Wild Bill

Hey, I live in Ontario but not in Toronto! As such, that makes it my duty to hate Toronto! Virtually the entire rest of the province hates and resents Toronto, similar to how western Canada feels Confederation favours the East. As for tax inequities, I will make a distinction between old Toronto proper and its surrounding suburbs. When I was a salesman there were virtually NO accounts for manufacturing within the borders of the old city. Everything was north of the 401, in Mississauga or in Pickering. All there seems to be in old Toronto is a zillion ethnic restaurants, hardly an economic engine. I am also obliged to stick pins in little dolls clad in Argonaut jerseys...

Agreed! Wyly is one of those rare delights - someone you can argue with without getting called names for disagreeing. Once in a while he actually changes my mind! I think the three of us could all have a good time over a table of beer!

Well, your premise is only relevant if your yardstick is to improve the city's situation. This is politics, remember. If the premise is whether Ford can defeat all challengers and get the mayor's job his chances look pretty good! Afterwards, he doesn't actually have to deliver to be successful. He simply has to be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the man who is trying! If he doesn't get much support from the rest of his council, those councilors run the risk of being perceived as obstructionists. Politically, Ford would get credit for trying and the others would get the blame for any failure. If the tide in Toronto is to blame leftwing councilors for high taxes and poor services Ford could win an enviable position! He doesn't necessarily have to come up with GOOD ideas! He simply has to make sure the other guys take the blame for any failures. This would put the leftwing councilors in a difficult position. If the name of the game is self-sustaining, properly delivered services and lower taxes they tend to be handicapped in originating such. They do much better at handing out blank cheques.

Multiculturalism is only a small factor. The big deal is that Toronto is by far the BIGGEST snout in the trough! It's electorate seems to care nothing for much outside of Toronto's borders and it is widely suspected of receiving far more tax monies than it remits. It has been suggested many times over the years that Toronto should be its own province. I would suggest it should be its own country, if not planet! This is not a value judgement. Being different does not by itself imply better or worse. Still, as a demographic it is VERY different! Again, being the "biggest snout" means that Toronto tends to hog all of the attention from both the provincial and federal governments. This makes it very easy for Toronto to become leftwing, since leftwing areas are rarely self-sufficient and tend to thrive only by begging more and more tax money from other areas. This IS a value judgement - mine!

That may or may not be true but all those angry people are going to get to vote, just the same. A better question might be, why all the rage? Obviously, it's a reaction to Miller and his council's previous actions. What did they do to trigger such a strong reaction?

My server's homepage has a news article about Parliament starting up and the Liberal gun registry as one of the contentious issues. The article quotes CTV News Robert Fife: "Fife said the Conservatives could score political points if they manage to kill the registry -- one of Harper's longstanding promises -- or if the bill is defeated. "One senior cabinet minister told me if the registry is saved they win," Fife said. "That's because there are 20 opposition ridings in rural areas, they think they can win at lease 15 of those." Could this mean that if the Liberal gun registry is saved Harper is much closer to a majority? If not, it would mean that those rural voters will easily forgive their opposition MP for flipflopping. Here's the link to the entire article: http://news.sympatico.ctv.ca/home/fireworks_likely_as_mps_head_back_to_work/d0815506

That is an assumption, on your part. References do not have to be binding. They merely have to be informative. Do you have a cite that these decisions have standing? Are you going to give us a new definition of sovereignty?

Are you saying that while Argus or my life experiences are anecdotal and imaginary, your ASSUMPTIONS are valid?????

No, not at all! That's the point! Before the Big Bang there was no Universe. Some random fluctuation triggered the Bang and the Universe sprang into being, with all its physical laws established right from the offset. Eventually we came along and are trying to understand it all. Our very primitiveness limits our understanding. It's hard for us to accept that before the Universe began there was no Time and no Space. We have evolved in conditions of cause and effect. Before the start of the Universe, that was not so. There was NOTHING! Nothing means nothing. The Universe doesn't really care that most of us have trouble with that idea.

