Wild Bill

Topaz, who says it will? McGuinty had said a couple of years ago that we were all going to get rich making windmills. We don't seem to hear much talk about that anymore.

I agree, MB. Mulcair IS in trouble! Young Trudeau will steal much more support from the NDP than the Tories. In his OP, Michael stated that Trudeau as leader could cost the Liberals the next two elections. I would think that without someone like Justin the Liberals would be DEAD within two elections! The Liberals are sliding into the abyss! The NDP has eaten them for lunch and expelled them out for fertilizer! They are done like dinner if nothing drastic happens. I've mentioned this before. I think the Liberals should forget about winning and concentrating just on surviving. Trudeau probably couldn't win an election but his sheer charisma might stop the Liberal slide. If he can just stop the losses that would be enough. I'm betting he would do more than that and recover a respectable number of seats, especially in Quebec. Give it two terms and the Liberals would be in a far healthier position to pick a true warrior leader and start trying for the brass ring again. The Liberals had better think long term or there will be no Liberals to matter.

Actually Boges, I do find some of the CBC's humour to be funny but its very spotty. The problem seems to be when some of their comedians drift into politics. Air Farce was good at this because they skewered all politicians equally, lampooning every one not only in sight but that they could even think about! Rick Mercer is also good at this, making fun and teasing politicians of both the left and the right without being at all cruel. Others like Mary Walsh are not so fair minded. Outside of politics she could make me laugh until my sides split. Then she would pervert her job into some leftwing pulpit to attack and demonize Mike Harris and later Steven Harper, in a cruel,personal and frankly puerile manner! She would say something like "Steven Harper blows dead bears in the woods, when they are not looking!" as if she had just Eddie Murphy at his best during his Saturday Night Live days, when she actually sounded like some Grade 8 loudmouth in the school yard. This is why I have often suspected that many on the left have a screw or two loose.

Manny, I guess you don't know much about rocketry. Sending fuel rods to the sun is cheap as borscht! First off, you seal some rods in a container that if a rocket ever crashed would protect the rods from scattering. Make the cargo one big strong lump of metal or ceramic, or both. The weight of such a cargo is mice nuts for most of the boosters in use today. The cargo sent to the International Space Station would likely mass more. You don't have to boost it all the way to the Sun. That would be an extremely expensive and inefficient approach, I grant you, but any rocketry engineer who suggested doing that would be fired as a "nob extreme" on the spot! You simply get your payload free of Earth's gravity and into a slow orbit that will eventually end up in the Sun. The nuclear waste will slowly drift along and in a few years get close enough to the Sun to get drawn in and obliterated. The cost would be very low, certainly FAR less than what we spend on storage now!

Then why were you repeatedly trying to get people to accept your joke as funny? Why did you keep posting "Tourism! Don't you guys get it?" You seemed to think that somehow your joke had flown over everyone, when it was just that no one found it funny. If you are indeed a comedy writer Michael, I hope for your sake you work for the CBC.

There was a great editorial cartoon published in a British newspaper nearly 100 years ago Tim that illustrates perfectly how socialism works. It shows some socialists in silk stockings and top hats riding on the back of a pig. They are drinking its blood from a tube inserted into its body, from champagne glasses. In the next panel, the pig dies, obviously from blood loss. The socialists have all hopped off and are skipping along to hop on the back of another pig!

Sorry Michael. You just weren't funny! You make too much of a stretch. No one believes it. It's too obvious you were reaching to try to make a valid joke. This type of joke has appeal because even though it's full of hyperbole there is a big enough grain of truth for people to recognize. Tourism just doesn't cut it. Most liberals don't understand this kind of humour, because they never see or believe in the failings of the "system" that generate it. It's why talk radio is virtually entirely rightwing. A Rush Limbaugh can make people laugh and cheer, even people who aren't overly rightwing. Al Franken tries a liberal talk radio show and can't attract anywhere near the same number of listeners, because he just can't make the same impact. He hasn't the same examples of liberal approaches that not only don't work but are ironically humorous. He only has ad hominem material about various rightwing prominent people being "mean". Again Michael, sorry! You just aren't funny!

