BHS

JOVIAC and Yaro: Great posts. You've given me a lot t think about.

Hmmm, that sounds pretty confindent. Am I to assume you have some unregistered firearms buried in plastic bags in the yard, perhaps? A panic room in the cellar? Fireproof underwear?An electronic thumb for hitching a lift off of our poor little backwoods planet?

This is a strawman fallacy. You imply that since I denounce the foreign policy of the USA, I must therefore embrace that of Canada, when I said nothing of the sort. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, what you're describing is bifurcation, also known as the false dichotomy. It would be a straw man argument if he misrepresented Canadian policy so that it could be compared to America's policy in an unfavourable light. Since you don't appear to disagree with his statement regarding the policy, it's not a straw man argument.

Like it or not we live in multiculteral societies which are only going to continue to grow with their cultural diversities. I don't know what the figures are for Canada and the US, does anyone know what they are, but Europe already has 20 million Muslims, and so we had better learn to somehow live together much better than we have so far, as Muslims are here to stay. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The US isn't a multicultural society. Americans take great pains to assimilate newcomers before granting them citizenship. Though America has many, many Muslim citizens, they don't have the same problems with "ghetto" neighbourhoods full of seething resentment. Ironically, it's the UK's multi-culti attempts to make foreigners feel welcome that's making them feel different and unwanted.

Come on, Suharto was a pussycat. Why else would the RCMP go medieval with the pepperspray to protect his machinegun-toting bodyguards from inconveniently vocal demonstrators? Chretien's laughing response: "I put da pepper on my food." In 2000 Suharto was placed under house arrest, but was unable to stand trial for embezzlement due to poor health. It is estimated that during his 32 year rule more than $70B US passed through his family's hands. Shudder. I just got a mental image of Chretien and Suharto reinacting the knighting scene from Episode III. Did anyone else get that? "Arise, Lord Incomprehensible".

This sounds so much like George Bush's plan to save Social Security that there is no way, come hell or high water, that the Liberals would ever consider it. Liberal orthodoxy states that to imitate the Americans in any way is to admit defeat in the Great War of We Are Different And Therefore Better. To imitate George Bush in any way would be that defeat times a thousand, because he's, you know, stupid.

Or, unless it decides to drop the concept of multiculturalism, which has clearly kept these people from joining the mainstream of British society.

Derision. Woe betide the president that would take a hatchet to the Pentagon's budget. There are millions of Americans whose livelihoods depend on the permanent war economy and millions of American companies who's bottom lines are dependant on the welfare program that is military spending. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> And yet, military spending decreased between 1987 and 2001.

Ask yourself the same question 20 years from now.

My mistake. What happens when federal expenditures exceed revenue? Deficit spending, of course. Social Security? Sorry, my bad. Call it being stressed at work and not thinking. I ran a quick google for American government pension plans but nothing came up, so I didn't think about it any more before posting. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm having trouble deciphering if that's a laugh of agreement or a laugh of derision.

And pretty soon 3000 US soldiers will have died fighting a war that has nothing to with terrorism or al queda. If the US had not invaded Iraq and simply focused on domestic security there would have been no Madrid or London attack. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Good grief! How could you possibly know that?

As I suspected, your first point is a mis-statement. Federal revenues were not at their lowest point since 1959, they were at their lowest percentage of GDP since 1959. There's a big difference, and a small-government fiscal conservative will tell you it's a good difference. One of the benefits of cutting taxes is that it's like money in the bank. If revenues are insufficient in the future, taxes can be raised again. As for future unforeseen spending increases, they're in the future, eh? And not foreseeable. (Hey, I know it's a weak argument, but the Dems would say the same think if the roles were reversed.) Other than Medicaid, what American federal programs require outlays for seniors? They don't have a nationalized pension plan the way we do with the CPP. Even with the gigantic defense spending outlays that you've listed, Bush isn't spending as much in real dollar values as Reagan did in 1987. Adjusted for inflation, the gap of course widens. And Reagan didn't come close to breaking the bank. You make it sound like revenues and spending and budgetary priorities are set in stone, when in fact they are among the most fluid of political factors. So much for whistling past the graveyard. There's a reason defense spending is called discretionary - it can go down as well as up. I'm sure President Hillary will have big plans for pulling the plug on the Pentagon.

Exposing a CIA operative is not an 'off the cuff leak', it is a serious criminal offense, and in my mind, treason. Further, it was done as revenge for Ambassador Joseph Wilson's exposure of the fraudulent WMD claims of the US/UK coalition that Saddam had sought uranium from Nigeria. I urge you to read "The Politics of Truth", by Ambassador Joseph Wilson, husband of Valerie Plame. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, I'm sure his book is super objective. If there's no question of him breaking the law, why the grand jury investigation? As for the facts of the leak: Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982--a crime is committed when a government official "intentionally discloses any information identifying" an undercover intelligence officer. Rove is said to have told Time's Matt Cooper that Joseph Wilson's wife (according to the e-mail from Rove) "apparently works at the agency on wmd issues." he may not have said "Valerie Plame, but the law makes no distinction. By disclosing Wilson's wife's relationship to the CIA, Rove was passing classified information to a reporter, information that identified an undercover intelligence officer. Furthermore, even if one disregards the AAPA, there's still the matter of Rove uttering false statements and the possibility taht he could be indicted under the Espionage Act for willfully communicating "information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States". Those are the facts. What's your spin? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You're ignoring the fact that the law only applies to agents involved in covert operations overseas, either currently or within 5 years of the leak. Which by Joe Wilson's own admission is not the case. Making false statements to a news reporter isn't a crime, last I checked. (Unless you libel someone, which isn't the case here.) Furthermore, merely stating that someone works for the CIA isn't prosecutable under the Espionage Act, which is why none of the Dems who are hysterically pursuing Rove on this issue have brought it up. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act is their only shot, and it's a loser.

