Wild Bill

My money says that if the mood of the moment suggests its better to drag it out then he will. After all, he has proven to be Chretien's protege.

Tell him all you want. He can choose to listen, ignore you or punch you in the nose if you are too obnoxious about it. Supporting a law to FORCE him is a rather different aspect of character!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambassador_Bridge "The Ambassador Bridge is a suspension bridge that connects Detroit, Michigan, in the United States, with Windsor, Ontario, in Canada.[1] The bridge is owned by the Detroit International Bridge Co., which is controlled by Grosse Pointe businessman Manuel "Matty" Moroun.[2] The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel also connects the two cities. A 2004 Border Transportation Partnership study showed that 150,000 jobs in the region and US$13 billion in annual production depend on the Windsor-Detroit international border crossing.[3] It is the busiest international border crossing in North America in terms of trade volume: more than 25 percent of all merchandise trade between the United States and Canada crosses the bridge." "25% of all the merchandise trade between the United States and Canada"? Sounds pretty important to both countries, I would think. How much is that trade, anyway? Here's an American link: http://www.buyusa.gov/canada/en/traderelationsusacanada.html "Canada-U.S. Trade Relationship The relationship between the United States and Canada is the closest and most extensive in the world. It is reflected in the staggering volume of bilateral trade--the equivalent of $1.5 billion a day in goods--as well as in people-to-people contact. About 300,000 people cross the shared border every day." $1.5 BILLION A DAY! So 25% of that would be $375 MILLION EACH DAY over the Detroit bridge! Surely any delays from using a bridge built IN 1929 must hurt that trade! I should think it obvious as 1+1=2 that a second bridge would be well worth it to both countries. It's probably the State of Michigan's financies that prevented it from happening years ago.

The Kennedys went into another line of business - armaments! Though distasteful, it was legal. My point still stands. If there is little or no profit in drugs why on earth would crime remain in that area? Makes much more sense to find another area. If you see the end of Prohibition coming soon enough you can "switch your investments", as it were, into other areas. Anyone smart enough to become an organized, high level drug dealer in Miami, with literally hundreds of millions of dollars flowing through their fingers, could simply buy Baskin & Robbins and go legit! Why not? The Moonies of the Unification Church did, back in the 70's! Or, they could find other areas of criminal activity that HAVE a high profit margin. Lord knows there are enough of them. As for legalizing pot increasing consumption, that's only a worry if you believe it to be harmful AND you wish to tell your fellow man how to live his life. We've already established that I don't and you do! There's no point in arguing it further.

Well, in this case the Constitution was used as an excuse to change the existing laws, with never having put the issue before the people. To my mind, a politician is NOT supposed to make his own laws or Constitutions! He's not supposed to interpret them to his own ends, either. That's why we have elections and judges. Sure, he's expected to show leadership but at the same time it's expected that the people supported him with their vote to make such a major change and that they would have the opportunity to express any dissatisfaction at the next election. Bill Davis pulled separate school funding out of his butt, made it the law of Ontario and then promptly retired before he had to face any repercussions! It was not part of his previous campaign agenda. In no way or form was it a move driven by the people. Afterwards, it forever changed Ontario politics, ending 42 YEARS of the Tory Party having a lock on ruling Ontario! His successor, Frank Miller, wore the decision round his neck like an albatross to a sinning sailor and barely kept hold of power. Afterwards we had Liberal governments for the first time in nearly half a century. I've never understood why he committed his party to political suicide. Especially when he could have likely gotten by if he had included ALL religious schools in public funding! The extra monies would have been trivial compared to what was given to the separate school board and at least it would have looked truly non-discriminatory.

And any first year economics student should be able to tell YOU the difference between price and profit! Yes, the resale price will plummet. That's a good reason for the criminal element to bail out! Did the criminals rejoice when Prohibition ended? Did the bootleggers continue to be millionaires? Growing pot is so simple that almost anyone can do it. Tobacco farmers could do it in bulk quantities. The guys who set up grow ops are the guys who would not bother. Right now the profit margin is HUGE! If pot was legal the profit margin would be only a pittance of what it is now. Criminals love scenarios where something in high demand can be procured cheaply and sold for a high profit margin. This is not the same at all as a high resale price! That's why they bootlegged booze and later pot and other drugs. They love to be involved in prostitution, for the same reasons. On a smaller scale, they love operations like coin vending machines, illegal betting and car washes. Lots of money running through but very difficult to accurately audit. Makes for an easy way to launder money. If you were right in your arguments Al Capone would have stayed in power.

