gc1765

You are calling that CBC hack job evidence? The only source they had is Karl Heinz Schreiber. Shcreiber alone wasn't credible enough for the Government to proceed with their lawsuit. *But* he's credible enough for you, and the CBC, to take as new evidence of Mulroney's guilt? No other media outlet thought ihe was credible enough to bring the story back. Why don't you think Schreiber is credible? Why would he admit to bribing Mulroney if he didn't? Are you saying that Mulroney didn't recieve $300,000 from him? Mulroney has since admitted that he accepted the money, after having previously denied it. Or do you really believe the money was paid for consultation about sphaghetti Even if that was the case (which I doubt), wouldn't you say it's a bit of a conflict of interest? And why did Mulroney deny recieving the money? Really? The current liberal party was guilty of adscam according to the inquiry? News to me, I thought they were completely exonerated. The previous government was guilty (ie chretien and gagliano), of course, but I've never said they weren't guilty. It's pretty funny how you think the current liberal party is corrupt, based on absolutely no evidence other than speculation, yet when someone shows you evidence of corruption by Mulroney, the source isn't good enough

I have no ethical problems with buying bottled water, but I just don't see the point. Water is practically free, but most companies charge ridiculous amounts of money for bottled water. So, I generally don't buy bottled water because I don't want to pay the high prices.

Of course Dion would have known about the sponsorship program, it doesn't necessarily mean he knew that the money for that program was being abused. What are you trying to say here? That because the government dropped it's lawsuit that Mulroney is innocent? Unfortunately, the evidence didn't come out until recently Link

You'd think that after loosing the last election, partially due to corruption, that the liberals would have smartened up. Apparently Volpe hasn't smartened up and he is giving liberals a bad name. He really should withdraw from the leadership race. Dobbin, that's the Liberals' age-old tactic: deflect the argument by making an accusation.How does this change what Volpe is doing? To be fair, it's more of a conservative tactic. When anyone tries to bring the ethics of the conservative party into question, it is almost a reflex action for conservatives to bring up the sponsorship scandal. Those conservatives are willing to defend the conservative party for questionable ethics, so long as it's not as bad as the sponsorship scandal.

Those are all questions that need to be answered before we can judge their actions. *If* the records truly haven't been provided... Are you implying that it's possible all the records were provided? Was Kingsley lying when he said they weren't?

We don't really know whether the conservatives have asked for extensions in the past. If that's the case, why haven't they asked for an extension in this case if they can't come up with the records on time? At least then Kingsley would know what's going on and that the books are on their way. If this is the standard, then it should be no problem to get an extension again, right? Instead they seem to be claiming that they handed them over, but Kingsley says they haven't. If it's a simple matter of needing more time, why don't they explain that to Kingsley and clear things up? Why are they instead claiming that they've already handed over everything?

Which interests?

Fair enough. but I didn't start this thread.... I know. That was more of a side-comment not related to anything you said.

The rules stipulate that political donations are disclosed. Kingsley says that the donations were not reported. Seems pretty apparent to me that the rules were broken. I don't need Kingsley to tell me 1 + 1 = 2. I know what Kingsley has said. He says he asked the conservatives for their convention books. He also says that he has not recieved those books. I am assuming that Kingsley is not a liar. Full cooperation on the part of the conservatives would require at least what was asked of them. So, they are not cooperating fully. Now, why would it take 2 and a half months? Don't they keep records of these sorts of things as they happen, instead of months later? The law also stipulates that the records are provided within 30 days of the end of the fiscal period. I assume that every other fiscal period, the conservatives handed over their books in time, that is within 30 days. How come they can produce a report in 30 days most of the time, but not be able to produce it in 2 and a half months this time when they are being asked for it?

Until Kingsley says it outright this is a non-story. Why do you care what Kingsley says? You know the facts, why not judge for yourself? Do you think it's not clear that the rules were broken? I'd say the rules were broken, it's hard to debate that, the only question is whether they were broken deliberately or not. I'd say probably not, but then why haven't they handed over all their books? Do they think it will make them look bad if it turns out they made a mistake? I'd say it makes them look worse not co-operating as fully as possible.

How is starting a thread calling the Prime Minister a wimp not being *irrationally partisan*? Do you not think he was being hypocritical? Good point. I actually didn't notice that before, which is why I didn't post a response. I guess you're both hypocrites At least the post about Harper being a wimp provided some argument as to why the poster thinks he is a wimp. In this thread, the liberals are called losers & idiots without really explaining why they are losers & idiots. I think in the first case, the thread was started to show how Harper tries to avoid the media, but calling him a wimp was excessively partisan. What was the purpose of this thread except to insult liberals?

Probably not. There's a lot of liberals here who are blinded by partisanship as well. But I haven't heard of any of those partisan liberals condemn others on this board for being partisan. To imply that it's a bad thing to be partisan when you are clearly partisan yourself sounds like hypocrisy to me. I also try to look at an issue from both sides and come up with a fair opinion of the situation. I'd say most of the time I'm non-partisan, but I'm sure I'm guilty of it from time to time (though not as bad as some others on this board, on both sides of the political spectrum). I'm not condemning you for not speaking out against the liberal bashing, if that's what you are thinking. I'm simply pointing out the hypocrisy of it. I'll tell you what, if I see a liberal that I think is being a hypocrite, I'll be sure to point it out.

