Wild Bill

Probably more! No politician ever wins over 80% of the popular vote! Bob Rae squeaked in with 38%. That leaves 62% that hated him?

Far be it from me to claim the USA is faultless, Michael. Still, we have to keep some perspective. First of all, EVERY culture always has SOME poor folks! If India has 40% of its population living in squalor and the USA has 5% the two countries are NOT equivalent! Just because they both have SOME doesn't make them the same! America no doubt has some political corruption as well but nothing like the scale practised in India. America also has much more social mobility. Being born poor doesn't mean you have to stay poor! Can India say the same? America is much more politically responsive to its people. The ratio of military spending to civil services is set according to which politicians are elected. I simply cannot believe that if America had the percentage of starving people as India has over the years it would not have adjusted its military spending ratio. It would appear that India just ignored its starving people. Either that or it kicked in a few bucks for some TV "feed the starving children" ads so THE REST OF THE WORLD would feed its people! One's definition of "poor" is relevant, as well. The poorest American likely lives like a king compared to the bottom level of Indian society. Simply spending ANY amount on a military while having widespread hunger is not at all hypocrisy. The first duty of any government is to keep its people safe from foreign attack. If the country is conquered or destroyed then what's the point? I would agree that India has some belligerent neighbours but did they need the Bomb? The scale of India's military buildup always seemed excessive to me. Much more capable of offence than merely a force for national defense. No Michael, I'm not cherry picking my principles. You just need to more accurately define them!

Jack, just because you and a few of the folks here hated Harris doesn't mean there aren't a great many Ontarioans that remember him fondly enough to vote for Hudak! I've said before, we never got a chance to find out if the hatred for Harris was widespread or just intense among those who never voted for him in the first place! Teachers, CUPE and other unions vilified him before his first election and after he was gone. So what? Frankly, I've never heard much one way or another from any other group. Harris stepped down. Ernie Eves was a rather pale choice to replace him. Two terms in many people's minds is enough for any government anyway. I could understand why a Dalton could beat an Eves, at that time. Hudak is not being compared to Eves. He's being associated with Harris. Harris won TWO HONKIN' HUGE MAJORITIES! There must have been SOME attraction to the man! I think Dalton has handed much of the good things about Harris to Hudak on a platter. Harris campaigned on fulfilling his promises and then kept them. Dalton campaigned on keeping promises but then he just kept breaking them! If I were Dalton the last thing I would want is any mention of Harris that might remind folks about that. You may be right that it's EVERYBODY who hates Harris but my point is that the premise has never been tested. Even the PCs after Harris wussed out and headed for the middle of the road, lowest common denominator, brown shoes and beige pants position. I think there is more Harris type support out there than the PCs opponents would care to admit. The last thing Dalton's advisers would want is such a clear choice at the ballot box. A few more electricity bills before the next election and Dalton may be cooked!

As I said to Dave, TB, it would be great fun to have the premise tested! I wonder if Ignatieff shares your confidence in the lack of risk, however.

I don't agree, Dave. Still, you could be right! It would be fascinating if the conditions turned out right next election and we had a chance to see your premise tested! After all, there's little risk to us as citizens. A coalition would likely not get a chance to seriously damage the country. However, if I'm right it could serious damage its component members! All the risk would be on the politicians. We citizens could enjoy the entertainment!

