CLRV

What amazes me is that we're still having the debate; that it *takes* a movie to get people thinking about Climate Change. Just look out the f*cking WINDOW, folks. It's right there in front of you...

The thing I like best about Gore getting the award is how apoplectic with rage the righties are over it all. Never mind the anger and impotent frustraton of the rubes in here who are still stupid enough to ally themselves with the failed Bush administration (does anyone think they'd be poo-pooing the Nobel awards if Bush had won his nomination in 2003 instead of being so justifiably passed over). The blogosphere and the punditocracy (ie. the Republican Lie Machine) is going positively berserk and it's hilarious the lengths they're going to trying to denigrate this.. Pat Buchanan seethed on MSNBC that the Nobel awards is controlled by "Swedish socialists" (Earth to Pat, the awards come out of Oslo, Norway). Michelle Malkin, fresh from stalking a sick child and her family over the SCHIP debate, had to dig so deep as to point out that Czech president Vaclav Klaus was ‘somewhat surprised’ that Gore received the prize (would she otherwise care what the Czech president said about anything?) Talk about reaching. The people who are currently objecting the loudest about the so-called triumph of politics over science are the ones who have been trying the hardest to bury this scientific debate in politics from day one and are still attempting to do so. Their frustration arises from the fact that it's not working. The truth is getting out and people are waking up to reality. Gore got the award not for the science (that was done by the reputable scientists with whom he shares the award -- some of the Canadian . Gore got the award for the way he has gotten the science through the bullshit barrier erected by the liars of the rightwing agenda. Their rage and ranting today is music to my ears and balm to my spirit. Rave on, righties. Rave on...

The link you provide comes up just as sure as mine do.

In answer to your rhetorical question when did the NDP become an international party: the second they became a federal party. Whether you like it or not (and I like it that you don't like it), they are a federal party. So they actually have positions on federal issues. The only "pro-terrorism" parties, however, are the backwards-thinking militarist parties that think keeping our armed forces occupying other countries will somehow stop driving new recruits into the arms of the terrorists. Oh yeah, and the people that want to treat immigrants like crap. No better way to motivate homegrown terror cells than that.

Don't know what you think a "deadlink" is. All the links I provided go right to their places within the pdf file. Perhaps you should talk to this jbg fellow. In his world, Republicans don't talk about guns, Christianity, immigrants or taxes either. The "b" must stand for "Bizzarro". You were both made for each other.

It wasn't "funding schools" that was the problem. It was the "faith based" aspect -- another failed American concept -- that people balked at. Just like Harper's anti-drug hype and stubborn refusal to consider bringing the troops home will come back to surprise him with a bite on the ass in due course. Federal and provincial politics aren't as separate as you seem to think. People and policies cross over all the time.

I included the federal politics to demonstrate that broken promises take place all over the political scene -- trying to hammer home the point that self-serving focus on SOME broken promises while gleefully ignoring others (or downplaying them as you just did above) doesn't inspire credulity or respect. As for that "top fifty" list, it gives no context in which these "promises" were made and some of them are just too amorphous to BE promises. "Make sure health dollars are being spent wisely"? "Stop the waste of taxpayers' dollars"? Wisely according to whom? Waste according to whom? Somebody is always going to question how health or tax dollars are spent. So all you have to do is say "that's not wise" and it's a broken promise? Trumped-up nonsense. The electorate didn't fall for it. Better luck next time.

It doesn't take much effort to find examples of the last PC Ontario government being accused of "broken promises". Here's one. Here's another. The the current incarnation of the federal Conservative party was FOUNDED on a broken promise. It is disingenious and dishonest to feign outrage at broken election promises. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a politician who makes good on every promise made during an election campaign. To try and act like this is somehow a new thing or peculiar to only one party is outrageously hypocritical. To imply that somehow YOUR government, if elected, would be the first to avoid this political reality is an insult to the intelligence of the electorate.

Maybe you're one of those "ho-hum Walkerton" types? In which case, I won't waste my breath.

I have no love for Dalton McGuinty or his party. I'm just elated that things didn't go from bad to worse, as they surely would under a PC government.

Well, it's always a habit of mine to check before making statements. You should try it. In this case, one glance at his platform says it. On welcoming skilled immigrants. Good immigrants. Not the bad ones, the refugess and such. Not unless you note that their plan for dealing the skyrocketing gang homocides includes focus on drugs, grow ops, street youth and white collar crime (?!). In other words, everything BUT controlling the guns the gang-bangers are blowing each other away with.link. In such a case "nothing about gun control" is a conspicuous absence. Uh, yeah. He MAY have. "Fairness for taxpayers", "Fair property taxes" "Truth in taxes" Like I said, taxes-taxes-taxes. But apart from all that, I'm way off...

Coming from the Conservatives it certainly is.