Vraiment, mon ami! I just can't understand why Toronto supports the Leafs! Every year the outcome is a foregone conclusion. You KNOW they won't win! Yet seats still cost hundreds of dollars! I wouldn't pay $10! The Jays are starting to go the same way. Every year is "a rebuilding year". Still, attendance has dropped dramatically and maybe that will get through some thick beancounter heads that fans don't expect a winner every year but they do expect there's at least a real chance of being a contender! If you're too cheap investing in your product then why would you expect the fans to be excited? I guess because somehow, at least for the Leafs, fans will perpetually support a LOSER!

Well, considering funding a right or privilege still seems more of a personal opinion than a dictionary definition to me. That would make most of your quotations just another political choice rather than a legal obligation, IMHO. However, one line is quite clear: "- Separate schools were entitled to a portion of the Common School funds set up by the Province." That line is plain as day and I cannot argue with it. It does not say "rights" or "privileges", which I would interpret as allowing the Catholic church to practice its faith and run its own schools in total freedom. It says "FUNDS", which indeed means money! Still, it says "a portion", not equal, as compared to the public system. Maybe to a lawyer a portion is the same as equal but I'm a techie. Equal means equal and a portion is an undefined fraction. So the Ontario decision to give EQUAL funding is still more a political than a constitutional one, at least as I understand it. I thank you for your research! First time I've ever been able to get something specific. I swear that spokespeople like that Bishop have never taken a math course in their lives! Their arguments always seem more emotional than logical. To me, that puts them in the same category as WatchTower magazine. It's interesting that after all these years so many Ontarions do not agree with Bill Davis' decision. He was smart enough to hand it down just before he retired. That was also about the end of the 30 year Tory reign in Ontario. Perhaps there's a connection. Look at what happened to John Tory at his election run just a few years ago! It would seem that the majority of Ontarions do not agree with funding the Catholic separate school system in parallel with the public one, EXCEPT perhaps if ALL religious schools were given equal and proportionate funding! Right now we actually are condemned by the UN for being discriminatory.

And my point is that if we are conditioned by our education to not be capable of logic and problem solving it's no wonder we have so many social engineers! Fundamentalist churches are not known for teaching higher maths and calculus, even less than public schools. If you are raised in such an environment the idea of "Just Say NO!" with drugs or abstinence programs for teenagers with sex can seem perfectly reasonable! Basically, the people that are most upset about sex-ed in schools tend to have a lack of logic and reasoning skills in their education. These are the people who believe that Creationism is indeed scientific! They are sincere, they just lack the more scientific education to be ABLE to see the contradictions in their premises! That being said, my own view is that McGuinty's program was not inherently wrong except that it made the mistake of targeting those of too young an age. In grade 1 kids would not be developed enough to handle many of these concepts. So in effect it would be more brain washing than education. The kids would be accepting what they were being taught by rote, without debate or question. Perhaps that was the real goal!

So far support for the BQ seems shaky and no strong successor for Duceppe is in sight. Quebecers seem like anybody else these days. They're voting against some party rather than having a clear favourite. Aging and demographics are also real factors. It's possible we are heading for a situation where the BQ fades to a weak rump but the PQ wins a solid majority, in the wake of disgust for scandal in the Charest government. Once again I am struck by August's perspective on this issue. He's obviously a well read and logical man but he seems to have the universal Quebec lack of perspective on English Canada. Quebecers tend to think of the English provinces as one amorphous mass that all thinks the same way. This is dead wrong! Because of this blind spot, they seem to think that their only need is to negotiate with Ottawa, at a federal level. They never seem to understand that for whatever political party is running the country at the time of any separation agreement the very idea would be political suicide! English Canadadians would be angry and emotional. They would not be in the mood for any deal for Quebec, despite Bouchard claiming we would be forced to act in our own best interests. So Quebecers seem to think that they could pressure a deal with Ottawa, even though that would cost the ruling party so many Anglo votes that they would fall from power. What's more, there would be no compensating increase in Quebec seats, because Quebec would be gone! It's ridiculous. After separation, Quebec would be just another foreign country to TROC. A foreign country that many of us held a grudge against, at that. She would have no more to offer a TROC ruling party than Bangladesh.