Actually, they HAVEN'T been lining up! If you had been following the threads from the start you would have seen that it is the police CHIEFS who support the registry! The rank and file policemen have not been officially consulted, but there was an informal poll taken by a police magazine that overwhelmingly showed the cops on the front line had little or no respect for it. This is not surprising. The ridiculously high number of "hits" accessing the gun registry database turns out to be because whenever a cop runs a plate or an address through the system the software automatically checks the gun registry. This has nothing to do whether it's necessary or useful. It's software - it just does what it was told to do! Even if the registry says there's no gun at a residence a cop would be a fool to trust it. All it tells him is that no one registered a gun at that address. Since criminals rarely register their guns what was the point? Police chiefs are NOT on the front line! Their skill sets are also highly political. They depend on support from politicians of many government levels to get and keep their jobs. They also have a vested interest in keeping ANYTHING that may even remotely be useful!Why not, if it doesn't come out of their own budget? Ask those chiefs if they would rather have that 2Billion that was wasted on setting up the Liberal gun registry divided up into their budgets for more officers, staff and better computer systems for fingerprints and stuff, computer systems that perhaps for that money could be integrated with all provinces across the country and see how fast they bail on supporting the Liberal gun registry! The money that was squandered by the Liberal gun registry could have easily paid for all those things. The fact that they considered them less important to me says a great deal about the character of those who were running the Liberal party at that time.

Well, not many from Toronto on that list. When I think of "urban elite" that's always the city that comes to my mind. I'm not sure where I fit into the definition. I grew up in a rural area but when I became an adult I moved into the city and have been there ever since. As for the Liberal gun registry, I never had any respect for it from the start. As a Libertarian it offended my sense of civic freedoms, i.e. everyone should be free to do whatever they want as long as they don't hurt anyone else. If they do, that's why we have courts and if necessary, gallows! In other words, punish people for negative behavior, not for their possessions. Also, as a "Utilitarian" it seemed obvious that the Liberal gun registry would also do nothing to stop criminals from illegal possession and use of guns. It never even added a day to the mandatory sentence for using a gun in the commission of a crime! It was simply a vote grab from a hysterical (and mostly Quebecois) demographic from people who are happy if they see someone buzzing around and blowing a lot of smoke but never actually exert their brain to see if a program actually DOES something! Thus it always was and will be in Canadian politics. It does seem to me that rural people tend to be more practical than Toronto folks. John Boy learned at an early age on the farm that if you didn't get the seeds planted in time you wouldn't eat for the rest of the year! Toronto folks seem to think that if there's a shortage of bread all we have to do is open more variety stores. I think the most basic divide between left and right thinkers, at least in Canadian society today, is that when the right has a goal or perceives a need they immediately start thinking in terms of what specific things or actions are necessary to achieve that goal. In other words, if we need more electricity what kind of generators do we need to build and how large must they be? What about the transmission lines? When the left wants something they always seem to take the HOW for granted! They talk in terms of political power and force. That's why so many of their goals always end up as a "clusterf**k", like housing projects that become slums before they are ever opened and retraining programs for skills that no one wants to hire. It's always "symbolism over substance". The left will get a city to implement a recycling program where it is mandatory for individual citizens to pre-sort their paper, plastics and metals. Then after collection the materials are often just mixed together and dumped en masse into the landfill! The goal is to foster a sense of public participation. Actually DOING the recycling is almost an afterthought! The Liberal gun registry seemed to me to fall into this category. The idea of gun control is really an entirely separate issue, since this particular registry did nothing to reduce the number of guns in the hands of criminals. Worse yet, when you examine it closely it never appeared to have been designed to do such anyway!

Who said anything about eliminating "...all laws that are compliant with Shari'a or that move in its direction "? That sounds totally unnecessary and cumbersome. All we have to do is recognize only our own country's laws and legal system, period and end of story.

Waldo, outside of urban prairie cities, ARE THERE ANY Conservative urban MPs?

Might work for Quebec, August! Not so for Ontario. You see, it's not talked about much amongst the politicians here but we've been a net importer of electricity from upper New York and across the Detroit border for years now. We don't have the transmission lines to take more power from Quebec or Manitoba and we quite often don't have enough for ourselves. So we have to get it from the Americans. Actually, our grid is closely integrated with theirs and at times we supply power to them. So we daren't gouge them on the price, particularly when all is said and done we get more from them than they take from us. Obviously, more and smarter transmission systems would benefit us greatly. Both Manitoba and Quebec could easily undercut the price we pay the Americans and also use Ontario as a conduit to sell the Americans much more. Why don't we build the damn lines? I have no idea! Maybe someone else has an inside scoop and could chime in.

