ScottSA

There's a huge difference between fiscal conservatism and social conservatism. I suspect most Canadians are fiscal conservatives but are not social conservatives. What do CTB and GST cuts have to do with social conservatism? In any event, the Conservative Finance Minister in 2006 and again in 2007 was the biggest spending finance minister in the history of Canada. So the current government is hardly fiscally conservative. Even conservative columnists acknowledge this: http://andrewcoyne.com/columns/2007/03/fla...ig-spenders.php On July 1, 2006, the personal income tax rate of ALL Canadians was increased by the Harper government. That's not fiscal conservatism either. So Canada is saddled with a Conservative Prime Minister Harper whose free spending ways are hardly those of a fiscal conservative yet he remains a social conservative in many respects. You have misread both my post and the article you quoted. I said that if social conservatism is defined by Harper's actions so far, then most Canadians are social conservatives, because the CTB is family oriented and very popular. You can say that he's a social conservative as a sort of epithet, but it's kind of meaningless unless you can show how that affects the way he runs the country. The article for it's part doesn't claim that Harper has raised income taxes in the budget...it merely points out that the alleged tax cuts are in fact programs rather than personal income tax cuts. I agree and I'd be much happier to see across the board tax cuts instead of programs, but there are no tax increases, so you're wrong. As for the grand spending spree, I agree with that too, but Coyne is being a bit disingenuous when he forgets the difference between real dollars and unadjusted dollars.

Drea, this post of yours illustrates precisely my point. I suggest you think again when you state that it has "no effect on me today". I'm not sure I would compare an event such as the Depression and the experience of slavery. And I'm not trying to assess blame or point any fingers: I'm merely trying to explain a phenomenon.Mordecai Richler said that he was incapable of going to Germany. Jews today are vigilant in a way that they were not in 1925. It would be difficult to explain the existence of the State of Israel without reference to the Holocaust. I'm venturing the idea that a consequence of slavery, even generations later, is the difficulty to maintain a family. Of course many people overcome the inherited experience of the past. In some ways, I think posters here don't quite understand how devastating slavery is and how it affects all human relations. I recently read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs's autobiography. The book is remarkable because, from the past, it seems to answer the question in the OP. I can certainly understand Mordecai Richler's feeling, because he lived through the times. If slavery had been in full swing in 1960, I could understand the correlation between single motherhood and slavery too. But I would not understand an explanation from a Hindu that he beats his wife as a consequence of Sutti being abolished well out of living memory, or from an Irishman that he must steal because the Potato Famine taught his people that they have to steal to eat. One might argue that the Holocaust was more profoundly disturbing to Jewish culture than slavery could ever hope to be to African tribal culture, but I don't see Jews dispensing with fatherhood as a result. And by this argument, Australia ought to be suffering similar effects from the family separations of transported criminals to Botany Bay. Perhaps the greatest flaw in this argument is that Jamaica and Haiti stand virtually alone as an atomised society, and Black society in the rest of the Carribbean, not to mention Barbados, just doesn't have that problem. Yet they all got there as slaves.

It's hilarious watching all the pro-Liberal grasping at straws going on here. The Liberals will drop ten points the first time Dion shows his face during an election campaign.

Money is not a zero sum game, so I'm not sure there's as "grandiose" a scandal as you think.

I wouldn't pat me on the head Scotty, I scratch. Bush is benefitting marvelously - as the MIC continues to reap huge profits!! Follow the money Scotty!! Who benefits!! (You may want to read something other than Steyn though...) I don't know Buffy. Who benefits? How is Bush benefiting? I'd love to follow the money, but I'm having trouble finding this money trail. Can you be a bit more specific in how Bush is benefiting?

Bravo! Hilarious!

Do you actually read anything? Did you see the absence of Liberal causation? Does that not make any difference at all to you?

I think Harper is well on his way to defeat. Of course you do. And dithering Dion is the man to do it! I think in a match between Dion and the flipflopping Harper who has yet to flipflop on his social conservatism, Canadians won't pick the social conservative a second time. The only manifestation of his social conservatism has been allowing people to keep more of their money through the CTB and GST cuts. It happens to have been a very popular move. If that is representative of his social conservatism, I think you'll be surprised to find that most Canadians are social conservatives. You'll notice of course the absence of trucks pulling up to your door to herd you into churches or troops in the streets or all the panoply of evil conservatism the left was bracing for.

No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't give my life for anything. It's a highly counter-productive exchange. That's a sorry statement, but I guess it's reflective of much that ails our society.

I think Harper is well on his way to defeat. Of course you do. And dithering Dion is the man to do it!

