Wild Bill

Exactly, GH! The oil companies figured out that by building a bottleneck into the system by not having enough refining capacity they could artificially hike the price of gas. However, that's only HALF of the story! What never gets mentioned is that over those past couple of decades our governments have imposed so many new environmental rules on refineries, particularly on any new ones, that it would be all but impossible to run a newly built refinery profitably! The governments have painted themselves into a bit of a corner. You can't force a company to build a money losing refinery. What's more, the government doesn't want to spend the incredible amounts of money to build a refinery that lives up to their own expensive rules! So, we just don't get any new refineries!

Once again, you give me an answer that has nothing to do with what I stated. You are lecturing me on something that I never asked for. Indeed, something that was not even stated in the thread! You just pulled it out of your butt and dumped it on me! You do realize that you are NOT talking to one individual, don't you? That there are a number of different people posting here? It's obvious that you have no interest in debate. You just want a free soapbox so you can preach!

You just totally ignored my points in your rebuttal! I pointed out that Harper was forced to increase the deficit under Oppposition pressure, only to then have the Opposition blame him for spending the money! YOU call this "BS in the worst way" but refer to the QUALITY of the stimulus spending! So not only were you sleeping when the initial actions were taken but you didn't even wake up to give me a rebuttal pertinent to what I actually said! Go back to sleep! I'm putting you back on 'ignore'!

That's not the case. Nobody is talking about "changed on a whim". Our amending formula is such that it is next to impossible to ever be changed AT ALL! The very idea of writing such a document so that it is perfect from the onset, with no need to ever have any amendments to fit with changing times or history, is absurd! Constitutions and Charters of Rights are not Commandments written by God and handed out on Mt. Sinai. They are man made documents, subject to errors and expected to need changing over the years. The American documents have not had hundreds of 'whimsicial' amendments! Just what their people found necessary. My point is that it doesn't matter what OUR people feel! We are NOT going to see any changes!

Where have you been, Mr. Ashley? Were you sleeping when Harper first took power and the recession hit? He and his finance minister made the mistake of saying things weren't that bad and we should stay the course. The Opposition immediately pounced on them, saying that they were just cruel and indifferent to the suffering of Canadians entering a recession. They absolutely DEMANDED that the government spend huge sums of money to 'stimulate' the economy! What's more, they threatened to bring down Harper's minority if he didn't do what they wanted. So, the money was spent and the deficit went up. Immediately, the Opposition started railing at Harper for spending so much money and running up the deficit! It was all there if you cared to look. As I said before, were you sleeping?

Bryan, when Trudeau and the boys wrote up the new constitution, they also wrote up the conditions for any amendments or changes. If you read them you will quickly see that it would require such a high majority among not just the MPs but also the provinces that in the real world it could never happen! In effect, Trudeau got the Constitution 'cast in stone' so that it would never be changed.Many have wondered since then if this happened deliberately or by simple oversight. Some lean towards 'deliberate'. For instance, the 'right to property' was left out, to the delight of the NDP! It will never get included under the amending formula. Unlike the documents of other democracies, ours can never change with the times or be improved if it originally had any flaws. That's why you're getting the laughing comments in this thread. This point has been mentioned many times before. People aren't really laughing at you so much as laughing bitterly about the situation.

I hope you're right Michael but geez, sometimes I just can't believe how McGuinty can keep doing such goofy and expensive things yet people still seem to be supporting him, just drifting along and not getting the least upset. It just shows my perennial point that it's not enough to show that an incumbent choice is bad. You also have to show that the alternative could be better! So far Hudak is about as inspiring as cold toast and old coffee.

