Canuckistani

Where does the Bible call for the death of non-believers? If it's in the old testament, Jesus specifically came to obviate it. (So I don't understand why it's part of he Christian bible.) I can't see Jesus calling for the death of non-believers - hell he was trying to make his followers better Jews, not Christians. He was real peeved that the non-Jews seemed to be following his teachings better than his Jewish followers.

The Supreme court has said that FN's hold rights over their traditional lands. (In BC, more than 100% of land is claimed by FN's) The charter specifically gives aboriginals extra rights - I believe this lies at the heart of the Supreme's decision. They may not say the FN's own the land outright, but meaningful consultation gives them a lot of blackmailing power. Time to change the charter to say all Canadians have equal rights, no matter their ancestry.

Not sure what any of that has to do with the issue of who owns the land. IMO, Canada should have long ago declared dominion. So do it now, Change the charter as necessary, but enough of this bullshit of FN's sitting back and collecting rent. For one thing the rent is never enough. My understanding is the original treaties called for payment of $4 a year. I have no problem with that. But better would be to just declare that Canada owns the land it sits on. What a rediculous concept otherwise.

Yep. Betsy is the Dogma Meister. With so man Christian sects having different dogma and different interpretations of the bible, by Betsy's own logic Christianity has been thorougly disproven.

And had the churches and state been more successful we wouldn't have the problems we do today. How exactly is FN culture different from ours? They seem to have the same material wants as we do - many of then just live under the illusions they get to be landlords and collect rent without working for those material wants. I think any rational person knows it's not feasible for them to truly live in the traditional ways, and most FN's don't seem inclined to do so. To function in modern Canada they need to know English or French and work at something. They are a smalll minority, but are of course welcome to try to keep their laguages and cultural customs alive, same as immigrants do, but if they want what we've got, they've got to live more or less as we do. Yes, they were abused in the past, but decrying assimilation just seems like bullshit to me. Can't have what the white man has but live like your ancestors did.

The idea that modern life is alienating has been around for a long time. I've heard it all my life, Marx and Seeman talked about it, Durkheim had his anomie. Pretty hard to question I think. But I also remember a study that found much more depression on remote farms in New Zealand. It said that people who voluntarily move to the country are happy there, but people who feel stuck there aren't. Still, just as our digestive system isn't adapted to the modern diet, it seems reasonable that our emotional system hasn't adapted to our modern way of life. Stress for instance. In hunter gather times, things were very relaxed with short, sharp moments of stress. Modern life has constant stress, not something our body is designed for.

What does size have to do with growth? Growth is a relative term, as used here. But you're right, the US really has nowhere to go but up - we hope. Still, Harper got the credit, he's got to take the blame. Somebody started a post here recently crowing about employment numbers and how Harper made it happen. As I predicted, they did not crowt about the recent employment numbers that were much worse than expected.

We see that in the people whom Obama got to run finance - the usual suspects. And his actions haven't matched his rhetoric. The party you're talking about is the RPPP, I think.

Just saw an interview in PBS with an economist who said that banks began to subvert Glass-Steagal as soon as it was passed. They found ways around it, then they found ways to get the politicians to weaken it, and finally they got Clinton to repeal it. http://billmoyers.com/episode/preview-taming-capitalism-run-wild/ He questions what kind of society would have people living in 40 million condos while outside people live in abject poverty. He gives some examples of how this poverty affects children, and makes the idea of equal opportunity for all a blatant lie.

I don't think you need corporate cronyism with govt assisting industry where merited. It should be done in a businesslike fashion is all. Ie loans are actually repaid, tax exemptions are re-evaluated each year to see if they still have merit, etc. You can't uphold the Olympic Village as an example. That was a complete mess made by successive city govts. Makes no sense to put social housing in one of the most desirable locations in Vancouver, nor to have it go green at huge expense. The number of units they could have built on cheaper land using lower cost building methods is just a real shame. I'm not talking about creating ghettos, but you don't put them in prime locations either. Actually in the end, they talked about housing firefighters and such there, at a subsidized but still high rent. There isn't a homeless person that's going to get within miles of those. Homeless people need to be housed in places where there are services to help them, not just a place to live. If they can be rehabilitated, then you can look at social housing - same as is provided for poor families and seniors. That doesn't have to cost top dollar either.

In a modern economy, the govt does seem to have a role to play in helping industry. There are investments than govt can make that do give more in return. They just need to be managed properly. You're mixing up social housing - mostly for low income families and housing for the homeless. I'm just not aware of any 500k units being built for social housing. I did a quick google but couldn't find anything. Do you have some examples?

I doubt it. Far too much time has passed. Especially if things pick up (doubt it) people will just want to get on with making money again, and never mind the lessons of the past. If things are going poorly, many seem to ready to buy the rightwing snakeoil anyway., or just be too afraid to rock the boat in case the bossman takes the jobs away.

