Springer

Well, so far, as seen on CTV... President of Dairy Farmers of Canada pretty much endorses the deal, noting that they recognize that Canada was under extreme pressure from other nations over supply management, but still managed to preserve most of it. Also noted that there are huge benefits for the rest of our agricultural industries. Representative for pork producers very supportive. Representative for CD Howe Inst. very supportive, noting lots of potential for aerospace and technology sectors. Perin Beatty, Canadian Chamber of Commerce, very supportive. And no doubt there will be many more endorsements. Game changer. Good for CPC, yet again proven their acumen at getting the job done, and most voters can easily understand why this is an essential deal for Canada. And Harper knows this file inside out. Not so good for NDP, albeit it might suck some support from the Liberals. The NDP's isolationist and backwards, if not archaic, approach to free trade persists, and yet again leaves them on the outside looking in. Of course, Mulcair has no choice; his core support is at stake. Loser in this is Trudeau and the Liberals, which will bleed support in both directions. Listening to him this morning, it's patently obvious that he doesn't have a clue in hell, and will have to be spoon fed talking points for the balance of the election. The contrast with Harper is stark, and not lost on very many. CPC majority on the way.

The core support of the NDP believe in this nonsense! Mulcair wins, he doesn't have a hope in hell of running away from half of his party! The unions will have their way in this country like never, ever seen before in our history! The climate change fanatics will think they're in charge of the whole damned economy...just like they're proving to be in Alberta! He will have no choices on the table but to succumb to the incredible and unrelenting pressure these two elements of the NDP's core support will heap on him. And out will come the national credit card, and up will go taxes, to pay for it all! The NDP will stick it to industry, to everyone they consider wealthy, to the working stiff that all of it will ultimately fall upon to pick up the tab for. Corporations will start looking for greener pastures, and more friendly business environments in which profit ain't a four letter word. And those can easily afford it will move their wealth accordingly. The NDP win this thing, you can stick a fork in Canada's prosperity for the next four years, and then for some years to come after they're kicked the hell out of office to clean up the mess they'll leave behind. That's the long and the short of it.

I don't give a damn about what any of those clowns have to say about climate change! Clearly, none of them are qualified...certainly by your own professed standards! And if you actually took the time to watch the Suzuki interview, you'd know exactly that! Hey, I'm not presenting others' opinion of the guy; I'm providing you the hard, cold evidence straight from his own mouth.

69cat... Do take a break to watch the Suzuki interview. Shocking hardly describes it! Scientists in the audience were too obviously dumbfounded by what they were hearing from this supposed icon of their profession.

Classic fallacious appeal to authority. I assume that excludes the likes of, hmmm, let me see now... Al Gore? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore Your guess as to his field of scientific expertise is as good as mine, I suppose. David Suzuki? Geneticist? James Hansen? The guy who told the world circa 1978 that the Ice Age cometh, stock your larders now for the big one! The same guy who told us a mere handful of years ago that the world would be fried to a crisp by now? Now there's an "authority" to behold, ya think? Jane Fonda? Neil Young? Can I toss in Bozo the Clown, you know, just because? Hey, just for the sake of comparison, if not just some ***** and giggles, watch this interview with David Suzuki on Australia's ABC network. I detest the man's politics and ideological bent, and even I was embarrassed for him... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hKdmQMVJ70

Wip... Go back to page 5 of this topic, and watch the video interview with Freeman Dyson. His scientific credentials are impeccable, and clearly he has no ideological axes to grind. The pre-amble in the vid will tell you everything you need to know about him. Fascinating thing has been happening over the last several decades, established by satellite imagery: Global flora, and the bio-mass thereof, has increased an estimated 15%. The reason? CO2 levels. Fact is, at 150 ppm, plant life ceases to exist. At 250 ppm, it's borderline starvation for plants. The levels of the last century, if not millennia, are among the lowest of the last several hundred million years, over same that time of which CO2 levels have been at orders of magnitude higher than today. Indeed, during times when the largest creatures ever to inhabit the planet thrived. It takes a lot of vegetation to feed 30 tons of dinosaur every day, eh? I watched an interview a while back with the head of the EU's committee on climate change. She said that they plan to spend $7,000,000,000,000 - that's trillions - on climate change by the year 2100. Someone then put it to her that it had been concluded that such an expenditure would result in lowering global temperatures by one tenth of one percent. She replied that, yes, she was aware of this...but it is still the right thing to do. Frankly, you can't even make up unowhat like this. Carbon credits, created out of thin air by people in far away places, traded by people in far away towers, tracked on computers nobody will ever see, and accounted for by people (UN?) accountable to nobody. You want to talk about a capitalist broker's wet dream come true, or what? 3% in and 3% out, talk about a license to print money! The first attempt at this in Europe several years ago saw $5 billion out of a total of $7 billion worth of activity disappear forever into the hands of organized crime. And to what end? The school boards here in BC a couple years ago were forced by the BC government to take money out of their budgets to buy carbon offset credits...millions of dollars worth from already cash strapped schools. So much for hiring teachers for our children, right? Done so that the government could claim that it had reduced BC's CO2 output levels. We've had a carbon tax on fuels here for most of a decade now...and you know what? The climate around here hasn't changed one millionth of an iota, and of course it never will. But, as the above video puts it so acutely: Think of the moral superiority liberals bought for themselves. As always, with taxpayers' hard earned coin. I loathe, passionately, any ideology that props up, if not mandates, utter and morally bereft crap like this.

