MiddleClassCentrist

I'd call it a mental illness to be attracted to members of the opposite sex who are prepubescent. Scientifically, the norm would be to desire sexually mature companions to produce offspring. It should be legislated against and punished criminally because that's what our laws do, prevent behaviour that our civilized society deems repugnant that remains from our evolutionary times (Theft, Physical Assault, etc). That being said, I think we spend too much time legislating sexually mature encounters. I had a 16 yr old friend who really wanted to bang older women and would have taken that offer up, had it arisen. I knew 15 yr old girls who swore they'd give "really hot college boy" a BJ, if they had a chance. When I was 16, I liked girls my own age. Younger was gross, older was gross. That was me. My wife is only 9 months apart since we met in high school. Teenagers aren't completely retarded, they have desires and act on them. I sought someone my age, some wanted older, some wanted younger. They will seek out that end. There was the one girl who had an affair with her married 33 year old driving instructor and it suddenly made sense as to why she always argued that "love has no age boundary" the Canadian Family course. If it is abusive in nature (physical, psychological) punish it. If it is consensual in nature and both people are of sexual maturity, what does it matter? We are meant to have sex, it's not like the act of sex is permanently damaging or people would be having much less sex.

The actual end outcome is nearly identical. Whether the government gave them 1 billion, or reduced their taxes by 1 billion. The government is still out 1 billion. And all they accomplished, was make a manufacturing plant easier to take over and shutter. When there could have been another buyer on the market that would have kept the plant in Canada.

Yeah, CAT is really hurting... (Maybe you should research your comments before making them) Caterpillar profits rose 44% by October

I don't know if I gave it admin permission, I'll make sure I did.

I was at McDonald's, ordering a coffee. I actually like their coffee, same supplier as Tim's (Mother Parker's). Anyways, the guy at the cash register mutters something off. Cashier - "I can't believe that I have to wait over a year!" Me - "Excuse me?" Cashier "Yeah, they are making me wait a year for it!" Me - (Silent, don't know what to say, I ordered a coffee...) Cashier - "They are putting frickin PANDA'S into the game and I have to wait a year!" Me - "Oh, you mean World of Warcraft. Yeah, I saw that expansion announced" Cashier - "What am I going to do until then? I've already played through Cataclysm" Me - "You could try other games, there are lots of good ones" Cashier - "I've tried a few. LOTRO, Guild Wars, Oblivion... keeps listing off games... AND THEY ALL SUCK!" (Hands me my coffee) Me - "Well, I guess you'll have to wait awhile" Can't remember the conversation that followed. Other than it was me trying to be polite and not just walk away but, slowly inching toward the door. The guy filled his life with Warcraft. After leaving, I remembered this page I had read. He was working a minimum wage job, and meeting all of his needs in gaming... and it showed.

America is a plutocracy of corporations. Not a democracy or republic. If you think of a corporation as an entity that has a right to express it's interests... Freedom of Expression can apply. In my opinion, that is sick and twisted. At least unions represent people when they support political parties, not that endorse that action at all. What I do feel is needed heavily, is transparency. If any organization contributes to a campaign, they need to publicly display all of their contributors in order of largest donation to smallest. That way, oil companies and other corporations wouldn't have such an easy time hiding their investment in "grass roots" organizations to spread misinformation.

Yeah, I got it for PC. I use consoles things like racing games, adventure (simple) games, quick/fast games. Nothing complex. PC for games that have any depth in story or required control ability. RPG's, RTS, FPS, MMO's (even though I haven't played an mmo in forever) Thanks for the links. I had downloaded OOO and installed it but then I read suggestions to play vanilla first and figure out what I wanted to change to make the experience better. So I installed a bunch of graphics updates, functionality improvements and am going to play through vanilla first. My computer isn't top of the line or anything. So I prefer being able to play slightly older games at high graphics/resolution settings, they way they were meant to be played. In TES games, you can win by using obstacles to jump away/use the environment to your advantage and any lag can screw up what would have been a perfect manoeuvre.

WTB: Fiscal Conservative.

I actually just picked up Oblivion. Never had the time to play it when it came out. I had some time so I started it up. My computer isn't top of the line but I can play this game at "Ultra" settings because it is older. Recently finished The Witcher 2. I've been meaning to try another game of Civilization V but, I don't think they have made the AI smarter. IT didn't know how to place siege weapons in battle properly so battles were one sided. It needs bonuses to win (125% of base production rate, etc) and I don't like that style of AI. Starcraft II is another occasional play for me. My little guy likes watching/trying Mario games on the Wii.

The economy only exists because of you, I and all of us regular folk. We spend money we earn. If we earn less, we spend less. The economy shrinks. Especially when money saved in Canada, just goes overseas.