I thought it appropriate to mention the history of just how we got into this situation in the first place! ---ANECDOTE ALERT!--- As a wee tad in the 50's and 60's I remember how there always seemed to be lots of doctors. Family GPs were always taking new patients. Most amazing compared to today, the doctor would come to your house if you were very sick and moving was a hardship! Just to be sure that this was not a false memory, I phoned an always accurate source - my mother! She confirmed my recollections and added to them. Things began to change in the 80's, after we had had some time with the medicare/OHIP thing. Doctors were put on a fixed fee schedule. House calls meant less money, due to the basic rate plus little or no allowance for travel time and expense. They rapidly became a thing of the past. I believe it was during Bob Rae's NDP government in Ontario that the idea of capping doctors' fees came about, as an attempt to control ever rising health care costs. At the same time, positions in schools for medical students were reduced and the number of new OHIP billing numbers being issued was cut back. This meant fewer new doctors coming out of school and fewer new doctors billing OHIP. With fee caps, once a doctor "maxed out" he wouldn't get paid for any more patient time, so of course he wouldn't take any new patients. Subsequent provincial governments have not opened the numbers back up. They just keep quiet, hoping no one notices. So we start with no more house calls. Of course, usually babies get sick and accidents happen outside of normal office hours. Where else can people go? ER's are their only choice! Only lately have we begun to see a few clinics and even fewer are 24 hour. Then we make it worse by having too few doctors. So even if your baby started a high fever or hacking cough at lunch time you don't have a family doctor of your own anyway! We have fewer doctors graduating and getting billing numbers. Since "private pay" is illegal in Canada no billing number means no income for a doctor. We also have a strong resistance to allowing immigrant doctors to get certified and practice here, even though it seems obvious we need them! It's almost as if the goal was to CREATE this situation! It couldn't have happened better if it was planned! In reality of course, it's just the inevitable outcome of another good idea implemented by dumbass government types! The system's very structure was never properly thought out to be self-sustaining because it was easier for politicos to take the photo op credits now, trusting that by the time the problems had grown to a scary level they would be long gone and it would be someone else's problem to deal with! Perhaps someone else could help with some stats but aren't we the WORST country at building a self-sustaining medicare system? The Europeans seem to all do a much better job. So it's not the basic idea of universal medicare that is at fault. It must be the way Canada has done it that's the problem. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2006/06/22/to-doctor20060622.html "Despite efforts to increase the pool of family doctors, the college received up to 70,000 calls from people seeking a family doctor in 2005."

Eyeball, as has been said many times, you have stated noble wishes but the problem is you and nobody else has yet suggested any way of doing it that will work with actual criminals! All we hear is some methods to make things very aggravating and inconvenient for law abiding gun owners. Criminals couldn't care less because they don't bother procuring their guns in a legal manner anyway. As I posted to you before, you can try harsher sentences for illegal gun use (which has never been done, to my knowledge. At least, not mandatory sentences that judges can't ignore) or you can try stronger methods of personal defense, which themselves are not the most attractive. Sadly, I think you are demanding the impossible and thus will forever be disappointed. Still, is that any reason to attack law abiding gun owners? All that does is allow politicians the appearance of doing something when they have not given us the reality.

Sounds good in theory but I'm not sure about the real world. I agree that there is a difference between rote learning arithmetic and understanding the principle of the Binomial Theorem. I just don't know for sure if you're correct that schools ARE teaching those "deep more basic principles"! Consider that most schools here in Ontario are fighting each other over an acute shortage of science and math teachers. Such a situation does not imply that the typical student is being well taught in those subjects. When someone claims to understand the higher aspects of science or mathematics sometimes he's telling the truth. Sometimes he's not. He's peddling mysticism, like creationism or astrology. He's blowing smoke to keep you from finding out he really doesn't know his stuff! This is a popular delusion. Learning higher math is hard but anyone with hair in his ears can "Use the Force, Luke! Throw away that high tech expensive targeting system and just go with your feelings!" I think there is a place for both approaches. Rote learning in the early grades seems more suited to the way a child's mind works. It implants enough of the basics of arithmetic and phonics to make understanding "deeper principles" possible at a later age! There is a perception out there that we tend to abandon the rote learning AND give short shrift to those "deeper principles" as well! My own experience has been that way, at least in my own children's schools.

The point is, many on the left say the same thing about nearly EVERYBODY AND ANYBODY!

