normanchateau

A RADICAL anarchist, not even the usual garden variety anarchist...

With all the heat May has received, she has held her numbers quite strongly. The heats mainly come from CPC supporters I suspect, but it's not resulted in any movement from the Green camp to the CPC camp.

They also suppress Environment Canada employees who write fictional novels on their own time with themes relating to global warming. Laughable as well.

Social competence is a pretty wide net that captures pretty much every quality that matters, as far as I can see. What other areas were you thinking of? That's what I'm concerned about. This 'study' is only 74 pages, and yet uses wide sweeping terms to encompass it's findings. Yet it's only 74 pages, Obviously they didn't read any of the many studies out there that show a direct relation between the father being in the home and an absence of crime, improved academic performance, and reduced pregnancy rates. The studies that show the absence of a father having negative effects on children are studies which compare the children of one parent versus two parent families. There's no question that two parent families are better for child outcomes than one parent studies. However, this has nothing to do with what the 74 page study was about. Published data show that children raised by two parents who are women do better than children raised by single mothers.

Thank you.

Indeed you have and they were valid criticisms.

Well said. That's precisely my point. I never said Harper did anything illegal.

Do you have the link to it?

Would you vote Conservative if Harper wasn't the leader? It would depend on who the leader was. If he or she was a fiscal conservative and not a social conservative like Harper, that leader might easily get my vote. But the evidence to date suggests that Harper is a social conservative and not a fiscal conservative.

What's a hateocracy?

What do you mean by "forthcoming as to financial matters"? As President of the National Citizens Coalition, Finance Critic of the Reform Party, leader of the Canadian Alliance Party and leader of the Conservative Opposition, he was a fiscal conservative. But now he's delivered two budgets which bear no resemblance to fiscal conservatism. By forthcoming do you mean adopting policies which are the opposite of those he professed to believe?

Start a new thread. Provide some links. There are old threads dealing with this topic. Here is Bill C-250 which Stephen Harper voted against: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_C-250

The only irrational nonsense is your response. What other party has a leader who is a social conservative? The jury is still out on whether Harper is a social conservative. I think though, that he has courted their vote and has managed to give them noting in return, which only raises his esteem in my eyes. I'm not sure if the jury is still out but there's certainly no shortage of evidence based on previous statements and voting behaviour. There's no evidence which I'm aware of to suggest that those previous statements and votes no longer reflect his current beliefs.

You can't debate rumours of what he might do. You can only debate what he has done or what he has announced he plans to do. I'm happy to debate what he has done. How about if we debate his voting to deny making it a hate crime to advocate or promote the killing of homosexuals?

I don't think I've defended the CPC's about-face on income trusts anywhere, Norman. It's certainly a broken promise. Thank you for the acknowledgment that Harper broke a promise. I don't think I've ever suggested that Chretien did not break a promise. Chretien deserved to get the boot and he got it from members of his own party. I can only hope that CPC members give Harper the boot. The sooner he is gone, the sooner CPC has a shot at a majority government.

Social conservatism in his policies or governance is more than fair game. Social conservatism as a scare tactic with no connection to reality. No that shouldn't be fair game. So you think the December, 2006 vote designed to take away the legislated rights of many Canadians to marry has nothing to do with either policies or governance? It was despicable enough that Harper, as leader of the Opposition, voted against granting these marriage rights. But he went much further when, as Prime Minister, he attempted to take away previously legislated human rights.

The government, Karzai included, sold out long ago. In case you hadn't noticed, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a theocracy where women are second class citizens. The Koran trumps the constitution in Karzai's Afghanistan. While some people would wish to equate the state of affairs under the Taliban to the state of affairs in other Islamic countries, the fact is that they are very different. People who claim that Karzai's government and the Taliban are all the same because it's all Islam are either very dishonest or very misinformed. Whoever those people are, you are absolutely right that they are either very dishonest or very misinformed. How does that relate to anything I said given that I don't equate Karzai and his Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the even more abusive Taliban? When the Karzai government sentenced a man to death for converting from Islam to Christianity, they ultimately decided that they'd allow him to seek asylum in Europe on the grounds that he was mentally ill for converting. The Taliban would have carried out the sentence. Should Canadians be dying for a regime which sentences people to death for apostasy? Not in my opinion but I respect that other Canadians feel differently about this. I believe their opinions will change as the abuses of the corrupt Karzai government become better known. Like it or not, the Karzai government is gradually bringing back Taliban initiatives such as religious police which were used by the Taliban to enforce their extreme religious doctrine: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1181612.ece

No need for anything that drastic. That's just *scary* *scary* *scary*. So is this: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/04/13/ambrose-climate.html

But then again, to others Stephane Dion's English is fair game but Stephen Harper's social conservatism is no longer an acceptable topic for debate.

