Wild Bill

'Real deal'? Maybe, Mr. B.! I've been told often enough to 'get real!' so maybe it's happened! I dunno if you read classic scifi but the great writer Robert Heinlein wrote in one of his books called "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" about a character who classified himself as a 'rational anarchist'. Such a person believed that he was totally responsible for his own actions and thus would NOT accept any law as absolute. He would always make his own decision as to what was the moral and/or ethical action for him to do in any situation. When asked if he would be totally lawless he replied "Not at all! Tell me specifically which law you are talking about!" In other words, most of the time the result would be that he appeared a lawfully minded citizen but actually, if he ever found himself in a situation where the law conflicted with his own moral compass he not only would not follow it, he would never take the legal way out and excuse any harm resulting from doing so. To him "I obeyed the law!" was no excuse if it meant his action actually caused harm. If a rational anarchist had a wife dying of an incurable disease, suffering in untreatable pain, he wouldn't think twice about helping her with euthanasia, regardless of what the law said. If that meant he might be charged and sent to prison he would accept that, since helping his wife was his first moral priority and following the law not at all. This is quite different of course from the garden variety anarchist, who believes that he can do whatever the hell he wants and damn the consequences. i don't know if I actually am a rational anarchist, but I sure respect the idea!

Are you old enough to have lived in those times or do you just watch a lot of leftwing movies? Your description just seems pure Hollywood! Incidently, I'm really surprised a couple of other posters haven't jumped in already and dismissed your entire post as being anecdotal. I guess sometimes 'anecdotal' depends on what side of the political fence you find your friends. Be that as it may, I won't deny that some of the horrors you mention did occur. They still happen today! It's just that you imply they were as common as having milk delivered to your door! What's more, you state that they happened with 'impunity' and I don't believe that either! I WILL concede that 'in the old days' a lot of justice was not reported because folks took care of it themselves! If someone molested their kids and the neighbours found out quite often the perp was beaten up and run out of town on a rail! Often off duty cops helped with the beatings! I personally know of one case in the early 70's where a local fireman was physically abusing his wife and 3 year old daughter, to the point where he broke the little girl's arm. The other firemen promptly broke HIS arm! Such tactics are deplored today as being barbaric but they seemed to have WORKED far better at protecting victims from repeat offences! Certainly far better than endless 'anger management' classes. Anyhow, I just wanted to state that your description seems to me to be an outlandish exaggeration, making "To Kill a Mockingbird" look like the Teletubbies!

Well, he's certainly struck a chord with Toronto's citizens! He's doing very well in the polls! I guess maybe it's just another example of the pendulum swinging as the 'system' tries to adjust. Miller took the city way out of balance, putting it not just deep into debt but he altered the very structure of the 'system' so that it meant inevitable higher taxes and inconveniences for citizens, especially those who have to drive to work. So they are looking for someone like Ford to save them! Well, they loved Miller when he was spreading the cash around. Now they're upset because they've seen the bills! It may be that the bills are so high they CAN'T be saved, without sponging tax money from the province that the rest of us have to pay!

Huh??? I think you've missed the entire point! Free and open use of copiers would have helped the USSR be able to operate as quickly as western countries. It might have been able to progress its technology as fast as its rival countries! It was the limited way it used technologies like photo copiers that made it simply unable to compete! It was like trying to run a WalMart store with no computers, just quill pens!

Racism? Do you even understand the word? The most racist man I ever met was a Hindu! It's hardly a white man only disease, you know! As for 1% of our incomes going to Pakistan, again you demonstrate an incredibly shallow view of that country! Perhaps the reason people give more to Haiti is that Haiti spends foreign aid money on their people, whereas Pakistan used much of it to afford to develop nuclear weapons! Any country that would rather build nukes than feed its people doesn't deserve our aid! How many dams to stop flooding would even ONE nuke warhead pay?! Yeah, I know. It's all George Bush's fault...

In what context? To the best of my knowledge, free and open use of copiers did not occur in the former USSR until after things fell apart, not before.

Hmmm...living in Beamsville and love Stealin'...I'll bet you used to go to the bars during the late 70's and 80's Jack and caught my friend's band Copter! Stealin' was one of their signature tunes! They didn't play that often in Hamilton or ST. Catherines. Mostly the small towns all around, particularly the Queens in Dunnville.