I should more specifically say Republicanesque. Look at their platform. Law and order. Immigration. Taxes-taxes-taxes. Knitting together small pockets of disaffected outsiders -- gun nuts, religious fundamentalists, fag-haters -- in an attempt to cobble together a voting majority. It's a tried-and-true strategy that's served the Reps well in recent times and is only now being discredited by inevitable, abysmal, disasterous consequences. Americans will be picking up the pieces on this for years. But we Canadians are a perverse bunch. We do love to do stuff just because the Americans aren't doing it and vice versa. That's why I thought Tory stood a chance for a while there. It would be just like us to vote for all that garbage just when the Americans are finally getting how destructive it has been for them. Fortunately, I was worrying too much.

And the organized crime was just a pleasant side effect.

I have to say I'm happier with this morning's election headlines than I ever felt I would be. Not that I'm a Liberal supporter by any stretch, but it was quite a pleasure to see the Cons and their American-esque leader go down in flames yet again, relegated to second place for another four years to gnash their teeth and spew hypocrisy about "broken promises". Sucks to be them. Of course, the sour grapes gang in the mainstream media are falling all over themselves trying to explain it away on one issue: the religious schools thing. If only John Tory hadn't gone there, they say, the rest of his entire platform of conservative talking points lifted directly from south of the border (where they have been proven unquestionable failures all), it would have been handshakes and buns all around for the Conservative party this morning. Fat chance. Ontarians walked away in droves; if not to the Liberals then to the NDP and Green (proving once again that even with a thrice-divided left, the newly "united right" hasn't got a prayer among thinking, decent Canadians. The fact is that in Canada, the left is the huge majority. Deal with it. More proof? We also threw out that ridiculous Americanization of our electoral process euphemistically called MMP even more vigorously. Phew. What a trap for the unwary that was. Just like re-arranging the ridings a few years back; another attempt to rearrange the goalposts at halftime; a sad Conservative grasp at a chance for power in a country where most people won't vote for them. I hope Mr. Harper, who recently challenged the Opposition to "bring it on" in a no-confidence vote, is taking notes. Reading the press today, I doubt he is as cocky about the guaranteed success of his "stay-the-course/support-the-troops" crapola as he was yesterday. God Bless Ontario and Canada.

Ok, I'll be good... Mr. Layton. I used to live in your Toronto riding and still work there. I have voted NDP across the board for as long as I've been voting. I have been delighted recently with the leverage your party has wielded in a minority Parliament; forcing Harper to deal with issues which would otherwise have gone unregarded in order to avoid no-confidence situations. It cannot be easy working with conservatives and you deserve credit. However, I have to say I found the photo of you at the recent Quebec by-election, hugging and raising hands with the conservative candidate in joy over depriving the detested Liberals of their stronghold ridings, to be a little disturbing to say the least. Are you not afraid that at some point the dirt is going to rub off on you or, more to the point, that public perception will begin to regard you as being more interested in boosting the status of your party (which granted has flourished under your leadership) than about the real issues which have kept most thinking people voting for you?

Well, it's not very often the news tops the ratings. But there were plenty of other indications that America found Desert Storm an entertaining and enjoyable experience. Remember the trading cards? The video game? The other video games? The Hollywood Desert Storm Victory Parade with Bob Eubanks? Hulk Hogan vs. Sgt. Slaughter in a Desert Storm Match for the title? Speaking of stupid sitcoms, remember Wings and the sassy female chopper pilot from Desert Storm? The footage of the laser-guided bombs hitting with surgical precision, even though Gen. McPeak admitted that such bombs represented only 8.8 percent of the ordnance dropped? But it was a really cool shot, wasn't it? That's entertainment. Bush the Elder's approval rating went to 91% from that war, the highest for any president in decades before or since. That's more than enough proof right there how Americans loved that war. It was well observed and documented, I'm afraid. The Vietnam Syndrome had been beaten forever. For me, the best summary was Roger Waters' "The Bravery of Being Out of Range". It was directed to Bush the Elder but could just as easily be directed at Bush the Lesser (and his toadying sychophants). Read the lyrics or to hear it as it was meant to be heard. I believe you. However I also believe you might be a member of a rapidly shrinking minority; the Thinking American.

I guess I'll keep things in that perspective, then. Thanks. Remember when moral relativism was a sin only the anti-war left committed?

That's a joke, right? You're not actually calling the separatist squabble in Quebec a "war" on par with the Iran/Iraq conflict? Are you?

