unionized employment, and you know how I feel about our North Korean-esque health care system. But Bob did face an uphill battle in regard to revenue and spending, and he was as surprised as everyone else when the NDP actually came into power. Can't really blame him for not having a game plan ready. I don't know that he left the Province's finances in good shape. I do recall that he raised taxes on everything, including dirt, and so it's just possible that he managed to take in almost as much as he spent. I don't recall any balanced budgets from his governments. Perhaps, in light of the absolutely moonbat raving response they had to Harris, the unions will forget how betrayed they felt about the Social Contract. And maybe some day the NDP will again win enough seats to form an official party under the limiting rules they themselves upheld when they ran the province, the same limits that have been reduced (twice, I think) to accomodate their terrible election records. Stranger things have happened. The biggest tax returns go the people who pay the most taxes. The fact that you think this isn't "fair" goes to show how corrupted the word "fair" has become in the modern vernacular. And no, I didn't get a big return out of all of this. I voted against Eves in 2003, not because I'm a big fan of Deputy Dalton and his gang of pledge breakers (from whom I've expected little and have been rewarded accordingly), but because Eves betrayed the Harris vision and needed to be swept out of office. Unfortunately we now have John "Red" Tory running the show, so who knows how long it will be before the next incarnation of the Common Sense Revolution comes around. Rest easy, err. The bad old days of Mike Harris are not likely to be repeated any time soon.

Yeah, BMI is just a guideline. I attended Weight Watchers for a while, and though they use BMI to determine lifetime goals for members they stress that everybody is different and you should consult with your doctor before trying to fall within those limits. A healthy weight for some people is outside of the BMI parameters.

I'm sorry, I couldn't find anything about embargoes becoming illegal over time, but I didn't have time to read through the UN Charter or the latest WTO rulings on the matter. You're going to have to supply some more details. Cuba is still free to trade with Europe and Canda and Mexico and South America, and they do. You're employing the same logic that says the Israeli wall is illegal in part because it doesn't allow "Palestinian" Arabs in to Israel to work. How is Israel particularly responsible for "Palestinian" economic well being, any more than Canada is? How is America responsible for the Cuban economy? Communism is a failure because it is fatally flawed. It is based on the notion that if you take away individual rights and responsibilities, and you take away private property and the incentive of individual wealth creation, people will still work hard just because it's the right thing to do. Communism fails because individual success and failure are irrelevant under that system. A successful nation is comprised of successful individuals.

NINJA <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hmmm. Ninja. Applies to posts about stealth and sneakiness. Not so good to confuse a ninja with a Muslim woman, for obvious reasons of senseless prejudice. Don't think I'll be using that smilely.

Taken from the text of the Downing Street Memo: "For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary." (Emphasis mine.)

Okay, for the record there wasn't supposed to be a smilely in my post above, it was supposed to be b and ) put together. Just to go off on a wild tangent, the smiley with the dark outline - is that supposed to be a smiley peeking through something, or is it supposed to be a smilely in a veil? If it's the veil, what context is it supposed to be used in? The wild, staring eyes are a little disturbing.

You might not know this, but you CANNOT fly to Cuba from the United States. You cannot do business with Cuba if you are a resident of the United States. This embargo has been in place for over 40 years. I was not suggesting that Canada is the country that is responsible for the illegal embargo against Cuba.... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Many American citizens will fly to Canada -> Cuba or Mexico -> Cuba to go there. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Besides which, a law passed by the US government barring it's citizenry from travelling to a particular isn't unconstitutional, and therefore not illegal. Unless you're from Planet Turtle Bay.