I've had some personal experience with one of our local hospitals over the past few decades. It used to be routine at the St. Joseph's Hospital here in Hamilton to wait several hours before even getting to see the triage nurse, the first step in the process. One visit brought home to me just how detached the "upper management" seemed to be from the front line situation. They fired the parking lot attendant for the emergency room parking lot and put in meters instead. The meters had a 1 hour maximum time limit so you can guess the obvious. You'd see a steady stream of people having to leave their place in line to go out and feed the meter. Local citizens were used to this and it was the custom to hold someone's place in line. The unfortunate thing was those patrons who had no one with them and had to go out to their meter themselves. Often they were in much pain and discomfort and didn't need the extra aggravation. The only attention I could see that the "upper management" gave was to put a bill changer machine on the waiting room wall, in order to provide change for the meter! Through multiple visits I can't recall ever getting through a visit to emergency in less than 8 hours. A few years ago my wife was running a very high and prolonged fever so off we went again! Right away I noticed they had done some changes. There was an entry machine to give you a waiting ticket to see the triage nurse! There were two triage stations but of course only one was manned. It did not appear that the second one had ever actually been opened, come to think of it. Anyhow, there was a fancy LED sign over the nurse to show the number being processed. "Great!" I thought. "They've advanced as far as a supermarket deli! Take a number!" The process did speed things up. We saw the triage nurse in about 15 minutes. However, all this meant was that we were admitted to a second, inner waiting room. Everyone there was waiting just as long if not longer than before! I will admit that at least to get a triage decision within 15 minutes was a huge improvement. Previously there had been an incident where a patient bled to death in the waiting room, waiting to be seen. Probably that was what had prompted the new changes. Anyhow, my wife was in much pain and I had asked if it was alright for her to have a Tylenol or something. The nurse said it was ok so I went off to the hospital pharmacy and bought the most expensive small bottle of such pills I had ever bought in my life! My wife took a couple and in 30 minutes or so the fever had dropped somewhat and she felt a bit better. Taking the Tylenol proved to be a mistake. About an hour later a nurse came by for another quick triage checkup. She quickly moved on and began to take patients who had come in after my wife. I was a bit puzzled when a nearby lady who had been watching whispered over to us "Did your wife take any fever pills?" When I admitted that she had the lady said "Oh dear! You see, when the fever goes down you move into a "safe" category and you become a lesser priority. It makes you wait longer!" Straight out of a Kafka novel! My wife didn't take another pill. Sure enough, when the nurse came back an hour and a half later the fever was up and my wife was then sent to an actual doctor! They admitted my wife right away to a bed in the actual hospital. It was then that things moved into high gear. Suddenly a doctor appeared an introduced herself as a specialist in respiratory diseases. My wife had a battery of tests over several more hours. Finally (over 8 hours later in total, naturally) she was allowed to go home with some prescriptions. We came out to find a parking ticket on our windshield. Afterwards we realized why she had had a respiratory specialist. This was in the middle of the SARS epidemic! My wife did have some of the symptoms. Fortunately, she didn't as the long delay before she actually got some attention could have been quite dangerous. I didn't give the system any credit. The delays were obviously NOT because someone had decided she didn't have SARS! For the longest time I thought that the problem was not money but brains! It really seemed that the changes at the hospital were lacking in common sense. They seemed cosmetic rather than attempts at truly improving wait times. It took me a while to realize that things DID make sense if I redefined my initial premise. They weren't trying to actually improve wait times! They were trying to make it APPEAR they were improving things by making the system look more modern and seem more complicated! This would get some political pressure off their back! People would be dazzled by LED marquee signs and more rooms with people buzzing around. Unless you went through the process yourself you would never know that the wait times were no shorter than before! Putting more money into their budgets just seems like a way to pay them more for doing the same.

