daniel

That 35% is the PC support base. It's the same 35% that voted PC in the October 2003 Ontario election and the same 35% in Ontario that voted for Stephen Harper's Reform/Canadian Alliance/neo Conservative party on June 28th. In both these cases neither Eves' party nor Harper's party had policy. Which brings me to my next point. Elections are won on perception - strong leader vs perceived weak leader. No matter how draconian the strong leader may be the perception of leadership will garner the votes. Examples: Mulroney vs Turner; Harris vs McGuinty. In both these cases, Mulroney and Harris in their first term both implemented far reaching overly ambitious policies that were both described and hidden from the public at election time. By the time of their re-election campaigns the results of their efforts had not fully surfaced, the public perception is still strong but weakened due to the smarter segments of society revealing the true nature of the incumbent's policies. But the opposition parties are still perceived to be too weak to be given the reigns of power. Re-elected and then guess what? The first term policies show their results in the second term. Reality sets in. Infrastrure has been destroyed. Schools don't have enough money to supply textbooks to students. Students graduate with $60K debts. The remaining of hospital staff are overworked. Quality inspection compromise public safety. And the leaders Mulroney and Harris suddenly jump ship leaving the next poor schlop to pick up the mess and try to garner an election survival. That 35% support for PCs isn't the general public but die-hard rightwingers who will support anything that's not under the Liberal or NDP banner.

You want to know what else Harris inherited from Bob Rae? A growing economy. It's also been reported that during the final year of NDP, Ontario had the highest economic growth of any G7 region. Take a guess what the Common Sense Revolution left behind. Because corporations create jobs, should they be: exempt from Labour legislation? exempt from the Human Rights Code? exempt from environmental regulations? exempt from the criminal code? exempt from local legislation of sovereign governments?

Even on election night of the NDP win, everyone knew the NDP was going to spend their way out of the recession. So at the end of their term (love'em or hate'em) there wasn't any big surprise. Compare that to the end of the Harris government when - surprise, surprise - big deficit, infrastructure chaos, poisoned water, hospital lineups, constant labour unrest, underfunded schools etc, etc. and the porkbellying and corporate welfare keeps on truckin'. Latest news on the Socred/Liberal front: Canada's Galapogos (Queen Charlotte Islands) will be open for oil drilling again. Got to keep the economy running, eh?

Are you sure that was the NDP's own doing and nothing to do with the world economy under Clinton? And certainly the Ontario Conservatives did kill the infrastructures of the municipalities. Now the Socred/Liberals and Conservative/Liberals are trying the same thing in BC and Quebec.

Whenever someone claims he knows the absolute truth because it's stated in the Bible, I go back to the days when I studied in Philosophy 101 Rene Descartes and the Cartesian circle. That essay got my head spinning.

So you blame the NDP doubling the deficit? What would you expect a government to do during a recession? Lay more people off? So you give Harris credit for creating 750,000 new jobs. Are you sure that was his own doing and nothing to do with the US economy under Clinton? So you oppose the NDP's increasing of welfare to levels above minimum wage. Are you proposing to increase minimum wage as well? I thought right-wingers were opposed to increasing the minumum wage. Bob Rae was highly educated. Who said nurses can go the way of the hula-hoop?

Can you prove it?

That $50billion sounds familiar. Oh yes, that's almost $1billion a week just like what George Bush is doing. Tuning Bill Clinton's surpluses into a big massive deficit. So anything George does, Harper wants to copy cat.

"The question was that health care costs had been skyrocketing, but it seemed to many that his only solution was throwing more and more money at it. " Actually, he started addressing the issue of skyrocketing health costs by looking at environmental issues - something that was not debated at all and we all know the Reform/Alliance/neoConservative position on that. Unfortunately, the debate was cut short. "Layton and his simplistic solutions go over well on TV, but not in real life. " Cut-and-spend; cut-and-spend. What's more simplistic than the Common-Sense-Revolution and Reaganomics? In both of these cases, the outcome has not been what was desired: Reagonomics tripled the deficit and the CSR created a crumbled infrastructure. "When he was a Toronto city councillor he was always trying to stick his nose into provincial and federal business. Now he aspires to be a federal politician and right off the bat he wants to stick his nose into provincial and municipal matters. " Now that's the kind of leader we need. Someone who knows all the issues and problems from the municipal right to the international level. With Martin and/or Harper, they wouldn't know because they are so far removed. And Harper called 80% of Canadians a "Special Interest Group". A term Harris always liked to use when creating class warfare.