I'll stand by my words! I would add that if I were to state EVERYTHING I believe it would take more than a forum post. It would take a book! I do believe that India still has vast numbers of people living in poverty. I do believe that getting a phone line often requires a bribe, although that may be outdated since the arrival of the cellular phone. Are you saying these things are NOT true? Because I can't respect any culture that would value getting the nuclear bomb over feeding its people! As for your cite of Indian mathematics, it's true those are valid contributions but not sufficient in themselves. Most of that contribution came from a long time ago. I'm concerned with what's happening today. I've worked with many people who came from India and was struck by many cultural traits. Some were positive, some were negative. The most racist man I ever met was a Hindu! In some ways I found the strong expression of Victorian Britain to be fascinating. One trait I found infuriating is that it seemed everything revolved around status - you either kissed ass or kicked ass! They always seemed very conscious as to who was of a "higher level" in any given situation. We had great difficulty with some order desk people from that culture, who seemed to think they were "superior" to any mere customer. However, I certainly don't single out India. We are accepting great numbers of immigrants and refugees from the more primitive cultures. While the numbers are not large enough to change mainstream culture what worries me is the numbers that are accepted by the civil service! It has been said before that Hell is where the cooks are British and the civil service is Indian! There's some truth to that. A country runs on the efficiency of its civil service and the LAST thing we need is to adopt the Indian way of running the country! I should point out that I APPROVE of the idea of "cherry picking" other cultures for our immigrants! When I said we should be concerned I did NOT mean we should not accept people from a particular culture! Rather, I meant we should screen them more carefully. Often people are born in a particular situation through no fault of their own and have no chance to thrive. One culture's misfit is another culture's asset! Some folks are born with a talent for agriculture but they have to emigrate to another culture to get the chance to be successful at it! It doesn't make a country an agricultural success if they have to depend on foreign countries to have enough supply. Thinking of people in terms of their culture rather than their race seems to me to be much more accurate and practical. For a lot of reasons ranging from philosophy to their time in history Britain and Europe gave us most of what we have today. Other cultures tend to be parasitical instead. Some are hybrids. One of the most important western cultural traits was the habit of cheerfully adopting anything from a foreign culture that WORKED! We should be promoting western culture because in the final analysis it means more people fed, healthy, comfortable and educated! Cultures that do not do such things as well should be discouraged.

Please don't put words in my mouth! I will agree that India has come a long way but it took a sharp dip when the British left. Again, I'm a techie and I couldn't really care about the emotional values of gaining independence if it means a culture still can't manage the rails or the mails. The best thing India has done is to become less socialistic! History shows that the more socialistic a country the more erratic services become. If anything, there is an argument that Canada and other western countries in some way aggravate the problem of countries with more primitive cultures. While I disapprove of excessive Family Reunification and high numbers of bogus refugees the regular immigration channels have often created a "brain drain" from certain countries, like India. In other words, sometimes we are getting the people coming here that could have fixed the services in their home country! As far as India's level of sophistication today, I would suggest we ask some of the athletes competing in the Commonwealth games. Hopefully the last ditch efforts to fix the toilets and clean up the living quarters were successful but we should not forget that the situation should never have happened in the first place! Lest anyone thinks that this techie can't see any fault at home, I was never very impressed with Olympic Stadium in Montreal either! A lot of corrupt people made a lot of money building a stadium where every so often pieces of the concrete roof fall on your head!

Bunk? It's more than bunk, TB! The very idea that Harper is a Libertarian is the funniest thing I've heard in a week!

I'm with you on this one! Wyly has just 100% contradicted my own personal experience from living through those years and also having always been a science buff! One of the problems of the Internet age is that often there are no cites available pre-mid 90's or so. Some folks seem to believe that there was no history before that time. Certainly, they don't seem to have ever actually read a book or two on a given topic! Maybe those of us with reasonably good personal libraries should start using footnotes.

I think you fail to understand how the Chernobyl failure worked! That reactor had far less computer control than those designed by other countries. Things were mostly done manually. Political officers wanted to run a test for political reasons that was deemed unsafe by the technical staff. That staff was over-ridden and the result was a catastrophic failure. Nobody ever built their reactors Chernobyl-style but the Russians and nobody would ever let a political officer over-ride the technicians and engineers but the Russians at that time in their history. Other reactors couldn't fail in a Chernobyl fashion because their very design is like a canvas bucket of water boiling over a fire. If the bucket fails the water douses the fire! The Russian system was run by ideological idiots, who thought that politics trumped physics. What happened was a tragedy but they did it to themselves. So unless the Iranians are similar idiots a Chernobyl failure is pretty well guaranteed NOT to happen! What's more likely is that the reactor will simply not work and keep shutting down, likely in an expensive and messy manner but NOT dangerous outside of the reactor!