You remind me of a school mother, Mr. Ashley! She sends her kid to school every day with lunch money. Everyday some bully steals it from him. She thinks the solution is to give him more lunch money! There are people and governments in this world who WILL take what they want if they are unopposed! It takes military force to stop them. Hiding behind Uncle Sam's skirts only forces us to give up our independence and support him in every conflict, lest he stop defending us. A strong defense is not just to prevent invasion. Nations also have foreign interests. Suppose Canada has a large investment in some middle east or tropical country and that country falls to a dictatorship that seizes all the factories and assets, with no compensation. Canadians are still hurt! Pension funds collapse, companies go out of business, people lose their jobs and can't feed their kids or keep their homes. You don't strike me as a very practical person. Noble dreams but a bit short on how to make them actually happen! Have you ever been truly poor for a long time? Can you imagine how it feels to have someone drop off a load of cereal bars to feed you today but who leaves the structure of things exactly the same so that you have no opportunity to ESCAPE being poor? I suppose if some other country becomes a threat we can try to bribe them off with your cereal bars. If that doesn't work we could always throw the bars at them!

You've moved the goalposts. Of course you can come up with illogical examples of many systems. So what? CR said that "logic was a delusion", carte blanche! He did NOT say that expropriation was illogical or that the government may make illogical justifications for some of its actions. Or any of YOUR actions! Or his, or mine, for that matter. He said flat out that logic IN ITSELF is a delusional concept! Geez, sometimes trying to get you or CR to stick to what you actually said is like nailing jello to the wall. One or BOTH of you MUST be lawyers! Every time you get challenged you try to weasel around it by dragging in examples out of context or in CR's case, flat out non sequiturs. Go ahead. 'Prove' your point by calling me a name! If you and CR are truly typical of native land claim negotiators it's no wonder government couldn't care less if things drag out for centuries. It's just not worth the cost of blood pressure pills for the frustration in dealing with people not "one to one" with reality...

Actually Nicky, I have! What's more, I suspect you HAVEN'T! Actions speak louder than words. The actions of the modern Liberal Party since Mike Pearson have had little or no relation to the classic definition of liberalism. To be fair, the present CPC is a bit vague, itself. Explain to me how the present Liberal party expresses individualism, laissez-faire government, the need for less government and more citizen responsibility? If you can have read my posts for all this time and think I'M a conservative then you have NO idea of the classic definitions! As I said, if you disagree or if you're listening to anyone to the right of Libby Davis then to you that's a conservative! Money talks and bullcrap walks, plain and simple. You can play all the "one-up" games you want over who has read what book but it won't change what the modern Liberal party stands for, considering it really doesn't stand for specifically anything! "I can play reggae, I can play disco, I can play anything you want!" "If I do, will you vote for me?" Whatever will get them into power and keep them there, I guess.

With today's level of technologies, war can start happening in moments. Do you really think that we'll have the luxury of having the TIME to vote on a response??!! Hell, we'd all be dead or at least become a conquered people before our politicians could decide if it was a federal or a provincial matter...

I've been following your posts for a while and I'm not sure just what you're advocating. It SEEMS to me that you think we should take 40 year old planes and jazz 'em up with some upgrades and 'bondo' so that our cheapass politicians can make our pilots fly them for another 40 years. That will mean we'll be flying essentially 80 year old aircraft! What's more, we're entering a world where stealth is becoming the norm and yet you want us to keep flying what will essentially become giant radar beacons on the battlefield. If you have a viable alternative that will give us similar capability I'd be interested but otherwise I think we'd be better off with Spitfires than your choice! They'd be the cheapest solution of all!