I actually agree with your post for the most part. Out of those three, I would also pick Dion. As for Rae, if I could put aside my skepticism and be naive enough to believe that he has actually moved to the center (economically) then he wouldn't be as bad of a choice....but I doubt that's the case. I don't want to see Canada getting back into deficits. Same goes for Ignatieff. I don't think ignatieff is as smart as he's cracked up to be, I don't know why people put so much hope in him. He also appears to be a bit arrogant, but that's just my opinion. As for education, this is where I disagree with you. Subsidizing tuition isn't such a bad idea. First of all, a course costs what like 3 to 4 hundred dollars? Times that by 250 students...that's $100,000 per course (not including the amount that an international student pays). Does it really take that much money to run a course? I'll bet a lot of that money goes to paying the professor's salary, when professor's spend most of their time doing research not teaching. The research that they do is meant to benefit everyone (for example health-related research), why should only students have to pay for it? Of course, I'm pretty sure that education is already heavily subsidized, but still.... The other reason why it's not such a bad idea is that, as someone else on this board has already put forth a very convincing argument for, putting money into education is an investment. If someone goes to school, whether university, college or trade school, they are likely to get a better job, make more money and pay more back to the government in taxes. So, in theory the government should get some of that money back, kind of like with Reagan's supply side economics (if I understand supply side economics, which I don't ). By the way...imagine being a graduate student and paying tuition but NOT taking any classes, now there's a ripoff. Luckily it's only masters students and not PhD students that have to pay tuition.

Yep, replace "liberals" with "conservatives", and some people on this board would immediately label the poster as a conservative/Harper basher...but when the shoe is on the other foot, no comment. Those same people don't blame others for being liberal bashers. Interesting.

What's your opinion of Dion? He has a pretty good chance of winning too.

Stop whining. If that really is a concern, write a list of all the ways in which it conceivably hurts the rest of us and the solution is in your hands: cut those government expenditures and their corresponding taxes. Cut those government expenditures and their corresponding taxes. OK! When you need treatment for anything, we will drug test you. Care for anything related to your drug use you pay 100% -- no medicare money for you. That would certainly help reduce the strain on the health care system. Tax marijuana the way we tax cigarettes (& alcohol). Smoking cigarettes (& drinking) is probably at least as bad for your health as smoking marijuana, especially for those who smoke a pack or more a day. Yet, we don't "drug" test smokers (or drinkers).

Rae probably does get credit for the "knock out" punch, but I believe it was Dion who iniated the attacks against ignatieff, if I remember correctly. True, he fumbled quite a bit on his response. It must be hard when both of the candidates you are debating are against you. Me too. At the beginning of the debate, he asked if he could answer in french (and was denied). But I was also surprised that the english-speaking candidates didn't speak french very well. In fact, some of them reverted to english when they were supposed to be answering in french. Dion is understandable in english, but I don't think he gets his point across as smoothly as he would like.

I don't know, they both hit at him pretty hard. Dion criticized ignatieff at least as much as rae did.

Legalize it, and tax it just like alcohol. I disagree. How many people are bootlegging booze these days now that it's legal? Not many. Sure they could turn to dealing other drugs, but there is only so much room for drug dealing. If we assume that demand for hard drugs does not increase, there would be increased competition among drug dealers. You can only have so many people dealing hard drugs before profits start to diminish.

Compared to the rest of this board, I would consider myself left-wing. But only because this board is pretty right wing (I think it has shifted a little more to the center recently, it seems like it was more right wing a few months ago but I could be wrong). In general, I'd say I'm a centrist. Socially I am very liberal, financially I am center or even center-right. I like the fact that it's mostly righ wingers here, it gives me a challenge. No sense debating with myself right? At the same time I hope the right wingers on this board appreciate the few left wingers on here, otherwise they'd have no one to debate either.

Ok, it was a citation about islam/mohammad. It was still the pope saying those words. I don't believe the pope's apology that he doesn't agree with what he was saying. Why would you quote something in a speech if you didn't believe it to be true? History shows that back when mohammad was slaying people, so were Christians (luckily things have changed).

mohammad used the sword to spread the word of Allah hundreds of years ago, just like many Christians used the sword to spread the word of God. Did the pope also condemn Christians who spread the word of God though violence? I don't think Christians do that any more. However, religious violence seems to be quite fashionable in the Muslim world these days. True, but the pope's comments were about mohammad, who used violence to spread religion hundreds of years ago. mohammad is not spreading religion by violence anymore either (even though some of his followers are).

You completely missed my point. I wasn't talking about this forum or the posters here. I was talking about Muslims who threw a hissy fit during the muslim cartoon controversy who now seem to be throwing another hissy fit over free speech by the Pope. I was saying they are trying to shut up anybody who says anything they don't like. And I was saying this is wrong. Oh I see. Then why did you criticize liberals for not defending free speech? I assumed you meant liberals on this board. I'm a liberal, and I believe the pope should have the right to free speech. I don't think there are any liberals on this forum who are saying that the pope should not be allowed to say what he wants. There are people on this forum, however, who criticize what the pope said, and they should have that right to do so.

mohammad used the sword to spread the word of Allah hundreds of years ago, just like many Christians used the sword to spread the word of God. Did the pope also condemn Christians who spread the word of God though violence? I thought the pope mentioned something about that in his speech, but now I can't find where it was said (if at all). If he condemned christians of the past for "using the sword" as well, then his comments were justified. The pope is free to say anything he wants. People on this forum are free to criticize, or praise, the pope all they want. Either all speech is free or none at all. Where is the problem?

What qualifications did her predecessor, Adrienne Clarkson, have that Michaelle Jean doesn't?