Depends on your yardstick, jacee. I had read the article you cited. It doesn't tell the entire story. Hamilton is starting from very far back. We get some new business that provides 400 new jobs. This gets touted as "happy days are here again!". What no one mentions is that the steel companies alone went from nearly 20,000 workers to less than 900. The losses are far, far greater than the number of new positions. What's more, the new positions pay far less and tend to hire younger workers fresh into the job market. So yes, Hamilton might be the leader in growth. That doesn't mean all those middle aged factory workers are working again, at anywhere near the same wages as before. I'm not saying that what growth is happening is not positive. Just that it's not exactly how it is portrayed in the media. There is a great deal of cheerleading going on. It's nobody's fault, really. Most of the job losses in Hamilton are the result of more modern manufacturing techniques. You can produce more steel today with nearly 1/20th the number of workers. It's just that the rate of change has been too rapid for many to adjust. Yes, new types of jobs have been created but as I said, they usually are not jobs for those who lost what they had - just jobs for the next generation. Even then, unemployment for those fresh out of school is still far too high. Again jaycee, it's all in how you measure it.

Smallc, I don't believe it! As I have said before, I took a job for a few months back in the late spring with a charity call centre, calling businesses to ask them to sponsor various charities. I called on literally several thousand Ontario businesses. The pickings were very slim! The number of businesses shutting down or moving out of Ontario was frightening. The computer had history of previous years donations for most of the businesses I called. Even as recent as last year the average amount sponsored or donated was much higher. So I don't deny that you may have official stats saying things are rosy but that is contradictory to my direct experience. Perhaps the time lag with compiling stats may be a factor. My experience was only a couple of months ago and the dip seemed to have come on relatively quickly. Meanwhile, unemployment is still high and has shown no sign of dropping, except for those whose benefits have expired and they drop out of the reports. My phone call sampling covered southern Ontario down to Windsor, Niagara Region, east to Kingston and north to Ottawa. The job ads in the local paper barely fill one newspaper page most days, all categories combined. I guess I live in a different parallel universe, Smallc!

Politics Manny, not science, is responsible! The scientists and the engineers never thought they would have to deal with ignorance that had a great deal of political power. You see, there are many perfectly safe disposal solutions. A borehole a few miles deep into the Canadian Shield is one. That rock has not shifted in hundreds of millions of years. It is not within the realm of possibility that it will shift within the next hundreds of millions of years. We're talking several miles thick of basalt and granite here! There are no fault lines and even if there were, they would be beneath miles of such rock that no crack could possibly reach through. There is also firing spent rods into the Sun. Every possible solution has been shot down by the anti-nuke movement! As I have said before, it is always very easy to criticize when you don't have to provide a positive solution yourself. The anti-nuke group does not WANT a solution! They want no nuclear power at all! So they sit back and object to every proposal anyone dreams up. When you are criticizing, you can stretch points out of all proportion. When you deal in "what if" you can bring forth objections that could only happen in a million million years and ... that's enough! They are very skilled at frightening uneducated people, uneducated people who vote! Politicians respond to those votes. So nuclear waste gets stored, never safely disposed. Nuclear plants hit the end of their life span and no more are built. Alternate power sources are used, that cost more money and often are not as clean to the environment as nuclear. The politicians don't care! People pay more and no one really notices the nuclear waste piling up. Every year it gets more expensive to store the waste. People's taxes go up but taxes always go up! Electricity rates go up but again, they always go up! People get what they want. As a populist, I support that. I don't agree with it and I personally feel that most folks are boneheads. I resent being included in those who have to pay more for what I consider no good reason. Still, the majority has spoken. Perhaps someday the majority will understand what these approaches are really doing and really costing them. If so, people will finally learn. Unfortunately, as a group this is the only kind of lesson that will stick - one that is hard and expensive.

Apples and oranges, Bud. There are always collateral deaths in a war. Drones have reduced such to the lowest number per strike in Man's history! There would be even fewer if the enemy did not use civilians as shields. As I have said before, when America or Israel hit their enemy, they may unfortunately kill a few civilians around the target. When a Islamist extremist straps on a bomb, civilians ARE the target! To me, those who TARGET civilians are evil! Even if you could provide me with irrefutable evidence that America is doing this, it would not make be forgive those who use suicide bombers and the like.

You may be right about the points you've mentioned Smallc but I have personally talked to a few businesses that are moving to upper New York because of the dramatic rise in electricity costs since McGuinty came to power.

