sharkman

Sometimes an observation is so apt, there is nothing left to say...

Chavez and the people of Venezula can do whatever they want with THEIR resources .. no differently than America or Canada does whatevr they want with theirs. The people of Venezula can bestow whatever powers they want to THEIR leader. The oil corporations have made more money than God has since the invasion of Iraq. Perhaps Chavez has been reading Thomas Jefferson who declared that freedom from corporations was a basic human right. It is hypocritical of you to find nothing wrong with the people of Venezuela bestowing whatever powers they want to THEIR leader and out the other side of your mouth proclaim how evil the U.S. is when they have only done the exact same thing. Not that I'm surprised, but you can't tell up from down.

A peculiarity of the right-wing posters on this forum is they often offer little by way of debate, other than saying you're "Bush-bashing" and, alternatively, "Harper-hating." Strange that this lame argument has been used hundreds of times, and I have yet to hear anyone called a "Chretien-hater" or a "Martin-basher." You ignored the rest of my post which outlined my debate on Chavez vs Bush.

Dude, you are truly a one trick pony. Your loathing for your own country is remarkable. I sincerely hope your attitudes are not an accurate representation of those of your culture and generation.

The president has the power to respond to provocation and attack, which is the case they are trying to build with "seized Iranian weapons" and "seized Iranian agents". He can respond to a created "provocation" which is what Zbigniew Brzezinski is warning the US Congress of right now. He almost came right out and said that we did 9/11 and are capable of doing it again. Then the Bush Administration can claim "defense" as their rationale. However, nobody is buying it this time and Brzezinski's warning may have complicated their plans even further. What, do you think Bush is an idiot or something?

Chavez has received sweeping new powers for the next 18 months. He plans to seize control of the oil industry, and is warning Chevron, Shell, and the rest to get ready for it. He would like them to remain minority partners of their own investments! And he will do it and close down tv stations he doesn't like. Any comments to that, or would you rather just bushbash.

The U.S. could literally bomb them back into the stone age in 2 weeks. Oh wait, they're already IN the stone age.

Okay, well how would you spell doggie do? That's what I was referring to.

Grand opening, grand closing. In some poorly worded comments that will diminish any chances of his winning the democrat nomination, Joe Biden, in describing Obama, called him the first main stream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy. Putting aside that many blacks have been in politics and are at least as articulate(Powell, Rice), a characterization of 'clean' in descrbing a black person has raised eyebrows all over Washington. Predictably, Al Sharpton and the Reverend Jesse Jackson have had little to say against Biden, as has most of the media. He's on their team after all. And this is not the first time Biden has talked himself into trouble. Here's a recent quote: “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.” Can you imagine what the media's response would have been to that had Jeb Bush said it? It would have lead the news for a week solid. But in this case, the Main Stream Media, Sharpton, Jackson etc, have spent much of their time trying to drown out the shock expressed by those on the right side of the aisle. And, of course, if a Republcan had said it, the world would have ended, CNN would be bringing live updates and Jesse Jackson would be getting his freaked out on. The left's shoulder shrug is sooo hypocritical.

Bush must have felt some pressure because now he is advocating for emissions standards in the U.S. Bush said he would veto any bill from congress that set carbon emission caps. The dems know that and will send up some sort of bill to have it vetoed and wash their hands of it. Interesting theory. I agree with you on the Dems strategy, but think they would try to make hay out of a Bush veto.

So let me get this straight. A union of scientists sends out a survey to 1600 scientists. 308 respond, and they feel that those responding are a fair representation of the 1600? LOL! Obviously, the 1300 that didn't respond didn't have anything to complain about, and the 43% of the 308 is actually 8% of the 1600 who complained. The Union of Concerned Scientists were probably quite dejected about the results until some whizbanger came up with the idea of just using the 308 number, and before you know it the media ride these skewed numbers like Seabiscuit! What's new. And this pressures Bush how exactly?

Isn't it the right wing that wants control of your body? Abortion and stem cells come to mind here. Actually, the left wing manipulates you to have an abortion and wants to harvest the stem cells.

I think it's time to move on. Fonda is ancient history. If the vets can't let go of that, I encourage them to seek counselling. I think it's time to move on. Fonda is ancient history. If she can't let go of her hate on for anything military, I encourage her to seek counselling.

Has anyone noticed how some media outlets are actually REPORTING on ads that haven't even been shown yet? On Global they called them attack ads and offered nothing but biased conjecture about them. I'm getting tired of the media telling the voter what to think. They are not a news story, they haven't even happened yet. I don't need to hear what some schmoe at Global thinks about it.

Yes corporations do this all the time. Entering a new market, you need to give the consumer a reason to do business with you. Offer them a freebie. Why did Flaherty do it? Because he's a politician, and it's become a push button issue. Of course he's got to address it. But at the end of the day, it's mostly just more shoddy work and grandstanding by the NDP.

August, that's what makes the world go around these days. Fear of litigation. Of course, it's not new, but was perfected over years of tinkering by one Jesse Jackson.

BTW, I love the way people in support of this protest throw out high numbers. It wasn't 100,000 protesters. The link itself says 10's of thousands, and at the end of the article it says somewhat under 100,000.