Of course we're pressing it, AW! The amount of traffic at the old bridge is mindboggling! Have you ever been there in a lineup waiting to get through? The existing bridge was built back in the early Pleistocene Era to accommodate mastodons and sabretooths during their migrations. Things have increased a wee bit since then! As for the definition of a loan, Canada will get a larger share of the toll revenues than it normally would to pay back the money it gave. Call it anything you like but if we get our money back, reduce the damn waiting times to cross and increase the amount of border trade then we'll be happy!

Ah Shady, don't you see? Those 9 bathrooms all have reduced water flush toilets! To a true believer, that makes everything all right. You see, they like Al Gore. So Al can do no wrong. If someone on the other side of the debate had TWO toilets he would be a fair target! It's called situational ethics. It's best to avoid people who think like that, if at all possible. If they don't like YOU, then you have no rights and are justified in doing anything to you!

How about a school in Bountiful, British Columbia?

I agree, it's an odd contradiction. I once had a discussion with a local bishop about funding for Catholic schools, just a few years after Bill Davis had made that change. He gave me the standard line about how it was guaranteed in the British North America Act. So I went and read the BNA Act for myself! I saw clearly that the Catholics were granted freedom to practice their religion and have their own schools but I saw nothing about any guarantees to pay for them! In fact, in those days I'm not certain if the government paid much if anything for PUBLIC schools! That was so long ago that funding could have been a community thing. I spoke again with that Bishop and told him how I could only find guarantees of freedom to have schools, not to have them funded. He seemed a bit rattled that someone would actually have read the Act for themselves and then told me that freedom meant the SAME THING as funding! Sounded rather revisionist to me but I admit I'm no constitutional scholar. Perhaps someone else could confirm if the good Bishop was right. Myself, I can only go by my own reading comprehension.

Hey, they've gotten away with receiving government money while discriminating against hiring non-Catholic teachers for generations! Why shouldn't they get away with this one? It will all boil down to politics. If the governments involved are afraid of pushing the issue against the Catholic Church then it will just fade away...

Oh dear. It hurts when people rub it in! Meanwhile, as for both wars, I guess success speaks for itself...NOT!

Well, I can see how we have our differences. I lean towards being a libertarian. Frankly, I think one of the major reasons society should not have the right to tell me what to do about such things is because society just doesn't seem to be competent! Have you ever seen the movie "Reefer Madness"? The social authorities who produced that film actually were sincere but they were so ridiculously over the top that they succeeded only in hurting their own credibility. To me, in the final analysis the decision for one's own body belongs to yourself. Society may provide education. In fact, often you'd be a damn fool not to consider it! Still, it's your life, not society's. Society also tells terminally ill patients with untreatable pain to "Suck it up! It's good for you! You have no right to a painless euthanasia!" If I were ever in that position I think I would hate whoever stopped me from choosing my own death worse than I could hate Adolph Eichmann. I would allow people to freely choose meth, if they were bound and determined to do so. I might try to talk them out of it. I would have a problem with someone encouraging a minor, simply because I don't believe a minor is likely mature enough to make such a decision. However, if it were a responsible adult I would say "It's your life!". At the same time, I wouldn't want any portion of my tax money paying for his funeral. You either believe in personal freedom or you don't. Anything else is just a variation of telling your neighbour how to live his life by YOUR standards! To me, a nanny state is something to be feared. Once it gets going it can be impossible to stop. You can end up perfectly safe and healthy but so bored and unfulfilled that you would consider suicide!

Ok Dancer, you are TECHNICALLY correct! But really, 5 joints a day for more than 10 years??!! How about some links that also say that kicking back a 40 pounder of rum EVERY DAY FOR MORE THAN 10 YEARS causes damage to your liver? 5 joints a day with modern pot is excessive. You remind me of the old story about how a lab was hired to prove that cyclamates as a sweetener were harmful. They needed to show effects over at least 10 years but the problem was that the rats didn't live that long. So they injected a 10 YEAR DOSE under the rats' skins and then reported that yes indeed, cyclamates were harmful. They caused lumps and tumours!

One study, vs. how many others? And what percentage of people can expect to suffer serious harm, in the real world? And how does this compare to the health damage from alcohol?

Good score! If I were you, I'd also hang a wire out from it,plug it into my ham radio and chat with my service buddies over in Afghanistan directly! The sunspots have started to come back and radio propagation should be great by the fall and for 4-5 years after that before it starts to swing back to a minimum.