Obviously, you are among the minority of Americans who can still think for themselves. I already had devined that. Whether or not the cherry tree thing is currently believed, the point is it *was* part of "history" for a long time. Moreover, I believe that if someone conducted a poll about it, along the same lines as the ones about finding the WMD's, you might be more surprised than I at the results. Well you better look around you, then. If Americans didn't feel that way about WWII, you wouldn't see every anti-US leader worldwide compared to Hitler every time you turn around. You wouldn't see every advocate of peaceful solutions compared to Neville bloody Chamberlain either. How dare the French not rush into Iraq with us, after we *saved their asses in dubyah-dubyah-too*. Can you honestly say these things weren't said and not by a few? Actually, I don't think there are many Canadians who go around saying that we saved the world. We fought alongside many other nations against a rising tide of evil. We're proud of that, but we don't think we "won" the war the way Americans think they won the war. Well not only as tribute. They also believe God wants them to have it. Well you really should reconsider the idea. America wasn't always the superpower it is today. It was once just one of many large powers and not by any means the greatest among them. WWII changed that. Most of the other players on the big RISK board blew their roll in that big war. America sat things out long enough to be still swinging when the dust settled. For that reason alone, Americans can credit their good lives and good fortune. I wouldn't think it either if it was just the latest Iraq mission I was talking about. But look at the way Americans enjoyed the first Gulf War. Actively ENJOYED it. It topped the TV ratings of the time. Clinton didn't have any trouble convincing the American public that Slobbo was Hitler, either. How easy was it for Bush the Elder to actually portray PANAMA as somehow a threat to the USA, justifying an invasion? Operation Just Cause, indeed. Just cause we want it. These are patterns, not solitary isolated incidents. Historical patterns. History isn't just what happened to the dead guys. History is all around us.

Your pose of world-weary, big-picture wisdom is as tiresome as it is strained. It is a cheap suit slapped on nothing more than apathy, amorality and laissez-faire intellectual laziness. But thanks for the reminder about those factors. They are, after all, the final pieces in the puzzle that is Historical Revision -- American Style and I had neglected to mention them. Without a population steeped in these debilitating characteristics, the simple presence of a crooked government, corrupt oligarchy and compliant media isn't enough. People have to be willing pull the wool over their own eyes in order to murder history. Yours is as good a demonstration of that process as any. When you can show me a time when Canadians funded and armed both sides of a war between two other states, one side openly and the other side by violating our Constitution, lying to Parliament, and funding the process by providing shipping to cocaine cartels, I'll re-examine whether it is, in fact, "all good".

Historians? You mean those guys in universities and such places, who regard it as a science to conscientiously render the facts for future generations? They are too easily dismissed whenever they stray too far from the Party Line -- as ivory tower intellectuals or effete snobs out of touch with the real world or, worst of all, as LIBERALS poisoning the minds of our nation's youth just as sure as Socrates himself. No, I'm talking about history as in what people believe happened, not what actually happened. American "history" is filled with what I will kindly refer to as apocrypha, from the beginning (how many Americans still believe George Washington chopped down that cherry tree) to the present day (how many Americans still believe they found WMD in Iraq). Look at how the rest of the world views WWII -- a horrible catastrophe that took the lives of millions upon millions of people. Look at the size of anti-war rallies in those nations today. Look at how Americans view WWII -- the last "good war" where America saved everyone's ass, took its rightful place as leader of the Free World and accepted 50 years of unprecedented luxury and overconsumption as just tribute. Look how easy it has been to generate poll support for any US military invasion based on any premise. Historians spoke out against the flawed comparison of Saddam Hussein with Adolf Hitler -- a comparison that only the most historically ignorant mind could accept. Look at the success they had in getting those facts across to the American public. As for Bush, he's done what he was put in power to do as Figurehead of these United States. The wish list is complete. A stacked SCOTUS; reduced interference with government power; obscene tax breaks and further entrenchmen of power for the upper 1%; and an unwinnable war guaranteed to keep the military/industrial complex fed for generations. All he has to do now is play out the side. Little things like a ruined economy, thousands of dead soldiers, enemies on all sides abroad, the loss of the American Dream at home -- these can safely be left for the ineffective Democrats to assume blame. In short, all that's needed is to bury the bodies. Nobody is better at burying bodies than these evil men. They buried Iran/Contra. They can bury this. Believe it.

No, these boys are absolutely correct. In a surprisingly short period of time, G.W. Bush's presidency will be seen as a time of peace and prosperity, during which American Liberty grew and flourished under a benevolant, articulate genius who never failed to listen to the Voice of the People. Never underestimate the Republican spin machine's ability to re-write history. Nor should we discount the "liberal media's" willing complicity in propagating such disinformation without thoughtful analysis and a credulous public who can't remember what happened in the news last week, let alone a few years ago. Look how they re-did Reagan. They even made NIXON look nice for his eulogy. These liars can murder *any* truth. Believe it. -- Frank Zappa

I would wager the "experience" is as fictional as the "black belt". A black belt would recognize the use of reasonable force.

Q: How many cops does it take to beat up a 15-year-old girl? A: None. She fell. But seriously folks... After watching this, I'd have to say the cop did his job right up until the end. This "punch to the face" business is overstatement writ large. It was a simple bop on the beezer; more of an attention getter and surely not enough to do any physical damage. An attention getter, if you will, and certainly an adequate response to what was unquestionably an assault. If it were my kid, I'd be asking her did I raise her to be a fool. You don't initiate violence with cops. You just don't. IMO, it was the pepper spray that went over the top. That was just pure spite. You could see it on his face. Up to that point he was doing quite well at a difficult and unenviable task.