From http://www.tokyotightwad.com/blueprintdebunking.html "According to the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC), "[w]hen you consider population growth, aging, and inflation, real health care spending in Ontario has remained flat since the Conservative government came to power." I am frankly amazed that it would increase considering all the hospitals the Tories shut down in their first term. The OHC also says, "In fact, provincial health care spending has actually shrunk as a percentage of the provincial economy (from 5.7% of the economy before Harris in 1994-5 to 5.3% in 2000-01). It has also shrunk as a proportion of provincial revenues (from 38.2% in 1994-5 to 35.1% in 2000-2001) - despite massive tax cuts. " So much for the increases. The 20% guarantee is in question now (Sept. 2001) as the Tories now say that spending is out of control. As far as the "politically risky action," I guess they are refering to when they laid off about 10000 nurses then hired them back again with federal funds. " But I guess you'll likely brush this off as left wing ranting without any basis of reality. The moon landings were a hoax, eh? Not even the RightWing Fraser Institute states the deficit being only $1.6billion. As far as the $10billion deficit, 1) like it or not we all knew the NDP was going to spend their way out of a recession didn't we? So there's nothing surprising about that. 2) the the NDP inherited the recession from Brian Mulroney - the predicted results of the FTA. 3) not only did Harris inherit the $10billion deficit from the NDP, he also inherited a booming economy. 4) All those Tory good-news budgets to balance the budget resulted in a deficit-surprise, surprise. Blame it on Sars or whatever. It just proves cutting budgets to their bare-bones does not allow flexibility in times of emergencies. And there were lots of emergencies during the Tory rein: Aylmer Meat Packing, Walkerton, crises in the schools, etc. I guess you were asleep at the time.

Hey, Argus: The Tories laid off a whole bunch of nurses and told them to go the way of the hula-hoop. Later, they started hiring them back but not enough so the result was an overextended system when SARs broke out. Ever wonder why it got so bad in Toronto but not in Vancouver? As for your claim that Dalton is the most hated Premier, I assume you are referring to the tax increases in the budget. Well, if you have to restore funding to something that was cut by 50%, the increase is 100%. Simple math. What do you expect him to do the restore the damage done by the Tories accounting for the extra $5.6billion deficit left behind. Plus Harris promised to end corporate welfare too.

Are you opposed to a society where people are allowed to be free with their opinions (provided their opinions do not infringe upon similar freedoms of others)?

The only thing that country really needs is a real name.

As long as Americans are dropping two-a-day, there's not much more that terrorists really need to do. Iraq has made the terrorist operations much more efficient. Instead of terrorists going around the world looking for targets, all the targets came to them.

With Eves, nothing was further from the truth. That applied to almost everything he heard. So in effect, everything he heard is the furthest from the truth.

Over to you, daniel. Answer: Ontario PCs. And guess who was Premier and still is a Reform/Canadian Alliance/Conservative heavy-weight?

Over to you, daniel. What kind of people can support a party born from a fundamental breech of contract?

And not to mention, those Reformers/Canadian Alliancers and Conservatives all voted in favour of MPs pay hike. I wonder how the "new" Conservative party can keep up any promises to voters when they couldn't even honour contracts they made between themselves? And lastly, guess which party owns the first Canadian political scandal?

Harper as Prime Minister? And I quote (from way back): "This is no time for on the job training."

Boy, do you two have short memories.

It would be quite easy for Democrats to produce ads against Bush. They should go something like "George...clearly not up to the job." The unfortunate thing is, Kerry only has $30million vs Bush's $143million for campaigning.

This is an American right-wing Republican speaking his mind. He is not anti-american or defeatist, nor is he a traitor or a Canadian. pekingduck

It's already been happening. I believe the Mormans uphold the practice of polygamy under God.

Greg, you might have privately warned righturn and that would be fine. But your warning to Bushmustgo was public so the image you portray is biased - especially when I cannot find those four postings you state.

I've searched the last five posting from Bushmustgo on this thread and couldn't find anything that supports your claim. Except for the pretzel statement, everything else reads reasonably well. But you don't find anything wrong that personal attack just prior BMG's last? Righturn, I'd like to introduce to you Derek who gives credit to Bush for bringing America out of the recession - even though Bush also brought us into it. You can teach him your argument about the business cycle and therefore all that hoopla about tax cuts has no relation to job creation.