You apparently have different yardsticks than I do for measuring the worth of a culture. I'm the techie, remember? I respect trains running on time. I don't respect cultures that can't do that. I expect the electricity to run 24/7 and the same for the water. That water is also expected to be reasonably pure. A hundred years ago the French used to say that countries that couldn't run a decent mail service were not civilized. They were mostly referring to African countries at that time but I totally agree with the principle and frankly, there were times in the 70's when Canada had many problems with its postal service that I was beginning to believe the axiom applied to ourselves! I also believe a culture should include a civil service that is not corrupt. There should be fireman and equipment if your house catches fire. If a culture cannot do these things then I value them less, plain and simple. I have no quarrel with people who want to live in such a culture themselves but take exception if they would allow Canada to become more like their old culture in these matters, due to their cultural values and attitudes. If you want to accuse me of discrimination I would not be surprised. I feel it's important however to have it understood that it has nothing to do with race. Raise a Somalian child in a Scottish Presbyterian family and there would be no reason to suppose that he could not invent a steam engine as well as any other child in that community. THIS is what I fear losing, Mr. Shwa! I really don't care if accepting so many immigrant cultures adds a statutory holiday to the mix. I really don't believe that Sharia Law will ever gain a foothold in Canada either. However, if too many key areas that control how our system works are staffed by people who do not share our culture sufficiently then gradually our trains will stop running on time, our letters will not be delivered and we might eventually have to pay a bribe to get moved up the list for a new phone! This last point should really have its own thread but can anyone name any scientific or technological breakthrough that came from a country with a tropical climate? Such a climate influences culture. When you have no fear of freezing and can pick your own food as you need it you tend to have a different world view than a Nicola Tesla growing up in Serbia, where you need to think about growing enough food in the summer to last the winter and building heating systems so you don't freeze to death! I believe it was British and European culture that built Canada into a country where we are relatively comfortable, with electricity for our lights and our toys and warm housing. We have a medical system that despite its flaws is several quantum levels better than most of the countries on the planet. Western culture is working on cures for diseases and ways to give us all the power we need to further improve our lifestyles without despoiling the planet. Most cultures on this globe have not yet contributed to these goals. All too many find it enough to figure out how use modern weapons to shoot each other. If the Greens are right that we are all in a "Spaceship Earth" then if you can't keep the engines going, run the lifesupport or navigate then kindly shut up and get the hell out of the way! So far Western culture has done the best at the things we truly need. I fear whatever might dilute it!

You might consider that the polls in the MSM are paid for by the MSM. They are only going to allocate so much money for such polls. Political parties no doubt pay more money for more intensive and focused polls. Unless it is to their benefit it is very unlikely that they would routinely share the results with the citizenry at large. As always, follow the money. Polls aren't cheap!

Nevertheless, if you ask people who have lived there, the utilities are still unreliable and the bribe to get a telephone or a car in a reasonable time is exorbitant! Britain may or may not have plundered India but at least when they were in charge the trains ran on time! THAT was my point! The Indian culture seems incapable of doing the same.

Well, if they're going to come to Toronto they better start getting used to coming by helicopter. One or two more mayors like Miller and NO ONE will be ABLE to drive a car to Toronto! We'll all simply be tolled for trying to get AROUND the perimeter of the city to other parts of the province. I see gridlock and roadblock as Toronto's future.