Maybe, Topaz. Still, I can't help but think that McGuinty driving up the price of electricity so high didn't help to keep the corporations in Ontario. That's just one of the dumb things he did. If he let the corporations make the rules then why have so many decided to leave? Or just gone out of business. That must be it! They got their own way so they went out of business, just for the fun of it! Somehow, I don't think we can hold McGuinty totally blameless for what has happened in Ontario.

Forgive me Michael but to arbitrarily jump to the conclusion that it is "guilt by association" is in itself "muddle-headed and emotional thinking". What has to be established is whether or not this was an isolated spontaneous act of a few bad apples or a cultural aspect of a large group. Only when a problem is properly understood can it be corrected. By large group I am NOT saying all Muslims everywhere! Please do not take my argument to some ridiculous extreme. It may or may not involve religion or nationality. Nothing should be ignored or taken for granted. The obvious inference here is that it was religious racism on the part of the rapists against girls not of their religion or their cultural heritage. It's possible that is true! Racism is not solely a white Christian man's disease. The most racist man I ever met was a Hindu. Ethnic cultures exist in every society. They vary from city to city and from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. There are also youth cultures, usually spawned and encouraged by those who make money selling them music and fashion. It would be important to try to find out what happened in this situation. Perhaps there is some radical Imam spreading nonsense, or some local thug who is a hero to this sub-culture. It all gets back to culture when we start to deal with groups and not individuals. What about the culture of the UK police force? Perhaps the idea that they did not act for fear of being labelled racist is true? There may have been specific examples of policemen unfairly reprimanded as racist before. We don't know, which means that before one can give a considered opinion one would have to find out! To just immediately decide on the basis of one's own biases would indeed be "muddle-headed and emotional thinking".

This joke was in my inbox. Wasn't sure where to post it but if we look past the humour and examine the point perhaps we have something worth discussing. ONTARIO: Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and attacks the Premier's dog, then bites the Premier. The Premier starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie "Bambi" and then realizes he should stop because the coyote is only doing what is natural. He calls animal control. Animal Control captures the coyote and bills the province $200 testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it. The Premier goes to hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and on getting his bite wound bandaged. The running trail gets shut down for 6 months while Fish and Game conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is now free of dangerous animals. The Premier spends $50,000 in provincial funds implementing a "coyote awareness program" for residents of the area. The provincial legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world. The Premier's security agent is fired for not stopping the attack. The province spends $150,000 to hire and train a new agent with additional special training re: the nature of coyotes. PETA protests the coyote's relocation and files a $5 million suit against the province. ALBERTA: Premier Alison Redford is jogging with her dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and attacks the dog. The Premier's security agent shoots the coyote and keeps jogging. The Premier has spent $0.50 on a .45 ACP hollow point cartridge. The crows eat the dead coyote. ....................... And that, my friends, is why Ontario is broke and Alberta is not.

Are you suggesting that the opinion of a left wing MP is not valid?

Pat, I happen to agree with you about the Turks and Caicos issue. I also appreciate that you put such effort to make a post about it here in this thread. Thank you for taking the time and showing such interest. However, it would work better if you took some time to get an understanding of how this board works. Posts are organized into threads about various subjects. That way, people know what is being discussed in any particular thread and can pick and choose those that interest them. So it is important to fit a post into the proper thread. If it is a new topic, it should be placed in a new thread of its own. Perhaps your post about these islands should have gone into a "Rest of the World" category, or if it concerns a choice and opportunity missed by our Canadian government, the Canadian Politics/Federal Politics sub-category. Threads can go on and on for up to hundreds of pages! If we don't try to keep things organized no one will be able to find anything. Your post here is not really about the F-35 purchase at all. It will tend to be ignored and forgotten quickly. If you were to repost it to be a new thread of its own you would likely see a lot of replies from people interested in this specific issue. Again, welcome aboard!

Well, you could try this link to The Telegraph, of an article printed last May: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9253250/Rochdale-grooming-trial-Police-accused-of-failing-to-investigate-paedophile-gang-for-fear-of-appearing-racist.html "However, the true number of victims, who were "passed around" by the gang, is likely to be nearer to 50, police have admitted." "Complaints to social workers and the police were ignored because they were "petrified of being called racist", former Labour MP for Keighley Ann Cryer said." The article is a good read and seems to be quite the reliable source, Michael. It would be worth your while to read the entire thing.