I don't think any have been proven to be false, since there is no proof that will satisfy the believers. Ancient fossils found in ancient geological strata? Why, God created that to test the faith of believers, who know the earth is only 6000 years old. He can do anything, you know. Geology and the physics and chemistry it's based on are obviously false. For one thing not all scientists agree with each other 100% on every facet of physics and chemistry, never mind evolution. But, come on, we're having way too much fun here. As Betsy has said herself, we would just ignore her otherwise.

Sure. But no homeless are being "given" condos like that. Nor even housed in them. For the supportive housing study they took over an old hotel as well as putting some people in lower end rental accomodation. As I said, the study found it's actually cheaper to do that then leave them on the street and have the health and criminal system deal with them. These people were stablized by this supportive housing, and some even found work. Unfortunatley funding for this has come to an end.

Or if they really followed Christ's injunction to give away all that they have. Or the one about the mote and log.

I think you've gone off the rails here. The rich are able to influence govt policies - not just direct subsidies but tax breaks, which means while they nominally pay a lot of tax, in fact they often don't. You're right they're looking after their own interests, but those often conflict with what's best for society. In effect cutting their own throats in the end. It's the modern version of Lennin's dictum about the capitalists selling the communists the rope with which the will be hanged. You're way off on your social housing thing. I said supportive housing - that includes health and mental health people's salaries. It was found there's a savings of about $20k a year per homeless person to do it this way instead of letting them rot on the street and then trying to pick up the pieces. Their living quarters are quite modest. I agree that a lot of social housing (ie for poor people) sounds way overpriced for what you get, that is an area where some proper management could see large savings, I think. I've never heard of homeless people being "given" any housing (ie ownership), let along 500k ones. More like a nice cardboard box.

In the case of the rich, the govt isn't offering, the rich are demanding - they own governmen to a very large exetent. Now maybe they feel since they pay the most taxes they deserve it, but it's not helpful. Efficient spending would be investing it in people so they need less govt help, or minimize costs to govt. Like it's cheaper to pay for supportive housing for the homeless than have the health and criminal systems deal with them.

No argument. You're leaving out co-operation tho, which is neither total self-interest nor altruism. People want to feel a part of something and work together. They do this not only for selfish reasons. This is the reason societies need to find that middle way you talk about, where everybody feels they have a reasonably fair deal. The rich don't seem to care much about their taxes being spent efficiently, since they seem to like subsidies for themselves just fine. Efficient use of taxes would be to reduce poverty, because poverty is expensive in terms of lost productivity and health and justice system costs.

Agreed about communism. Just as the Randians fail because they presume we can have a society where everybody just works for themselves. Just as economics fail because they assume people act as if they are all Randians.

that's a good point. Same as people here arguing evolution with you - you have no understanding of it, it's futile. But who said futulity can't be fun? Here's a clue tho. Them pointing out doctrinal differences between Christian sects is analgous to you pointing out differences between evolutionists. According to you, it invalidates evolution, so applying the same logic, they've invalidated Christianity. But then applying logic isn't really what this is about, is it?

We'll never have totally equal societies, whether by country or individually, nor should be try. But we also don't have to give way to rampant greed. No country can operate that way, every country has some sort of wealth redistribution scheme. But on a global scale there are no controls like that - just people trying to grab everything for themselves. Ultimately I think this is doomed to collapse, but it sure won't be pretty when it does. And it may be that technology allows those who get to the top to basically stay there. If people really believe in meritiocracies, then each generation should start out exactly equal as to resources. Ie rich kids and poor kids get exactly the same upbringing, and nobody inherits a dime. Don't see that happening either.

Dream on guyss. With globalization what we're seeing is a harsher, rougher capitalism, not the reverse. We're seeing the creation of a global elite, supported by the tech people, 20% of the pop tops, with the rest more and more reduced to a form of serfdom. We're importing the organization of the 3rd world, instead of exporting what we had, while we export our middle class jobs to the 3rd world. I used to believe in globalization, because I thought it would lift everybody up - instead, as I say, we're getting an entrenched elite that will owe allegiance only to each other, ie the money, not their countries. And they'll have the technology to keep it that way. We have way too many people on the planet, most are redundant with technology. As I just read, most people will wind up specializing in whether they clean the deep or shallow end of the rich people's pools. Presumably the deep end guys will get a few cents more.

Rape has a spectrum from somebody pushing an ambivalent woman to have sex or the kind of thing Assange is accused of to what happened in India. And so do the consquences of being falsely accused fall on a spectrum from not much harm done to people being falsely executed for it. I don't think you can generalize here.

You missed this part: Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/02/22/chevrolet-ss-criticized-in-israel-for-evoking-name-nazi-organization/?intcmp=features#ixzz2LkyXpa9r Reminds me of the comedian Kevin Pollack doing a bit about what a bad idea the bacon and egg bagel was for BK. Never had one, but what's not to like? I'm sure they sell them like hotcakes. Talk about an ethnocentric pov. Chevy has had SS models for over 50 years, you'd think people would have got over it by now. Must have been a slow news day.