You misunderstand me. I'm not one of those posters who delights in ever more witty ad hominems. I simply post what I believe, although I will admit to putting my tongue in my cheek once in a while. I cited Toronto as a cheapskate city for musicians because that's one area that is important to me, among fields that to me are just irrelevant. I will confess to a bulge in my cheek as I wrote it, guyser! Still, I believe it and in a small way I think it indicative of the character of the city. I don't buy into the old idea that Toronto is the financial heart of Canada. When I was an on the road salesman I didn't have a single account in old Toronto. Everything was north of the 401 in the suburbs. Manufacturers had virtually all pulled out of the old city, chased away by bad traffic access and high taxes. True, there are some large corporate HQs that deal only with the accounting aspects but they are far fewer than they used to be. Much of that has moved out west! Toronto reminds me of an old whore who has long since lost much of her looks but still insists on getting her ass kissed!

Not quite, for me, BM! Prostitution would be 2nd to last. Last would be LAWYER!

Another voice of rationality! Hear, hear!

Here's another slag! According to an informal poll we took on a national Canadian musicians' board, Toronto is the cheapest city in Canada for club gigs, by far! Runnerup was Hamilton. It seems the farther you get east or west of Toronto the better clubs pay, although these days NO club pays well, in any city. The "hand that feeds the province" obviously spares only crumbs for its musicians. Yet in both Toronto and Hamilton live a rather large number of professional musicians! They just go somewhere else to make a living.

Well, the polls seem to be saying the voters would rather have a moron who talks about CUTTING their taxes than another leftwing silkstocking socialist who blows their money like a drunken sailor... Perhaps Ford will prove not to be smart enough. Life is not full of digital choices, after all. ALL candidates can be bad! Still, Miller and his council have appeared to be corrupt at worst and impractical at best, fulfilling every cliche about the left possible. Maybe its too late? They may have screwed things up so badly that Toronto can no longer be saved! It may be doomed to become a perpetual drain on the taxpayers of the rest of Ontario and Canada, with 100 % gridlock and a civil service that runs like that of India. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I really don't care about the city. I'm used to being taxed for its deficits. That will never change. I wouldn't live there at the point of a gun!

The question is not whether there is one lady who could "kick your ass". Rather, it is if there are enough such ladies applying for the position to fill the quota.

I think you meant to say Pierre Laporte. Doesn't change your point, though.