Motorhead, Jack? Those young pups? Half an hour ago the mailman delivered my latest CD purchase: "Mountain" "Live: The Road Goes Ever On". I just had to have a copy of "Nantucket Sleighride" I could play in my van!

Yep! I'll turn 58 in October! One nice thing about making my living building and repairing amps for musicians is that I've been able to let my hair grow again! Not as much red and a lot more white than when I was a kid but the hair is almost past the shoulders and the beard would be respectable for Ronnie Hawkins. The most fun is meeting friends I haven't seen from high school and seeing that now they are bald! It's fun to rub it in!

'Relaxed censorship'? Maybe that was one factor. Many folks think that the major reason was photocopiers! That's 'copiers' as a symbol, of course. I rode the high tech electronics curve from the late 70's onward, selling those newfangled computer chips and stuff. We were all pretty plugged in to the changes computers were making and our industry led the way with all the new gadgets. Here in the West we all took to copiers, fax machines and personal computers like ducks to water. Not so in the Soviet Union. Only important institutions could get a copier. Notice I said 'a' copier! They would have one and only one copier in an entire building! This was because they considered copiers to be a security risk. Important documents could be copied and conceivably smuggled out to foreign interests. By having only one machine it was much easier to keep it secure. The same held for fax machines. Personal computers were only for highly placed people in the party and scientists/engineers in state-run factories. They were ALWAYS tightly monitored! Think about it, Nicky. Think about how SLOWLY information could be shared or ideas developed in such a system, compared to the free and easy environment we all take for granted! Every office I ever worked in had copiers and faxes all over the place! Later email meant that we could share information with customers at the click of a mouse. That was never possible in the USSR. The two systems were as different as a snail and a greyhound. During the first 5 years of the 80's it became painfully obvious to even the most stubborn commissar that they had no hope of keeping up with the West once the Computer Revolution had started. Gorbachev was smart enough to not even try but rather went for a 'controlled collapse' with the least possible amount of pain. I absolutely believe that this was THE most important factor! It would have made a great episode of James Burke's "Connections" tv series.

Just follow the pitter patter of little Pictish feet into the cave...

Wow! Totally Libertarian! Personal 100% Economic 90% Take that, all you folks that keep insisting I'm a Conservative!

PLEASE Mr. Visionseeker, don't support the use of that word - "progressive" in association with 'leftist'! The 'new' definition of 'progressive' really bothers me. The left has deliberately chosen the word to describe themselves and their political philosophy. The problem is that it is not truly a definition but merely an opinion. It implies that 'their way' is 'progressive' so therefore views contrary to their own must, again by a (false) definition, be 'regressive'! It only confirms everything George Orwell said about the Left, when he described in his book, 1984, how the Party had set out to control language in order to control the very thoughts of the population! We must use words to formulate thoughts so if the definitions we are taught only allow one point of view then thoughts 'heretical' to the ruling orthodoxy actually become impossible to conceive! That may be a bit of an exaggeration but only in degree. The thought behind the move is definitely the very same! Doubleplusungood!

Geez, TB! Reading your prose, I couldn't help but keep thinking of the situation in present day Iran...