the raising of income tax was only due to the Liberals lowering it by a percentage point during the election campaign, after the Coservatives had announced their plan. The Conservatives were in power when Canadians paid their 2005 income taxes. The Conservatives were in power when Canadians paid their 2006 income taxes. The Conservatives had a choice each time and they chose to raise income taxes. What made this Conservative tax increase particularly despicable was that it only applied to the first 36,000 of income so that it's biggest impact was on those who earn the least. Of course that's the group least likely to make a fuss or have any impact on Big Government. As this thread indicates, the Conservative Big Government caved when Big Business complained about the foreign investment interest tax loophole being taken away. So Flaherty restored that loophole. This will mean a reduction in government revenue. How will he balance the budget now to pay for this postbudget loophole? Increase personal income tax rates again?

If you compare this SES poll with the one held exactly one month ago, you'll see that the Conservatives dropped by 4% and the Greens rose by 4%. Maybe May's tendency to mix politics with religion is getting at least some of the CPC vote to move in her direction. She's more up front about it than the two-faced Harper.

Well, then I have to ask you, what should they be cutting, which programs go tomorrow? Here's a novel idea from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Rather than cut programs, take the extraordinary multibillion dollar surplus and use it to provide taxpayers with a reduction in income tax rates. Paul Martin as Finance Minister thought this was a good idea. Preston Manning thought this was a good idea. The incompetent Stephen Harper is taking us precisely in the opposite direction. Big Government Conservatism * Program Spending up 7.9% in 2006/07 and projected to rise by 5.7% in 2007/08 * Three dollars of spending for every dollar of tax relief in fiscal ’07 Ottawa: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) reacts to the 2007/08 federal budget, which was tabled in the House of Commons by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty this afternoon. Finance Minister Delivers Liberal Spending Budget: Federal government spending on all programs increased from $175.2-billion to $189.0-billion in 2006/07, this represents the third largest increase in percentage terms at 7.9% and the second largest jump in dollars since the budget was balanced in 1997/98. Program spending is budgeted to jump another 5.7 per cent in the upcoming year fiscal 2007/08) to $199.6-billion. “Rather than reduce the overall tax burden, the Conservative government opted to spend down the federal surplus,” said CTF federal director John Williamson. “Program spending is up 7.9% as a result of the finance minister wildly overshooting his original 2006 budget target of 5.3% an astounding 50%. As such, there is little reason to believe Mr. Flaherty will hit next year’s budgeted spending boost of 5.7%.” http://www.taxpayer.com/main/news.php?news_id=2515

SES Research Poll Results released May 8, 2007 Federal voting intentions (committed voters only) Canada CPC 32 Liberal 33 NDP 17 BQ 9 Green 10 Ontario CPC 33 Liberal 37 NDP 19 Green 12 Quebec CPC 17 Liberal 27 NDP 13 BQ 35 Green 9

What the hell does that have to do with anything? Private business dealings aren't bribes, Mulroney was long out of office and out of influence. From Thursday's Globe and Mail February 10, 2006 at 5:56 AM EDT "Reports that a $300,000 payment made by Karlheinz Schreiber to former prime minister Brian Mulroney came from a Swiss bank account connected to the Airbus affair raised internal questions among federal Conservatives yesterday, with at least one MP saying the matter should be looked into." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...y/National/home

"Parenting by same-sex families is just as good...for children when compared to heterosexual families, a Justice Department study has concluded. Commissioned by the then-Liberal federal government in 2003 at the height of the same-sex marriage debate, the academic study was not released until recently when its main author, professor Paul Hastings at Concordia University, obtained it under the Access to Information Act. The paper references about 100 studies on parenting. Mr. Hastings said it is only speculation but he believes the study was being held back from being published by the Justice Department once Stephen Harper's Conservative government came into power in 2006. The Conservatives upheld their election promise to review the issue of same-sex marriage when a government motion on the question of revisiting the definition of marriage was defeated in the House of Commons in December. The psychology professor pointed out that a government-commissioned study that suggests same-sex parents may even be advantageous to children would probably not be appreciated by the federal Tories. Question period notes and media lines recently obtained by CanWest News Services, via an Access to Information request, reveal the department distancing itself from the research paper by stating it simply represents the opinions of the study's author "and not those of the department." As well, in notes prepared for question period, it stresses that there has been "very little research in this area" but that "the Government of Canada has a duty to fully support all children and their families." http://forum.newshounds.us/viewtopic.php?t...7d8ab0a3fb483dd What's especially interesting here is that the author had to use the Access to Information Act to get his own report released to the public. The Conservative Justice Department was not about to release it. I wonder why? Could it be because the conclusions were "not those of the Department" but merely those of more than 100 rigorous scientific studies that the professor had compiled? I wonder what the Conservative Justice Department believes should be a more appropriate and authoritative source used to make conclusions?