The motivating premise of this manifesto obviously is AGW/Climate Change. Time for some biting satirical comic relief. This vid - whomever put it together was brilliant - has generated no end of laughter among those to whom I've shown it...

WIP... I've been listening to capitalists-will-cause-the end-of-the world rants of socialists since junior high, some 45 years ago. The main ones threatening to crash and burn these days are countries that have been economically and financially run into the dirt by socialism. ...which, no doubt, in your mind is still all the fault of nasty capitalists that won't play by your archaic rules.

A current travesty inflicted upon hundreds of millions in this world has to do with "Golden Rice". Every year an estimated 5,000,000 children go blind due to a lack of beta-carotene in their diet. Genetically modifying rice with three genes enables it to produce this precursor to vitamin A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice Nevertheless, the advancement in health this basic food offers to hundreds of millions, the prevention of unspeakable suffering, and the massive savings in healthcare costs, remains a distant dream due to the efforts of anti-GMO activism. Activists operating from within the security of their own little safe havens here in the west, where such challenges to every day life are beyond the scope of their imagination. I'm so sick of fad driven activist causes, I can't speak. Now we're even out to inflict this crap upon our own children with this imbecilic campaign against vaccinations, driven by wannabe do-gooder entertainers or the like, whom have decided they somehow are qualified - presumably because they've gotten rich off of some one hit wonder song or movie - to provide medical council to the world.

Cyber, you're wasting my time. And you've offered up exactly nothing in return for it. Clearly, your avatar resembles your attitude towards debate better than you know.

Another example comes to mind... In my early days, circa '60s, the ongoing crisis was all about feeding the starving millions in India. A new strain of wheat had been developed by then, but the Indian government...due to pressures from all the (same) usual suspects of the day...refused to allow it to be utilized in their own agriculture. Then they finally relented. The almost immediate result was a six-fold increase in crop yields in India, and that nation went on to become a net exporter of its crops. And mass starvation of its peoples ended.

Cyber... You have no idea of what you speak. We have a free enterprise economy. The governments we have, provincial or federal, to one degree or another, facilitate this. There is a vast difference between "manage" and "facilitate". To affect the kind of utopian world envisioned in this manifesto would require massive and direct manipulation of just about every single facet of society. And you know what goes wrong with that? Some people have different ideas about how they want to live their lives. So, what do you do with them??? We know all too well what Communism...essentially the same form of governance advocated by this paper...did with those would not conform, do we not? This is the root problem of "ideologies", and certainly with "religions": Both ultimately require twisting the world into neat little knots in order to get it to fit within the narrow confines of doctrine. And everything that doesn't fit...or refuses to fit, ends up on the waste heap. Or, more to the point, in concentration camps, or just dead. Free enterprise is, by far, the least manipulative and interfering premise by which societies are enabled to thrive, while still providing the most freedom and liberty, opportunities for self expression, and personal development. Perfect? No...but kicks the hell out of everything else tried so far. Read "The Rational Optimist". He makes several points... a ) Show me a self-contained economy, self-sufficient community, and I will show you people living in poverty, and conditions one would not wish on anyone. b ) Nothing is static in this world. The underlying operating assumption of just about every hysterical and alarmist claim by, f'rinstance, AGW activists is that their assertions are based on the status quo of the day. This is NEVER the reality. For example, and in approximate numbers because I haven't the text available at the moment: In 1915, of all the arable land under the plow in the US, roughly one third was dedicated to feeding the 15,000,000 horses required to work said land and harvest crops thereof. If that situation had remained static...i.e., technological progress ceased...today it would require 80% of all arable land available in the US just to feed Americans, forget about anyone else. Instead, we currently exploit about 27% of arable land, both to feed America and a large part of the rest of the world as well. The implications go further, for were 80% the current reality, how much land would thus be afforded to wildlife conservation, and the parks that preserve their habitats? Therein is demonstrated the absolute fallacy, if not outright myth, of this ideological manifesto, which used words like "iron clad" to enforce its methods to attain its goals. A description the likes of which Stalin and Mao would have used to justify their means to an end.

I'm going to type this slowly for you... Because it is all about government micro-managing every facet of the economy, and the lives of the citizenry therein. You give government that much power, I guarantee you corruption to the nth degree, and ultimately and inevitably disaster and ruin. The one thing the left has struggled with since forever is the fact of human nature...which in the end is irrepressible, and will not be herded like sheep. Evolution is the natural law of the universe; it cannot be guided, nor contained, nor restrained...certainly not by mere ideology. It will find its own path every time, always upwards.

The Saudis crushed the price of oil, aimed at directly undermining N. America energy independence, and specifically at the oil sands and shale production, which had its inevitable effect on our economy. How that somehow becomes Harper's fault remains a mystery to all but those challenged by HDS.

Cyber... You show me the government micro-managed economy envisioned in this manifesto, and I'll show you the failed examples of the USSR, N. Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, the Warsaw Pact nations prior to emancipation from Soviet control, Maoist China, etc., etc., etc. Along with the litany of human tragedy that ended a hundred million lives along with them, either through mass starvation, indescribably poverty, or just outright murder at the hands of ideological inspired tyranny.