Well, I'm not exactly a conservative supporter. I just disagree less with them than the other idiots. Still, I'll take a stab at it for you! I don't think the bias is against intellectuals so much as against 'academic' intellectuals. There are many well educated members of the CPC. However, they do seem to have a mix of people from other backgrounds, whereas the Liberals seem to be virtually all law and poli-sci graduates, with only a few exceptions. The bias against academics seems stronger in the West, although it has been picking up some steam here in the East as well. The charge against academics is based on the popular caricature of an academic being some university prof who has never actually done a specific task himself but because he has taught it from a book believes he knows all about it! This view is usually accompanied by some anecdotes about how someone with a string of degrees was put in charge of a product, arrogantly ignored the experience of all the people under him and then had the project go down in flames for failing to understand the specific details of the task, for having taken a superficial textbook example as gospel. An example would be Stefan Dion and his 'green energy plan'. The charge is of course an exaggeration but there is a grain of truth to it, unfortunately! Technicians have joked for generations that while it may take a tech to make something work to really screw it up requires an engineer! The Liberals have always seemed to put much trust in academics and perhaps this explains some of the estrangement they suffer in western Canada. Maybe it's a french thing! One of the constant criticisms of government programs is that they always sound good in the action plan but bog down into a mess for not foreseeing the details. Myself, I'm even more cynical because I don't believe governments really care about things working at all! It's enough to look good to grab votes. If it actually works that's just a bonus. LHence the old joke about a 'liberal Solution': "It doesn't have to work, as long as we can say we've got one!" Academic solutions flourish best when times are flush and it doesn't really hurt when they make mistakes! Errors like the National Energy Policy hurt the people in the west so badly that they were forced to be very practical in their outlook, just to keep food on the table. It went so deep that it became part of their culture to distrust academics and so-called experts. Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Ontario has been economically hurting for some years now as well and we are seeing a growth in sharing Alberta's view. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it! I'm not saying that the anti-intellectual or academic viewpoint is justified in all cases, just trying to explain what it is, where it came from and why it survives. Like any other instance of having lost trust in something, it's much harder to get it back! When someone has come to distrust academic intellectuals the only way to earn that trust again is to give a very large number of success stories. That is perhaps the very hardest thing for ANY politician of ANY party to do!

You know, when I was a boy most folks in my neighbourhood were long time Canadians. My mother's side goes back to the 1690's, when the good ship Hector landed in Pictou, Nova Scotia. My grandfather had come to Canada around the turn of the century. We had a few immigrant neighbours, mostly from war torn Europe. They were good people and in the main blended into our core culture rather quickly. Of course, they had some customs of their own they practiced at home and among themselves but as far as the public view went they were glad to become loyal Canadians and adopt our culture. We were proud of our British Heritage and cheerfully sang God Save the Queen. In the late 60's and early 70's the "powers that be" decided to open wide the immigration gates. We welcomed them in! Then came the idea of official multiculturalism, where the government encouraged immigrants to preserve their old culture and downgraded the importance of our incumbent one. Now someone like you openly cries for all the new immigrants to forever change our country into a republic, dumping our Queen and with her all traces of our British heritage. You know something? Attitudes like that are the cause of much of the anti-immigrant resentment growing today! I'll bet a lot of racist extremists are cheering folks like you on! They love to see you stir the pot! I've never been a strong monarchist but enough is enough. Maybe you can get enough immigrants involved to achieve your goal, I don't know. I DO know that it will be a cold day in Hell before you'd ever get MY vote!

Ah August, in my OP I wasn't asking if Quebec was relevant in an historical or emotional way to Canada. I asked if it was worth the money and resources to campaign aggressively for Quebec seats, considering how many are REALLY up for grabs! It appears that there is a hard, dedicated core of Bloc seats that they win every election. When the Liberal party fell into disfavour because of Adscam and such, their lost support seems to have gone to the Bloc rather than the CPC. Realistically, how many seats could Harper actually win? How many could Ignatieff? Hence my question: Is it worth it? Parties do not have infinite amounts of money. They always claim that they campaign hard in every riding because you need to cheer loudly if you are going to motivate your troops. However, when the back room boys start passing out the money for election signs and supplies it's only common sense that if a riding has been overwhelmingly won by your opponent for several elections you are not likely to have a chance! You do check to see if there has been some change that improves the odds, like an incumbent dying or having been involved in a big scandal but in a normal situation you just can't afford to throw money down a rat hole! So they find some "newbie" to be a placeholder candidate and they scrape up barely enough money to make an honourable showing but that's about it. I was hoping to see some input from you August but I'm not really interested in an opinion from the heart. Rather, I'd like to hear your opinion on how many seats are truly available for a mainstream party to have a realistic chance of winning.That would tell us if Quebec truly represents a chance for a majority or if it's a carrot on a stick tied to a donkey's back, a carrot the donkey can never actually eat!

Just out of curiousity, did you drop math in grade 9? There is absolutely no logical connection in your premise! Just because you have the signs doesn't mean anything. Kids can copy signs just for the fun of it. In my city, we definitely have the gangs! Damages and arrests are made every day, although there are far more of the former than the latter. The signs in my neighbourhood helped explain WHAT was going on! We had no need of signs to tell us what WAS happening!

