Wild Bill

I'm not sure of your real motive here. Are you suggesting a system that would have prevented Harper from bowing to Opposition pressure to shovel out stimulus money? After all, we all saw how at first Harper seemed indifferent to the severity of the fiscal crisis. The Opposition howled that his government was cruel and unkind. If the Tories didn't immediately start shoveling out stimulus money they were going to bring the government down! Afterwards of course they accused the government of spending too much money! Oh well, that's just politics. No one expects it to be sane or rational. Still, your proposal would have prevented that spending from happening. I'm just wondering if that is one of your goals.

I suppose I am as well, Argus. At least as defined by some. I never knew I was a racist until some of the Six Nations supporters on this board made it obvious that if I disagreed with them on any point I must be, by definition! I will admit that I was a faithful reader of the Toronto Sun from the first day of its debut till the early 90's. I don't think I ever missed an issue. Then their editorial board bowed to politically correct pressures and toned down the Sunshine Girl. They no longer were the type of models that attracted me. They seemed more like models chosen by a committee of women to be acceptable for their son's lockers! When the National Post came out they 'stole' some of my favourite Sun columnists. That was the last straw. I quit buying the Sun and went for the Post instead. Does that make me a sexist pig? I make no apologies.

You have the right to tell others what to do when they have the right to do the same to you! If someone feels they have the right to limit my free choice then I demand the right to do the same to them! Do unto others as they have done unto you! It seems to be the only way to make some people understand respect and tolerance!

Your parallels...aren't! First off, previous immigration involved religious groups that for the most part already embraced the principle of separation of church and state. Fundamentalist Islam is quite different. It has NO difference between church and state, or rather it simply views Islam as supreme. The best example would be the religious regime in Iran. They may have a prime minister but the real power is in the hands of the religious leaders. Fundamentalist Islamic immigrants do NOT accept the laws of Canada as supreme! By definition, their Islamic code is supreme. In any conflict between the two the Canadian law would be ignored. I would agree that perhaps the majority of Muslims are no threat to changing our culture, particularly politically. However, those aren't the folks we need to worry about! One fundamentalist with a bomb is more dangerous than thousands of those who, for lack of a better word, are civilized! For it is not the religion of Islam that we should fear. It is really the culture of SOME primitive, fundamentalist Islamic countries! The distinction is important. Most Christians are not violent. Some wackos are! That doesn't mean we should fear all Christians. Still, it is not "Islamophobia" (I really hate that term! As much as 'homophobia'. It is very poor English with a meaning totally different from the word 'phobia' itself. Both terms grate on me like the word 'irregardless'!) to fear and to take steps to protect ourselves from MILITANT, fundamentalist Islamists! It is just simple prudence! What's more, the numbers of fundamentalist Islamists tend to be far higher than one might assume. For every one willing to commit violence there are many others who approve of it, even if they wouldn't commit violence themselves. When it comes to immigration it is a very naive notion to think that we have a duty to be fair to everyone of every culture, even if it means erring on the side of allowing some folks into the country that may be a risk. We have NO duty to anyone not already a Canadian citizen! Immigration is ONLY for the benefit of Canada! Governments should set immigration policies that act to increase the security and prosperity of Canadians, NOT immigration applicants! While those policies should be racially blind it only makes sense that if the CULTURE of certain countries fosters values contrary to our own we should not accept applicants from that culture! At this point in history it is not the Catholics. Irish or southern Europeans who are committing suicide bombings.

Take a deep breath and think about it, PR! Remember that when things don't appear to make sense it is often because of premises flawed in the first place. Does a poster seem inconsistent in his arguments? Does it get frustrating trying to debate him because of it? Initial premise: the poster is trying to consistently take the same stand with his arguments. What appears to be happening here is that one poster is having a great deal of fun getting large numbers of people to interact with him. THAT is his true goal! He may justify it saying he's a champion of conservative thought but again, there are at least two false premises. First, he doesn't argue in the style of conservative thought! He argues like an evangelical, in a religious rather than a philosophical vein. Religious evangelicalism is not a political philosophy. It is a faith rather than reason belief system that has often tried to ride on the coat-tails of conservatism for a free ride to some sort of advancement. By itself it only appeals to a tiny portion of the population. Second, why come to a board with a strong conservative presence to 'rile up the lefties' and advance the cause of conservatism? Talk about preaching to the choir! Why not spend your time on 'rubble.com' instead? No my friends, what we have here would seem to be simply another troll. Energetic and articulate but a troll nonetheless. He's simply posting as he does because he's having a great deal of fun with all the attention he's been getting! As long as he doesn't actually seriously break the rules we can't really expect him to be banned. If he's civil he has as much right as anyone else to make posts. However, most of us get bored with trolls after a while. Nothing says that any individual MUST participate! Me, I had him on 'ignore' for months but there were so many posts made and so many quotes showing in other posts that it seemed futile. So I tried to work with reason but reason can't compete with entertainment, I guess. So, for myself I will go back to my 'ignore' list and try not to waste my time anymore. I may disagree with many other members but I usually find them sincere! They challenge me to defend my opinions and often assist my 'edification'! I don't feel used as if I'm someone's pseudo-debating toy. Others may do as they wish. Me, I'm not playing anymore!