This is one of those topics where it is almost impossible to have a civil and informed discourse. That's because it it too easy for some to turn it into discrimination against minorities or immigrants in general. Most of that is just sensationalist rubbish. Still, when you blow away the chaff there are some kernels of truth that we should recognize and deal with. First of all, while it is true that this country was built by immigrants, not all immigrants are the same. Sources of immigrants change over the years. The typical immigrant of today is NOT likely to be from the same countries and culture as those who came over after the First and Second World Wars. My father-in-law came over from Italy in 1950. War torn Europe was full of people facing a bleak situation at home and willing to come to Canada for a chance at a new life. They spoke a different language but their cultures had a lot of similarities to our own. They were likely Christian, educated in a common history and familiar with a common technology. They could find jobs over here and fit in quickly. Those days are long gone. Only a few folks from those countries are interested today in moving to Canada. Instead, we are forced to look mostly to the Third World. Many of these countries are essentially primitive, by our standards! Not just in basic education but in lacking much of our culture. Using waste receptacles on the streets or hell, even using toilet paper! They may have little or nothing in common with our history. Basic skills that we who grew up here take for granted, like simple house wiring or backyard mechanics, are a cosmic mystery to them. In their home country they may have had no electric lights. Automobiles were for the privileged few. It is much harder to integrate such people into mainstream Canadian culture. Even in construction, the traditional entry path for an immigrant, they require much more basic training. Given a chance, they could eventually do as well as anyone else. There is no reason to think they are any more or less intelligent. It's just that they cost more to educate to get them to a level where they are useful to an employer. Not all immigrants today are doctors or engineers. There weren't that many in the 1950's, either! Most immigrants are just ordinary folks, looking for a chance to get ahead. Our problem today is with the quality of those ordinary folks. It's no disgrace to be born a Somalian but the odds are a Somalian immigrant lacks the carpentry skills of my Italian father-in-law. The 20th century belonged to the First World, to Europe, to Japan, to North and parts of South America. Technologies like radio and transportation had unified these countries. Information was shared and incorporated into every country's culture. Now we're in the 21st Century and many of those cultures will certainly catch up and perhaps even surpass us! Still, they're not there today! Look at the scandal with India and the Commonwealth Games. They're ready to open the games and the place is a disgrace! The living quarters aren't even sanitary! What people don't want to face is that such situations are NORMAL for India! Since Britain pulled out and gave them independence nothing works. They can't make the utilities reliable or the trains run on time. In vast areas of the country its a miracle if the water keeps flowing from the taps. What HAVE they accomplished in those 50 years? Well, they got themselves the nuclear bomb! Millions of their people live in squalor but hey! They've got the Nuke! They're in the big boy's club! We should either re-examine how many immigrants we actually need, particularly during periods of high unemployment anyways or put up a lot more money into helping those immigrants from more primitive cultures assimilate. That doesn't just mean teaching them how to wire up a rec room in a basement. It means teaching them Canadian values like using street garbage cans. There was a time when Toronto was known around the world as incredibly clean! Tourists, especially Americans, were amazed. Why is that no longer true? What changed? We also have different kinds of immigrants today because of the ratio of regular immigrants and those brought in under "Family Reunification". My father-in-law was allowed to sponsor his wife and his infant son. Today, it was decided that for lack of a common definition of "immediate family" we would use the definition from the culture of the applicant! So if he said that a second cousin on his mother's side was "immediate family" then "Wham!" Down comes the approval stamp! This might not seem like that big a deal if that second cousin was a whiz at running a bulldozer. Unfortunately, family reunification is usually used to bring over grandparents and elderly relations. Not many of these find jobs in construction to become part of the immigrants that "built this country!" No doubt there are some members who will take my words to mean that we should only accept European imigrants. Some of those sadly would cheer such an idea for racist reasons. Before they start cheering however they should consider that we CAN"T get all our immigrants from Europe! There aren't that many Europeans that WANT to come to Canada! Things are just fine for them where they are! We can argue if we are taking too many or too few immigrants right now but most would agree that we have to have at least a certain minimum number. We simply can't be as picky as we'd like about where we find them. That leaves us only a few options. We still will likely have to take most of them from those more primitive countries. We can get a bit more rational about family reunification but we will also have to spend more resources on helping those immigrants integrate into our culture. No doubt this will cause the multiculturalism fanatics conniption fits but that's another argument.

Well, for a start, her clothing is part of why she looks like Katy Perry! It wouldn't be her if she came on dressed as Joni Mitchell, 1966. Also, I refuse to believe that kids the age of the average Sesame Street viewer are titillated by cleavage! I really think this was all an over-reaction by the Charles McVety/Priscilla Goodbody set. As I said, I'm getting really tired of the prudish minority running the show. I would have had no problem letting my daughters watch the video when they were that young. At least Katy can actually craft her own songs! I've even heard her play a guitar instead of faking it with an actual player behind a curtain! It's bad enough our kids are exposed to the pop crap manufactured by the record labels anyway. Far better Katy Perry or Pink than Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana! Thank God my children had brains strong enough to resist that insidious intellectual pablum!

You know, I'm an old hippie. I grew up thinking we were helping create a world full of tolerance for each others ideas. Every time someone like you makes a comment like this I think the whole hippie movement was a dismal failure! You are about as tolerant about people who disagree with you as Charles McVety...

I think people are making mountains out of...well...mountains! I watched the video and didn't see a damn thing wrong with it! Lord knows Katy's original video for her song was plastered all over the airwaves and likely seen a zillion times by kids already. I saw a grownup woman acting like a kid, playing tag with Elmo. True to form, the little red bastard was dodging her and running all over the place! This is something real kids do with adults. I would think that they would pick up on that before they would start dreaming about her cleavage! I think some people are just a bit repressed. They are entitled to be, but I am getting really sick of not being allowed to do or view something because someone ELSE has a problem!