Pretty sure I can find one for $8 Alcohol is one of those things where similar process + similar ingredients = similar result. In one of my business management courses, a marketing representative from Allied Domec came in and not so subtley (but not directly) told our class that it was 95+% marketing for all alcoholic products. Afterall, premium products going through the same process makes the same drink. I thought it was hilarious that students disagreed with him. "They taste different" "[brand] is garbage sucks". He entertained them for awhile and then noted that very few people can actually taste and identify different brands of the exact same type. He was trying to show the importance of marketing and differentiating in a market where all products of a same process (Ale, Lager, Chardonnay, Rum, Vodka) are extremely similar with very minute differences. Especially when the differences in quality are nearly entirely subjective and psychological. Stella Artois, crap beer in Europe... Premium Beer in North America for it's "heritage". Name your product something provocative "Flying Monkeys Ale", "Naked Grape", etc and you can hit it big on novelty. I like wine, and I am not a wine snob. As long as it tastes like wine, I don't care about the subtleties to rationalize a 100% price increase... unless it is for a special occasion and I just want something pricey to add to the feeling of glamour.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/caterpillar-sets-new-pay-terms-for-london-workers/article2288403/ Even when Caterpillar profits rose 44% by October In Conservatopia, when a company is hugely profitable... what do we do with workers? Cut their wage! With a government that sides with corporations in all scenarios. Corporations have been given the green light by the Harper Government to treat workers (The majority of Canadians) like crap. And they are running with it. Let's get ourselves out of this bad economy by paying everyone less, so we can't generate as much economic activity!

Big News Sells? My brother works for a University, got a free MBA that way.

It doesn't surprise me that Shady comes in to question the validity of the argument against price fixing.

A corporation is by definition, a psychopath. No empathy or moral compass. A drive only for profit to shareholders. To lead a corporation, it is likely that you too must also be a psychopath without any empathy for others. We should abolish corporations. They are a modern frankenstein. You won't see companies purposefully harming people or the environment when their owners aren't protected by limited liability.

I also oppose forcing anglophones to learn the two languages. We waste money on a language that is becomming obsolete in the grand scheme of things when we could be training kids in more useful skills like hands on worldly skills, which Ontario currently sucks at (large part due to Catholic system and hiring unqualified teachers with no actual construction, communications tech, or any other experience.)

Not really. I find the individual MP's rather useless. Party ideology trumps local issues all the time. Cut it to 100 + speaker and nothing would change.

I don't expect Ideologues to respond to this rationally. The cost of educating kids in Ontario is something like $7.5/classroom hour. Notably cheaper than hiring a baby sitter or daycare provider 6 hours. To the ideologues, facts that go against their belief are somehow biased or questionable. The reality is that public delivery systems are more cost effective. As soon as you add greed into the mix, the cost to the end user goes up.

That's a straw man if I've ever seen one.

'Fair' would be offering everyone the same 'non-segregated' public school option with no special funding for religion. No special preference, no special admission, no discriminatory hiring practices, no supporting intolerant attacks based on archaic misunderstandings. While I believe amalgamating all school boards and providing funding within the single beaurocratic body to fund different religions is a solution that is more equitable, it still leaves smaller denominations out and enforces discriminatory hiring/treatment of people who don't follow a religion perfectly. As soon as Muslims want their own publicly funded school board, Christians are going to have a hissy fit saying that it will breed intolerance, extremism etc. All the while, ignoring the irony that their system does the same.

Yeah, how about a section where we can just have community discussions... sports, games, house stuff, etc. There isn't a general "Life" forum about anything and everything. Just call it "MLW Community Forum" I find this forum is all about debating/discussin issues right now. Everyone is just a name in an argument. It would help put character behind the names and get everyone to know each other a little better.

And our economy is capitalism onn the global scale. But he wants to make those the norm in North America for the sake of providing corporations with cheap labour.

Thank you for agreeing that we don't need the crime bill, jets and that we didn't need a 1 billion dollar summit.

Maybe it should be? If it was... say a $50,000 one time fee... We could make $12 500 000 000 a year just on immigration. Of course it would be lower than that number because fewer people would immigrate if there was a large investment cost. But even at 1/10th, 1.25Billion a year would at least help fund Harper Government and their irrational spending on unnecessary crime measures and military jets that don't actually suit the purpose we need.

The Catholic system has been fighting bureacratic merges to save money for some time. In Halton, the Public board wanted to build a new office with the Catholic board for education. They catholics said no and spent millions more of tax payer dollars for their own. The Catholic boards have been aggressively building new schools for the purpose of growing their system drawing students away from the stingy public system. The Catholic board runs deficits to build shiny new buildings (parents like shiny new) and over run their budgets, the government then forgives the debt because the board can't operate with it... Meanwhile, the public system tries to stay within its budget and does not get rewarded. Of course the schools that were built with public money will be absorbed into a single school board. The catholics didn't pay for them. They claim they build them with money from catholic supporting parents, the reality is that millions come from general public funds because they treat schools like a business(like they treat their religion) and they are trying to drain the public system of students to spread Catholicism. Partly true. They don't allow you to practice your religion or beliefs if they don't fit the Catholic beliefs. You can't go to the school as a muslim and practice and celebrate your holidays publicly. You won't be accepted as a homosexual or any student that doesn't fit with the catholic beliefs. The teachers will be at the forefront of this bullyish behaviour. And it's legal. Just look at this joke of a modern employer that operates on pure discrimination that we have allowed to exist: They won't hire you if you aren't Catholic. (They'll openly tell you this) If you divorce and try to get remarried, consider your career over. You won't become a department head of curriculum (note, not divinity in the Catholic church) if you do not attend their mass on weekends regularly. You will never become a principal if you don't lead their mass. You won't be hired if they think you are gay or lesbian. This would be fine if Catholics were only allowed to teach at Catholic school so they could have their system etc. But they infiltrate the public schools and start hiring only Catholics too. In my community, there was a public school teacher that was outted for spreading lies about the local public high school. She was telling her students that the easy girls, drug dealers, gang bosses etc all go to the public school. She was telling them that they'd get beat up regularly. She was Catholic, promoting the Catholic highschool as her religion demands by slandering the public school to innocent public school kids... as their public school teacher.