Ok! Here it is, from msg #48 - Bonam: "God damn, grade 10 and 11 history, 100% focused on Canada, was B O R I N G as hell." Still means the same to me! Perhaps you follow a different sense of grammar...

Hey, he did say the Canadian history he received in high school was boring. This is NOT the same as Canadian history! It is merely the history his school gave him. We've all known too many teachers and school boards setting cirriculum that could make even sex classes boring!

Hey Mr. Eyeball, you shouldn't be that surprised! Some of us agree with you on a number of things. The pertinent point however, is that there are SPECIFIC things! With Harper, we might disagree with you on this but disagree on something else. The reason we don't often agree with you is that quite frankly, you appear to have decided that you disagree with Harper and the CPC on EVERYTHING! Harper could discover a cure for cancer and I swear you'd start ranting that he's taking jobs away from doctors!

Thanks, Kimmy! You put things much more concisely than I did! There are always rumours that CPC movers and shakers monitor boards like this one. Geez, I hope so! I'm prone to say how I support them 'cuz they smell less than the other guys but still, that's no reason to do things to make themselves smell even worse! Importing some of the Ontario Harrisites helped the party perspective a little bit but too often that "minority fundamentalist" viewpoint that irrationally believes it is in the majority leaks into these policy decisions. The CPC just has a bad habit of being out of touch with the mainstream and costing itself gains. That's likely one of the strong reasons why they have such a hard time gaining in the polls over such an inept Opposition. They are an inept GOVERNING party! They are sufficiently competent in administrative matters like trade, foreign affairs, the military and such but when it comes to social issues it's like watching Ned Flanders try to run a chapter of the Hell's Angels. The poor guy is just bewildered! It's like at the Toronto SARS benefit concert a few years ago. It opened with AC/DC and the Rolling Stones. Pretty well all the acts were traditional rock and roll. However, Justin Timberlake came out and the crowd threw water bottles at him! I felt a bit sorry for him since he had been good enough to donate his time and talents but I couldn't help wondering who had been stupid enough to put him into a playlist of artists where he just didn't fit! The man's career was in pop music, the last thing traditional rock and rollers would respect. Later on Celine Dion appeared on the Jumbotron screen via a satellite feed. The crowed loudly booed her! The boos were quickly cut out of the external TV feeds but anyone who was there knew what happened. Again, she was totally the wrong fit for that crowd. It seems to me that whoever had been responsible for those two poor choices is now likely working for Harper, still blissfully unaware of just how out of touch they are! No doubt he or she thinks they are really "hip" and "with it", as they download those Walter Ostenek polka tunes onto their Ipods...

Two words: Libby Davies! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Davies "On June 5th, 2010, Davies gave an interview in which she suggested that Israel has been occupied territory since 1948. She was criticized for her comments the next day in an Ottawa Citizen editorial. She responded to these criticisms in a letter to the Citizen which can be viewed on Davies' website. On June 15th Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae echoed the criticisms in the Citizen and demanded her resignation. NDP Leader Jack Layton defended his deputy leader, but described Davies' statement as a "serious mistake" and called the Israeli ambassador to clarify the NDP's policy. "

Following into the centre? Maybe, but I think they have a muddled picture of that centre! They have bundled the popular feelings of being soft on crime with a "Reefer Madness" attitude towards marijuana. This is NOT a centrist view at all! Polls have consistently shown over the years that the majority of Canadians are relatively soft on marijuana use, except perhaps in Stockwell Day or Vic Toews ridings. The Tories really should have kept marijuana exempt from their "get tough on crime" approach. It has only diluted their appeal. It's like bundling child sex crimes with Prohibition! They only go together with a very small minority of Canadian voters. Particularly in Ontario and Quebec, two areas where the CPC desperately want to increase their seat count. Once again, we see a problem stretching back to the Reform days, where some Westerner makes policy decisions while being totally out to lunch with values outside of his own little western 'pond'. The anti-pot component will likely negate any benefit of the tougher sentencing aspects and likely will COST them a couple more seats than they gain here in the East! Why oh why do they constantly keep doing this? Talk about your death wish! If Harper wants his majority he better 'get real' very soon. He's running out of time!

Perhaps. Still, one cannot support the rulers of Iran and NOT be irrationally anti-Jewish!