Somewhere some Taliban types are laughing at us! The cartoon rage and the associated riots are obviously fabrications for terrorists' purposes. Even the average Muslim on a middle east street corner can understand that there is a difference between a movie produced by an individual who happens to reside in America and an action of the government of America. Should Americans condemn the entire country of Libya for the murder of their ambassador? A murder that was never committed by their new government but rather by some extremist animals who happened to be in Libya at the time? No, cartoon rage is just an excuse to commit violent protest against western targets. Anyone who believes otherwise is simply naive.

I would define it as a animal who practiced an extreme faith that happened to be based on Islam beheaded a human being. I would no more blame all Muslims for such a crime than I would blame all Christians for the actions of Jim Jones and his "Drink my Kool-Aid" massacre. That being said, I will not excuse a murderous animal just because he hides behind belonging to an extremist form of Islam. I will not let my condemnation of that animal and those like him to be deflected by falsely claiming it is an attack on all Muslims. It is not. It IS an attack on an animal!

Ah, I see. "Weasel words"! From what I understood Waldo, it appears we have a treaty that seems to definitely say something but has a few loopholes that diplomats could use to weasel out, lawyer fashion. This might and does fly in a civil court but I am not certain as to how nations would view it. If America reneged the Chinese would be happy but if I were another country I might feel very differently of ever making any deals with America. Again, a lawyer might win with technicalities and legalisms but nobody ever likes a skunk at a picnic. Does America really want its image to the world to be Johnny Cochrane? It has recently been revealed that he tampered with the famous glove that didn't fit O J Simpson. If America chose this route the damage to its credibility with the Japanese could be enormous.

I admit I don't understand all the ramifications, Dr. Dre. Still, I happen to believe that nations should honour their treaties. If America does not honour its treaty with Japan then what worth is America's word? Who would ever expect America to honour a treaty again? It would be an enormous kick in the crotch for Japan. Why on earth would they ever again trust America?

Personally, I have nothing against Muslims. No more or less than any other religion. Islamists however are a different kettle of fish. There are Islamist cultures in many backward countries in the middle east. As far as I am concerned by their acts I judge them. They are beasts, not men. Primitives who are barely above cannibalism and even that would not surprise me. It's as if we discovered a jungle tribe of cavemen who through some accident were also Christians! They are a disgrace not just to modern Muslims but to Mankind as a species. We should treat them as the mad dogs they are! Tell it to David Pearl!

You're right, Waldo! I remember the suggested split and the 2020 timeline. What I am finding frustrating is that although I distinctly remember hearing the reporter telling us how Obama's admirals told him they did not possess sufficient assets I can't google up a link to support this! What's more, the tone of the report had more to do with America's inability to honour its treaty obligation to Japan, which specifically lists the disputed islands. 2020 will be much too late to have any influence. As always today, things are "come as you are" engagements, all over in a few months or even weeks. The report of insufficient assets was fluffed out with the usual talk about America waging too many theatres at once, like Afghanistan, Iraq, and other areas. I admit I am not a close follower of America's power level but I always thought that there is a huge pile of mothballed ships and other materiel available. The real problem is calling up manpower. I would think that if an American president truly thought it were necessary he could re-activate assets and call up manpower relatively quickly. Perhaps it's a money thing? Anyhow, maybe its too recent for me to find on the Net, or its just my own googling skills. I'll keep trying whenever the mood strikes me. It couldn't be a cover-up conspiracy, could it? :lol:

It was only a day or two ago, on a PBS 'Asian News Hour'. I'll see if I can dig up more of the same. I was being facetious towards the Americans, mainly. China is flexing its muscles against Japan. The USA is treaty bound to protect Japan. Yet when Obama calls for more naval power presence in Asian waters his admirals come back and tell him that they just don't have the available assets anymore! No doubt they were not so impolitic as to mention that it was politicians like Obama who cut those assets! It is a reality check for Uncle Sam. Actions have consequences and if you do not have the wit to see them in advance then you deserve what you get. You know I'm a great one for enjoying such situations! China is going to just up and take those islands because no one has the strength to oppose them. There will be moaning and whining at the UN and perhaps some here on MLW will call for Canada to save the day with our "soft power". It won't matter. China is taking those islands for the oil reserves because it can! America will not stop them because it can't! Ass, grass or gas. Nobody rides for free.