If I understand correctly though, thanks to NAFTA, if we open up our health care system to private companies, US corporations will have a distinct advantage. Something about preferred country status? Correct me if I'm wrong (which I hope I am in this case ) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> This is a good point, that I hadn't considered before. A privately run hospital owned by a US company might have a case that a publicly run hospital providing treatment for free was a form of government-subsidized competition, and therefore illegal under NAFTA. The solution to this problem would be to negotiate an exemption clause in NAFTA for medical treatment, which I can't see the American's refusing. They also have free clinics and an enormous amount of government subsidy under Medicaid that would just as easily become illegal for the same reason, and I don't see the American public approving of that any more than ours would. UPDATE: reading further, I note that eureka is making more or less the same point.

And yet, when the federal government steps in and pours hundreds of millions of dollars to fix the problems, the problems persist: Natuashish Jack Layton isn't the first federal politician to express righteous indignation about the sad state of the reserve system in Canada, nor is he the first to propose grandiose and expensive schemes to fix the problems. What would be nice if he addressed the elephant in the room: life on an Indian reserve is a dead end that no amount of money or concern can fix.

Fer cryin' out loud, lad. The original post doesn't say that explicitly. With all the references to booze and family I thought this was an all-ages event. This is the second time in as many weeks that I've participated in one of your threads, just to be turned away, when I'm making an effort to be supportive. Not a great start to a political career. (Although, the conservative movement in this country has made great strides in alienating as many people as possible in recent years, so maybe you're heading in the *right* direction.) Is there another group in the Niagara Region that caters to old geezers between the ages of 25 and 35? I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know.

Not adventuring, interventionism. Mutual defense exists on the premise that one nation will come to another nation's aid in a time of crisis, as the US did for Britain and France in the World Wars, and as the NATO Pact obliges all signatories to do. Taken a step further, a strong nation may wish to provide for the defense of a weaker nation as a token of friendship and come to it's aid in a time of crisis, as the US did for Kuwait in 1991. This isn't adventurism, and it would be a great loss to the world if the Americans decided to pull out of all foreign conflicts.

Regarding Bosnia; I think you're confusing Bosnia with Kosovo. Arguably, the worst atrocity in Bosnia was the Srebrenica massacre wherein Bosnian Serbs executed 8000 Muslim men and boys in front of the Dutch Peacekeepers set to guard them. Without, might I add, the encouragment of American bombardment. Srebrenica Massacre

This is slightly off topic, but interesting anyway. The "depleted" in "depleted uranium" is referring to the removal of highly volatile U235 atoms from the raw uranium ore, leaving only a small fraction of U235 behind with the bulk of the ore, being stable U238 atoms. I once read somewhere that depleted uranium isn't as radioactive as 24K gold is, but I haven't been able to locate a quote of that nature on the 'net, and so I bring it up purely for conversational purposes - ignore it at will. What can't be ignored, however, are the World Health Organization studies done in supposedly "hot" areas that were contaminated with depleted uranium dust in the former Yugoslavia after the NATO intervention. Scientists studying the problem were unable to find any indication that DU dust had caused radiation poisoning or any other evidence to back up claims by the locals that they had been poisoned. WHO fact sheet Please note that the copyright at the bottom of the page appears to indicate the information is current up to this year.

No. The threat the Bomarc was designed to mitigate was that of Soviet long range bombers, which by the time the Bomarc entered service, had been eclipsed by the threat of ICBM's, rendering the Bomarc useless. A lofty goal indeed. U.S. military spending is around three percent of GDP. But that number belies the impact military spending has on the economy. A large sector of the U.S economy hinges on the war machine, an artificial economy, if you will, an entire range of enterprise soley supported by the state. As well, the economic growth of the U.S. in the 1990s shrunk the percentage even as actual amounts increased. Keep in mind too that spending today roughly matches that (percentage wise) of spending during the Cold War when, arguably, the US faced a large conventional threat. Now, they have have rising deficits, rising spending and shrinking revenues, an aging population and a costly foreign engagement. You do the math. Now the big threat is a whoopise? Given that in almost 50 years, no nuclear missile has been launched by accident, I'd put that threat even lower then that of a "rogue state" committing suicide by attacking the U.S. Simply put: the missile threat is small and shrinking and in no way justifies mammoth spending on a project of questionable utility and performance. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> We've pretty much argued this thing to death, so I'll just poke at one paragraph from the above: You're choosing to ignore some data in making this statement. American federal government revenues are actually growing faster than predicted, not shrinking. The deficit is expected to be cut in half ahead of Bush's original schedule; it's not growing. The aging population is being offset by immigration - the US is still the most popular country in the world for talented young professionals to emmigrate to. And according to the general I saw interviewed today, the Iraqi constitutional efforts are on schedule and the American army expects to begin pulling out of Iraq in stages by the end of this year. You can go ahead and fact check me, if you like.

Mmmm. Ground organ meat. Am I to suppose your a vegetarian, then?

What are you talking about? This has been all over the media for months. That's ridiculous, to say that an off-the-cuff leak to the media puts America's entire reputation as a democracy in question. The reason Rove won't go to jail is that he won't be convicted, because he didn't break the law. If you don't believe me, look at the law that he's accused of breaking, and the facts of the leak.

I might be able to make it.

There was much to admire in the man, but he wasn't a god. The government can't make the economy grow any more than it can make trees grow. The government, like the gardener, has only the power to trim and pluck and restrict. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> And water the plants too. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Perhaps taking care to water some plants more than others, depending on which plants give him the most, um, pleasure.

Oh my. I'm actually agreeing with you on something.