Hey Scrib, this time he did a poor job of lying right from the start! He sold these smart meters by telling us that if we waited till the off hours to use the most electricity we could save money and save the planet! That was crapola from the start! You see, if you read the forms he stuffed into our electricity bills and look at the rate we would be charged at different times of day you can see right away that while the peak rate was much higher the best rate at night-time was still a penny or two higher per kilowatt hour than we had been paying. This meant that even if we shut the electricity off except for at night we still would have to pay more than we had been! Plus McGoofy knew then there would be the HST increase and he also slipped through more extras on our basic rates! He lied and he knew it! There's no other possible explanation. Yet somehow we sheep in Ontario seem to shrug it off. Nobody's screaming to tar and feather him, unlike the BC protests over the HST and such. I don't know if we Ontarioans are just too timid or if we've been beaten down to the point where we're numb and just don't care anymore.

Sadly, there is only one way but you're not going to like it! There are practical limits in trying to keep guns out of the hands of wingnuts like Lepine. It's like the old argument about controlling drugs - you'd need a cop on every corner and how could we possibly afford that? The first 80% of anything is easy and relatively cheap. The last 20% just gets harder and more expensive on a logarithmic curve that will never quite touch 100% of the desired solution. The only other alternative is defensive approaches. We could put metal and xray scanners in schools and public institutions that are prime targets. This would dramatically change the ambiance of a place! Lastly, we could allow the carrying of arms! I wouldn't go this far myself but I can't deny that if a wingnut starts shooting into a crowd where several citizens have the ability to fire back, odds are the death toll would be minimized. If the only defense is an armed cop then you automatically grant a Lepine 10-30 minutes of free and clear shooting! I don't expect you to like any of these alternatives, eyeball. I'm just saying that realistically, there aren't any others. We can wish all we like but if Daddy can't afford a pony we won't get one. Or to be more techy, no matter how much you want the water to go uphill you will still need to buy a pump. Things work or they don't. They are possible or they are not. They may be possible but too expensive, or demand we change our lifestyle more than we want. Personally, I think we are just going to have to accept as a fact of life that there is no defense against (as FireSign Theater said it years ago) "just some berserker who's prepared to die!"

Please, no more "Well, somebody else does it too so it must be ok!" arguments! If an Islamic sect is fundamentalist enough to put their women in bags then virtually always their women are never asked for their choice! One can also make an argument that their religious upbringing violates their inherent human rights. We already step in as regards polygamous marriage to underage girls in places like Bountiful, B.C. We prosecute honour killings, not allowing religion to be an excuse. we insist that children be given medically necessary operations and blood transfusions. Raising a female child to have no concept of a free choice as regards living their life in a bag can hardly be equated with life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness or as we somehow believe here in Canada, the overwhelming urge to have good government! B) As for "stretching things", what can I say? I'm getting to be an old codger! The difference between myself and some others on this board, I KNOW I'm getting to be an old codger!

You have my condolences. Hopefully he will beat the odds! I lost my own brother a few years ago. Sudden heart attack. He had always aced his physicals and bloodwork, the last being only a month before. No warning signs but his arteries had just hardened up and an attack came out of the blue. I could never really empathize until I experienced such a loss myself. I wish both you and your brother all the best.

Non sequitur. Motorcycle helmets are normally only worn while driving a motorcycle. Halloween masks are worn at Halloween, and so on. Try walking into a bank wearing your balaclava. Or going through airport screening with a Halloween mask in place. No one suggested banning the wearing of a burkha in your own house or backyard. However, certainly it should be in security sensitive areas. In these times of terrorist dangers, the definition of a security sensitive area should err on the public safety side. You should keep in mind that the burkha ban is a reaction to some Islamic groups that are demanding they should be worn practically 24/7, without regard to any security concerns! That in itself should be grounds for suspicion. Can you cite any NON-fundamentalist strain of Islamism that promotes the burkha? Seems to me it's only those sects that are more likely to abuse security concerns! We haven't even mentioned how demeaning it is to women. What's in it for us to condone such in our society? How likely is a women raised in such a manner to be an asset to our country as a whole?

Well, we do seem to have more political parties and perpetual minority government...

I thought the face covering was the entire issue! Who cares about ethnic dress? The problem with the burkha is that it hides identity. This is one of the most basic tenets of western society. If that bothers some immigrants then let them choose not to come here! Osama bin Lauden himself could hide under one of those things and who is to know? Security and safety for society at large has to trump ethnic custom. Hell, the burkha didn't appear till the 1970's anyway! That's suspiciously around the time middle eastern terrorism was starting to take hold. It makes a marvelous tool for terrorists, that's for sure. Conceivably, we could have repeated suicide bombings under cover of burkhas several times a week! An exaggeration perhaps but it only has to happen once to kill someone's innocent wife or child. Is allowing the hiding of identity worth it?