Of course! By its very nature, software is a creative process. Very little book learning is involved in grasping the basic concepts of a computer language. After that its all in how well you think! Boolean Algebra and calculus can help immensely. Of course, we've dropped calculus from our high schools here in Ontario. Hard maths and sciences have been de-emphasized for years now. Yet these are things that train students in problem solving. Other subjects tend more to be simple memorization and regurgitation. It's getting harder and harder to get capable teachers for problem solving disciplines. Meanwhile, English, French, Arts and phys-ed teachers are a dime a dozen. Also, with software you can't try to dress up poor results with psychobabble, like if someone questions the declining literacy of today's students. You have an immediate need for a program to do a specific task that can be supplied to the market or a specific customer. It either works or it doesn't. It is supplied on time or it's late. Period and end of story. This means that software companies are painfully aware of the need to have competent people who understand software themselves be deeply involved in the hiring process. Human Resources is confined to its traditional role of "Personnel", where it simply filed and kept track of the paperwork.

Not a wonder drug but there's no denying it does have useful applications that the law prevents many people from using. As for becoming dependent on any drug, what gives society the right to tell someone a drug should be illegal? The fact that booze is legal and pot is not is a clear example of how society is simply not qualified to make that decision. Besides, who's life is it anyway? When society can tell me I can't smoke pot (even though I haven't in years) then why can't I get to tell everyone else they can't drink daiquiris? Frankly, when YOU define something as a crutch and YOU support denying ALL your fellow citizens a free choice I find that uncomfortably fascist! It's like having Ned Flanders from the Simpsons suddenly appointed Community Commissar with total dictatorial powers!

And if my granny had wheels she wouldn't bump her ass when she hopped, TB! The average voter just isn't well enough informed and frankly has no desire to change that! I agree that Harper should be forced to reveal the documents. If some BQ member becomes a security leak then great! We'd have a perfect excuse to hang him for treason! Harper has to assume that a sworn-in MP has integrity and will abide by any security cautions. He's not being asked to publish the documents in the Toronto Star. He's being told to reveal them to members of Parliament. He has to give MPs the respect they deserve for their position, even if some are obviously rather "dodgy". The difficulty for Ignatieff is that this is a very weak issue for an election. Polls have shown that as far as Canada having turned Taliban types over to an Afghan government that may have tortured them, Canadians really couldn't care less! As a people we are not all dewy eyed and idealistic over an enemy who has violated the Geneva convention almost constantly with terrible atrocities. Canadians tend to be practical in such matters. Only ivory tower academics who think that such an enemy can be reasoned with and gotten to sing Kumbaya in the international choir rate this issue as election-worthy. Ignatieff knows this and so he has been forced to try another approach. It's not the torture, it's the fact that Harper wants to cover it up 'cuz he's an old meanie with no respect for Parliament! This is a much harder row to hoe, even if it's true! Ignatieff will have a hard time convincing die hard Tory voters to switch to him over such an issue. Many swing voters will think that it is just more political rhetoric, that Ignatieff is stretching the point and just trying once again to demonize Harper. That's leaves only the Liberal supporters who started out with him in the first place! I understand your outrage over the issue, TB. Still, you only feel that way because you have a much deeper understanding and passion for ethics and politics than most folks. What's more, suppose many people DO agree with you! Is this enough reason to switch your vote to Ignatieff? Could a voter who agrees with Harper on most everything except this ONE issue comfortably switch his vote to the Liberals, who he agrees with on ONLY this ONE issue? I'm predicting we'll hear a lot more theatre from both sides and they will come to a compromise within the Speaker's deadline. Then each will claim credit for saving us from an unwanted election.