I totally fail to see how you can link those names to their race! They also appear to have worn shoes. Should we therefore consider all people who wear shoes to be superior? The more important factor to me would be their CULTURE! Britain developed the "protestant work ethic", which then spread to Europe in a diluted form, as many of the names you mention achieved their success after coming to either Britain or America. Culture has little or nothing to do with race. Raise an Innuit child in a Scottish household and you'll get a Scottish kid, likely a whiz with machinery and able to stomach haggis. There are many cultures but not all are equally positive as far as advancing the quality of life for human beings on an average. Some cultures throw people into a life of hard work and poverty under a caste system and excuse it by saying that those unfortunates will be repaid in a future life. Others have mostly people that lie around all day, living in a climate where they have no fear of freezing and where food is cheap and easy, literally hanging free on trees. Such cultures are not the most obvious examples of inventing steam engines, putting a man on the moon or inventing cures for diseases. It does appear that a culture where you have to plan for cold winters is more positive for initiative, hard work and innovation. Some folks try to use Asian kids in our schools as examples of how one race is superior in intelligence. That's a very short-sighted and weak premise, since it more truly appears that it is the cultural force of their parents instilling the values of education and hard work that is responsible for Asian kids tending to win the math and science awards. Children of 'incumbent' Canadians who achieve highly in schools usually share the same values as the Asian families. It's the children who's parents are part of the 'victim' and 'don't hurt their self-esteem!" culture who seem to find a stop sign to be a week's good reading! So much for race! As an aside, I didn't see too many Estos in that list of yours. I wonder why?

I too come from eastcoaster blood, that is Irish and Scottish. This has meant that I do enjoy a drink but I don't like to pay for it!

Nothing wrong with looking after our own! However, if that means buying obsolete aircraft then how is that good for the country? Hell, why not have them build Spitfires and Lancasters! It would keep all the jobs here and would be MUCH cheaper! Go crazy! What was that WWI fighter, the Spad? Or that german one with 3 wings...

Nice to hear that the honeymoon is still not over! Me, being an old fart and married for years and years we've long since graduated to 'hall sex'. If you don't know the joke Jack I'm afraid I'd have to give it to you on a Private Msg!

Well, I guess that's fair, since the Liberals aren't Liberals either!

So you believe that if a registry check did NOT say you had a shotgun or a rifle a cop should not need to worry about it? Considering that criminals are not very conscientious about registering guns, wouldn't you have to ALWAYS be careful, no matter what the registry said? And if that's the case, what good is the registry report? I have a hard time with your logic here, SH!

Again, 'superior" is a subjective term which can only make sense within a specific context. In precisely what context do YOU mean? My premise is simply that children of mixed races or at least genotypes tend to be healthier overall. That would include a black haired French Canadian from northern Ontario and one of those blonde Nordic beauties that you keep talking about, or an Asian with a 'white' caucasian or a black African. Good health is only one trait expressed in the products of 'mixed' breeding. Intelligence, character and aptitudes both physical and mental will be shown in a much greater variety. If you want to define this as 'superior' you absolutely need to state the context! If you need someone to figure out some new aspect of physics then obviously a great long distance runner is not a 'superior' choice. If you DO need fast runners then a child born with a great singing voice may not fit your definition of 'superior'. People being people and with the contact between humans ever increasing due to travel and migration we are going to see more and more 'miscegenation' as the years go by. Already it can be almost impossible to find someone 'racially pure' in North America. As I said before, Nature has programmed us to be attracted to the 'exotic' and young folks are going to fall in love and not care a fig for the prejudices of some of their elders! You better get used to it. It's a process that is not only good for the human race as a whole, it can't be stopped!