Bullshit. The Globe and Mail endorsed Harper as their candidate of choice in the last election. Harper will yet again get the endorsement of the Jewish CanWest/GlobeMedia for his support of Israel. The Globe and Mail? Are you kidding me? Edit: I guess you're not, I just found proof! Wow, I don't know how I missed that.

Unfortunately, Jack Layton and the NDP may not actually know what they are talking about. Or maybe they know a little bit, and a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. John Turley-Ewart has a story in today's National Post, and this is some of what he's found. The story is not accessable on the net, so I've typed out the highlights. It turns out that the idea of service charges accounting for 5% of bank revenues ignores profits. An NDP press secretary later admitted that 5% of revenues comes out to 32% of bank profits. So scrapping IBM charges would have a disasterous effect on the industry. Also us, because anyone who has mutual funds no doubt has some money invested in bank corporations, whose stocks would drop like a stone if charges were cancelled. Next, the figure of 420 million the NDP came up with as what Canadians pay every year in ATM charges. It turns out that this figure comes from a 2006 AP story about the U.S. ATM market. That story got its figures from a Florida web site called Bankrate.com, which does no research at all on Canadian banking. Americans paid 4.2 billion in 2006 for these charges. Does that number look close to the 420 million amount the NDP came up with? Try dividing it by 10, because that's what the math whizzes at the NDP office did. No Canadian research was involved, no surveys or studies, just grabbing numbers out of their behinds and then getting red in the face about it in front of the cameras. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study from 2003 found that the average bank owned ATM fee in Canada was .58 cents, while in the U.S. it was 1.35, or more than twice the Canadian amount. So in other words the numbers the NDP came up with are more proof that they need to stay away from the reins of power. If they do this poorly with mere statistics, how fast would government revenues disappear?

We need some kind of North American Union to counter the EU whose clout has recently passed the U.S. The bullying will soon commence. (The EU's economic output is growing faster than the U.S.) An economic union in North America, including Canada, Mexico, the U.S., and maybe a south American country would kick butt. I don't like our money anyway, it's getting silly with all of the colours and counterfits.

This is completely irrelevant. But to answer your question, I don't think it has ever been used, but I could be wrong on that...it certainly hasn't been used often. But how often has there been a need to use it? How often has there been an important issue that the majority of Canadians (including the majority of MPs) agree with that has been struck down by the courts? My point is that IF the majority of Canadians wanted abortions to be illegal, the Harper government could (and most likely would) bring in legislation to make it illegal. If the courts struck it down, he could (and probably would) use the withstanding clause. That is what I have been arguing...do you disagree? I guess I agree with what you've said, but the majority of Cdns are not going to want to make abortions illegal any time soon. It would take a straight out referendum and can you imagine the screeching on both sides on that one? \

blackascoal, maybe your computer needs updating. a search that takes 47 seconds? At any rate, we were debating the CIA's involvement in a TV station during Chavez's recent election, and the U.S. supposed involvement in a coup attempt at that time. Your first link is from 2002, and your second link from a dead guy in 2005. Neither of them refer to the events we are discussing. I know you can google about this and get thousands of hits. The point is most of them are from people opining on blogs or forums like this, or conspiracy theorists. There's a lot of junk on the internet. True hard facts have to be searched for. Again, if there was such in this matter, Chavez would be going to the world courts with it. And he'd have those guilty arrested at that station.

Wow. Maybe next you could focus your finely tuned analytical prowess on world hunger.

Look Coal, this is how it works. If you state something and want to be taken seriously, you provide a llink with at least some kind of evidence. Since it was you who made all these statements, YOU have to back them up with something or your argument is just words. Obviously, words is all you have and my previous comment rings true.

Coal, again you make accusations without any evidence whatsoever. I am supposed to just believe everything you say without you giving any supporting evidence. If there was evidence that the U.S. tried to overthrow Chavez, don't you think he'd be in the world courts pressing his case? And Bush, who by all accounts is dumber than a bucket of rocks can somehow orchestrate an attempted coup without leaving the tiniest evidence? On top of it all, there are many whistle blowers in his administration leaking all manner of secrets to do with CIA prison camps, Iraq strategies and the like. Yet there is no evidence leaked of this coup attempt. Now you are asserting, again without a shred of evidence, that the CIA was involved with this particular TV station, and that is why Chavez is shutting it down. If this was actually true, Chavez would be within his rights to arrest the station managers and leave the station open to be run by those at the station that were uninvolved. But he's going to wait for the station's license to expire in May, and then not allow it to be renewed. Obviously he has nothing to stand on legally even in their kangaroo court country. And never mind the scores of other media outlets that he is feuding with and threatening. Notice again what Bush has done by comparison. The New York Times prints state secrets VERY damaging to the administration's efforts in Iraq and other places. They do this because they hate Bush and want to harm his administration. Has Bush done anything to the NYT? No. Nada. Many media outlets in the U.S. are hostile to him, and they are free to print and broadcast whatever they want. But they can't do that under Chavez's rule. Next you assert that the Bush administration is involved in secret wire taps. What, you think this is illegal? They sure aren't secret.