Michael, there ARE formidable other barriers! We live in the age of "accredited" education! I've been watching this trend since the 70's, sometimes in frank amazement! Nowadays it would seem that you can't get a job as an "asswiper" unless you have completed at least a year or two of an accredited course! The converse is, if you haven't gotten such a certificate you can't possibly know how to wipe your own butt! Some of the greatest journalists in history never took a formal course in journalism. Some of the greatest engineering breakthroughs came from people who were self-taught. Today, they would never be hired! In my day (forgive me!) there wasn't nearly such an emphasis on formal learning. A true professional like a doctor, engineer or lawyer needed a degree to be hired but for most other jobs the question was simply if you appeared suitable at your interview. Usually the department head interviewed you himself, i.e. for a machinist's job the head of the machine shop would check you out on his machines and that, far more than your resume, would determine if you got the job. One of the biggest cultural differences I note between today and my formative years is how no one seems to learn much of anything on their own. Hobbies have all but disappeared, compared to yesterday. When I was a young lad we tore apart old cars, radios or whatever and thought nothing of it. Variety stores had magazine racks with dozens of hobby magazines that would show you how to build your own oaken dining room set with only a jacknife and a rock for a hammer! There were issues galore on hotrodding your car's engine, from the ground up. I invite you to look for yourself at what magazines remain. You won't find anything to help you build your own speaker cabinets for your hifi. You'd be lucky to find a magazine of owner reviews to help you pick something store bought. We used to have LOTS of guys into ham radio as a hobby. They self-taught themselves electronics and radio theory, just for the personal fun of it. When WWII broke out they immediately became an important resource for the country's military, which put them into the Signal Corp. Today, the hobby is slowly dying. There's only a pittance of hams left, with little new blood replacing the old guys who die off. My wife works for the City Health Department. She once explained to me how whenever a new application like wordprocessing or whatever was loaded on the city's computers all the employees involved were expected to attend a course that could last for weeks if not months to learn how to use it. All on the City's dime, of course. I had to smile. I remember in the mid 80's when my company became computerized. All of us managers came in on a weekend and moved all the manual paperwork into one storage room, which we then LOCKED! We put a terminal on everyone's desk and when they showed up on Monday morning we told them all "We are now computerized! There is NO manual system left for you to do your job! You are going to HAVE to use the computer or you won't have a job!" There were moans and shrieks of terror but by Friday NO ONE wanted to go back to the old ways! Everyone proved perfectly capable of learning on their own, with some coaching from computer guys and fellow employees. I don't know how it is in your province but here in Ontario a farmer friend of mine runs a greenhouse operation. He regularly gets visited by various government types, for inspections and paperwork. One morning he was taking down an old dead tree in a field behind one of his greenhouses and a government type saw him and called him over. He was told that he could not cut down his own trees without a tree feller's certificate! Now most farmers would have just nodded their heads and said "Yessuh, Mr. Gummamint Man! I dood that right away!" Then as soon as he was gone they would have gone back to work with their chain saw. However, my friend loves to check out government foolishness from time to time so he investigated and signed up for the course. They took 6 weeks! This was a long time for such a simple task and he had a hard time staying awake but eventually they gave him his certificate. What really threw him was when one of his instructors cautioned him as he handed him his certificate to not SELL any firewood he cut down! That would require another certificate and 6 week course! My point is that there seems to be little if any self-education. Even the simplest things need a certificate to get a job. Nowadays, a shop foreman rarely gets a chance to be involved in hiring interviews. "Human Resources" handles the whole thing. Some woman with an "Human Resources Degree" will check off a bingo card of boxes for what she notes on your resume and later from an interview. If you're lucky and get hired often that shop foreman is very frustrated and disappointed that you may not be very good at the actual WORK! I actually once had a Sheridan College graduate working under me in a warehouse who couldn't put stock numbers on the shelf in alphanumeric order. He was a smart kid, he just had never learned the concept! Even then, it took me a week of MY time to teach him! So accreditation has often become a barrier rather than a goal post to getting the best applicant for a job. Many degrees require years rather than just weeks for a certificate. It makes it all the more important for someone to focus and achieve goals when they are young. It's as if the academics have set up a guild system that provides more jobs for teachers but at the expense of self-initiative. I remember watching a couple of young lads from Mohawk College at the electronics counter where I once worked. One lad was looking at a soldering iron. From what I overhead they were both taking an electronics techician program. One lad said to the other "Why are you looking at that for?" "I'm in electronics! I'm going to have to learn how to solder!" was the reply. "Forget it!" his friend said. "They have them at school and they'll have them wherever you find a job. Why should you spend your money?" I was floored! One of the best gifts my dad ever bought me was my own soldering iron when I was 10 years old! I couldn't conceive of anyone not getting hooked on electronics on his own and then choosing to take formal education, just as I couldn't conceive of some lad ever becoming a good auto mechanic while never having looked under the hood of a car before he went to a community college! For those types of skills, if you have no passion of your own then all a school can do is make you into some kind of robotic assembly line worker. I don't see how you could ever be a GOOD technician or mechanic! Please understand Michael, I'm not disparaging higher education. I'm just adding some perspective. Learning is NOT an assembly line process. Simply achieving a certificate is not the same as having a talent or a real understanding of an area. In the "old days" the most talented tended to rise to the top. Today it seems it's those who accumulate the most certificates. No wonder countries like China are outpacing us!

Good stuff! If you ever need my services, I promise a 15% discount if you play me a Crowbar/Biscuit Boy tune!