Ah...no! However, as a suburb city we are a conquered people and there's nothing we can do but grumble. Hamilton was always a financial basket case on its own and so Mike Harris forced Amalgamation on the suburbs so they could be bled to pay Hamilton's spendthrift ways! Look at the nonsense from Mayor Fred over the new stadium! He thought he could use the Tiger Cats as a lever to FORCE people to come to the west harbour! Poor access and no parking but he thought if they wanted to see a game they would have no choice and he would get to renew his crappy old downtown! Of course, this would have guaranteed that next to nobody would ever have gone there and Freddy couldn't seem to see that Bob Young was hoping to some day make a profit, instead of being forced into bankruptcy or moving the team to another city! Thank heavens Mr. Fenn the mediator had some common sense and has suggested a better location. This is the perpetual problem with Hamilton and why it never seems to get anywhere. Its council always seems to be dominated by the unionist leftwing types who take business and jobs for granted and think that so many have pulled out of Hamilton just to be pricks and hurt the union movement, for the sheer glee of it! They have no idea that a business has to stay profitable to survive and don't really care! Mayor Fred was actually quoted in the local newspaper complaining that the TiCats didn't properly appreciate the need to help revive the older parts of the city. How the hell could they do that if Fred got his way and they couldn't make any money? Even when you watch council meetings on the local cable channel they all sound like a union/company negotiating meeting at one of the steel mills! For the most part, they just haven't got a clue. They say they want new business to come to the city. I can just imagine some Yankee CEO coming up to check out Hamilton. Here's what he would probably report when he got home to the rest of his management team; "What a city! They have the highest taxes anywhere, cracks and potholes in all the streets and skyhigh electricity and water costs compared to any other municipality! Their transportation corridors are marginal at best and their public transit only works along the lower city, being inadequate if you need to travel from the upper and lower city levels. But wait! The good thing is that they put flowers in all their street medians! They're beautiful! Forget all that stuff that has to do with money and profitability! Because of those flowers we should move our entire operation to Hamilton tomorrow!" Sometimes it just breaks my heart...

Yeah, and apparently Mr. Lictor was one of those who DIDN'T fantasize about her! Does that prove my premise?

A superior race? You're putting words in my mouth! 'Superior' is a subjective term. You would need to definite by any different context. If being a fast runner is a survival characteristic then perhaps a black athlete from some areas of the world would be the best choice. Other circumstances could necessitate a quite different choice. No, my point was simply that if you breed too pure you tend to bring out genetic recessives. What's more, the idea that 'mutts" tend to be MUCH healthier dogs is accepted fact among breeders, like the sun coming up in the east every morning. The 'lure of the exotic' is something I have personally experienced. Years ago I was a roadie for a rock band. We played a Northern Ontario town that was rather isolated and populated totally by French Canadians. I was never much of a 'ladies man' but in this town the girls were all over me! I finally asked one of them what was going on and she explained "It's your red hair! Look around you! Everyone in this town has the same black hair!" I had a marvelous time! I don't know enough 'pure blooded African black women' to answer your premise about attractiveness, but I do know that when I was growing up any young white male going through puberty who didn't constantly fantasize about Nichelle Nichols, who played LT. Uhura on the classic Star Trek, was probably gay!

Is that the future you see for native people? Forever under "perpetual care"? Now who is patronizing and racist??!! A life forever "on the dole"! And why should I have to forego arenas and road repairs? Indian Affairs gets more than 11 billion dollars a year! Sure it's mostly wasted in bureaucracy and corrupt chiefs but it doesn't have to be! How about a one-time payout? It would be far cheaper to buy every native living on a reserve a condo in Florida with a couple of hundred thousand dollars for his bank account! Besides, I've already foregone things like road repairs. I live in Hamilton! They flaunt themselves as "The City of Waterfalls" but they are really "The City of Cracks and Potholes". Anyone who drives Hamilton Streets can attest to the truth of my statement. We had a detour for months here in Stoney Creek (forcibly amalgamated into Hamilton a few years ago) to repair one street that diverted heavy traffic unto a main thoroughfare, ruining it with cracks and potholes. We thought naturally that the city would repair the alternative route but after a year or so it was obvious they had no such intention so the citizen complaints started to be sent in. The City of Hamilton eventually responded. Halfway down the street they put in a speed bump! Keeps you from hitting the potholes at too fast a speed, I guess! They would stop me from fixing some potholes myself but I guess I could move somewhere run more intelligently. Naw, I'll just sit on my ass and what for the government to fix things for me!

Today's paper had an article pointing out that Britain's major objection was that the Haudenosaunee passports are too primitive to be useful to today's security systems! Apparently, parts of them are handwritten! Supposedly, the Haudenosaunee are working on bringing them up to par...