Are you purposely ignoring the link from the government website that both I and hiti posted? There's a great deal from that site that you're ignoring too, including this: On average, Canadian homes and businesses required lower energy quantities for space heating in the winters of 2005 and 2004 compared to the winter of 2003 due to milder temperatures. In 2005, Heating Degree Days (HDD), an indicator of the necessity for space heating due to the severity of cold weather, were down 5 percent compared to 2003 and 2.2 percent compared to 2004, both on a National basis. This fact almost certainly had an impact on fossil fuel consumption, specifically in the residential and commercial/institutional sectors where emissions declined by a total of 4.4 Mt in the two year period. and this: The fossil fuel industries1, consisting of oil, gas and coal production, refining and transmission showed a rather small (0.5% or 3/4 Mt) growth between 2003 and 2005. During the period, average oil and gas production increased by only 1.2% annually. This appears to reflect the impact of hurricane Katrina on North American markets, as well as decreased synthetic oil production following a nine month shutdown at a major oilsands facility (due to a fire). But guess what we don't see? We don't see any government measures. Nothing. Nada. Dion did squat. We see a useless treaty signed and emmissions go down for a couple years due to the very thing these morons want to stop...warmer weather. If one takes the logic of this and runs with it, it would make more sense for us to belch CO2 into the atmosphere, causing more warmth, reducing the need for heating, thereby reducing CO2. This whole GW thing is a fucking howler, and Dion is the butt of the joke

With respect, of course it would affect my family history. It would more directly affect my father and mother, both of whom grew up during the in depression era Ontario and dustbowl Saskatchewan respectively. Their parents struggled to maintain a farm and a station master's income respectively. And of course it affects and informs discourse and actions today. But I don't hide money in my mattress or drive jalopies to California in search of work just because Steinbeck's protagonists did. If I were caught on the road in a jalopy on the way to California tomorrow, I could not reasonably claim that I'm following lemminglike in the foorsteps of the dispossessed from the depression, and that I can conceive of no other life because it occurred. It informs my history with the knowledge that economic crisis can happen and has happened, but it does not determine my future nor my actions. WW II informs our collective western history, in the sense that we have learned, or some of us have anyway, that appeasement rarely works and that modern total war can destroy societies. After all, to ignore Santayana's observation would be stupid. But that doesn't mean that we bomb Berlin or Tokyo every chance we get because WW II determines our actions. The depression and WW II happened within living memory and 1860 is generations out of living memory. Slavery does not determine the actions of Blacks. Slavery cannot reasonably be blamed for single motherhood.

There is no way Dion gets dumped before the next election. I actually think Kennedy will succeed Dion. Dion is very slowly improving his English. He has at least started trying to talk like real folk instead of a perfesser. He keeps repeating the same phrases over and over though. He can learn to talk like John Wayne, but that hand thing he does...the two fists held in front of him like he's about to mince into a torrential sob session, or scream like a poofta...that makes him look about as ineffectual as Neville Chamberlain's daughter.

Actually, it invites another perspective. Anywhere in Canada or in the US with a sizable number of "Whites", there will be higher crime rates compared to Asians. Why must Asians tolerate such crime and violence from Whites. What is wrong with "White" culture? Because we colonize them whenever they get uppity. And besides, your stats aren't true...the majority of gun deaths in Vancouver are caused and received by "Indo-Canadians."

This post contradicts itself. You made a statement and then proceeded to prove it wrong.

*patting buffy on the head* Yeah it's a big plot Buffy. Oh, wait. How is Bush benefiting again?

I think they are showing a lot of cunning in playing a weak hand to maximum advantage. Yeah, Hitler did that for 8 years. You would have admired him too. Then he stepped in a big pile of doodoo.

Gee Buffy! There you go getting all fluffed up again at first reading! You ought to know by now that in order for you to actually understand what people are saying, you have to lip read it over slowly numerous times until you hear the *clink* of a penny dropping!

There will be just more Senators for Dion to appoint once Harper is defeated. He isn't getting a Senate reform bill through the House before the next election. Harper would have to be caught eating dead babies to be beaten by Dion.

Oh puleeese. Next terrorist attack, you'll be howling at the top of your lungs demanding to know why you weren't protected better.

That wasn't my comment. I was pointing out that Israel could contentedly ignore this internal Palestinian conflict, if they were not responsible for protecting the civilians in territories they Occupy. But now that you mention it, yes, in a way Israel is partly responsible for this, by having thwarted the possible peace they could have had with Arafat, undermining the authority of the mainline PA, and advertently or inadvertently nurturing Hamas. Right. And Britain is responsible for the American civil war by thwarting the possible peace they could have had after 1813, and undermining the authority of the Northern Republic by advertently and inadvertently nurturing the CSA. You just gotta blame the Jews, huh?

I see the Liberals hereabouts are gloating themselves into an American-style Democratic mindset, so they can express shock and awe when Harper wins a majority, and set up an interminable wail about "stolen elections" for the next few years...

I guess they don't teach statistics in first year anymore, eh? Nice try though.

Handicapped folks are not handicapped by choice or self-definition. Further, the "concessions" made for handicapped people are in aid of them living to potential, whereas fags have no such bar to their potentiality.

Where are the fathers? Political correctness?--- Slavery explains the break up of families. Mothers were sold seperately from children, husbands seperately from wives. As opposed to family separation because of emigration, slave sales separated families without notice and without choice. And different from emigration, a family separated because of slave sales had in practice no hope of re-uniting. For several centuries, white people separated black families this way. Such sales stopped in America about 150 years ago and in Europe and Canada about 180 years ago. The Holocaust occurred almost 70 years ago. I have heard it said that it takes five generations to overcome a family's calamity. Maybe. But many (if not all) of these young men grew up in single mother families. This post just goes to show the length to which some people will go to somehow blame the white man for all the ills of the world. How utterly silly. Do tell why most carribean cultures don't have the same problem. Then lets talk about why the south american indian culture, which was just as vigorously enslaved as any Jamaican, and not just by the evil white man but by the indigenous pre-columbian empires for centuries before that, has one of the strongest family cultures in the world.