For the record, I have children and I'm certainly NOT a leftie! Yet I disagree with you! Why? Because I don't find your arguments to be logical! I think you would make a great preacher, where all your points are to be taken on faith. Myself, I draw a distinction between faith and reason.

Hey, I'm up for number 3! Your tone indicates your own bias but when you say "We Ontarioans certainly remember..." you are being a little arrogant, don't you think? You imply that the bulk of your fellow citizens agree with you. I live in Ontario and I don't! Mike Harris got two HUGE majorities! Somebody liked him! Since he's been gone all I ever hear is "everybody doesn't want his style again" and "everybody knows that Harris conservatism won't win at the polls". This is presented as fact when it is merely untested opinion. The same people that hated Harris when he was in power keep squawking, trying to make their beliefs be accepted as true. Myself, I can grant that you may be right but it's still a totally untested premise. We haven't had such an electoral choice since Harris left! Certainly not with the likes of Ernie Eves. So how do we know if the premise is true? I also know that the things I was most upset about with Ontario government before Harris seem to be back today! The only thing I hold against him was civic amalgamation. I'm still waiting for a single example of where merging my city with Hamilton has given either better service or lower taxes. All I hear is "Oh, without amalgamation it would have been worse!" which of course is a totally unprovable statement. Still, nothing's perfect and despite initial promises no other party has been willing to change things back. I'm not denying you have a right to your own opinion. I'm just taking exception to you claiming to speak for ME and ALL other Ontarioans!

It's always the details, TM! There's a very good reason why people want to stay connected to the power lines, and an equally good reason why they should not! First off, the thing about off-grid power generation like wind or solar is that it is far more expensive to build an installation large enough to always deliver what you need at any given time than it is to build a smaller one with a big battery storage facility that will store the power while you aren't using it, building up enough of a capacity to easily handle any peak loads like a stove or washing machine. Many American states allow systems that let a homeowner use the grid as that battery! With a meter being able to run both ways, you get charged for any excess you take from the grid and you get credit for what you send back when you aren't using much. You have the potential to dramatically lower your overall bill or even make a profit! Ontario has implemented what many of us call "a Liberal solution". That's defined as one that "doesn't have to work as long as we can say we've got one!" The reason I say that is that officially, homeowners are told that they can do the same thing. In fact, they are given a much higher rate on what they feed the grid compared to what they get charged for taking, as an incentive to put wind and solar systems on their homes. Dalton has made announcements and had his picture taken many times. The catch is what happens if you actually try to do it! First off, you get caught up in a bureaucratic, Kafkasque maze with Ontario Power Generation Corp over inspections and standards of your equipment. You are forced to spend so much money that it pushes your payback for your investment out for decades longer than it had first appeared! A personal friend of mine went through this here in Hamilton. There was a very good article recently in the local paper of a couple who had done this two years ago and to this date they have not received a dime in rebate for their extra power from the 'system'! They freely admitted in the article that if they had have known what they were in for at the start they would never have bothered! There just isn't a mechanism in Ontario to use the grid for your storage. Only officially but not in reality. That means that you have no practical choice but to pay for a large battery storage bank. This means deep discharge rated batteries. Scrounging old car batteries doesn't work 'cuz they are damaged if you drain them too deeply. Marine batteries aren't a bad choice. Still, they aren't cheap and you need a lot of them. If you want to run your electric stove and refrigerator at the same time 4 of them might give you a total of 1 hour's supply. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. A practical number of batteries might be more like 25-30! if you google up sites about off-grid power you'll see that for the average homeowner on a city lot there's not much in choices available. Unless you're so rich that you really don't care about the money and can afford to just want to 'be green!' the only guys making anything work are the technically inclined tinkerers, who scrounge up used tow motor batteries and build everything themselves. They train their families to unplug the coffee pot when they want to turn the TV on. They also all seem to live in warmer places. I never see much of anything about guys doing it here in cold Canada! This is why I've always resented countries like Spain, Venezuela and Portugal calling us Canadians "energy pigs" at Kyoto conferences and the like. Easy for them to say as they pick oranges off trees in their backyards, in January!

You mean, Brian Mulroney?

Then are you saying that if we vote for Ignatieff taxes WON'T go up?

You completely missed my point! Some races are more susceptible to some diseases than others. Some have a higher immunity than others. I cited just one example, sickle cell anemia, which is sadly a black disease. There are MANY others! I thought this was common knowledge. I will admit that I have the advantage of a wife who works in a civic Board of Health. She tells me that this has been common knowledge in the medical field for a LONG time! That being the case, who CARES were they live? How is that relevant? Their genetics are what puts them at greater risk. I'm a redhead with 'redhead skin'. I can get a burn from moonlight! Should I be denied priority treatment or preventative measures not given to other races for melanoma?

I tend to agree with you, MM! I'm appalled at the outcome but it's at least refreshing to see a 'real world' analysis instead of jingoism and 'rah-rah'. I think the single biggest factor is the value of a country's currency! Taxes and tax breaks are usually too similar between countries to matter. Cheap labour is often cited but automation has leveled much of that out too. Take a country like China that has kept its currency artificially low deliberately, refusing to allow it to float to a natural level and it gets a HUGE cost advantage! Parts and labour are in low value currency and the goods are paid for in U$ funds. What a sweet setup!

I know what you mean. My family is from Nova Scotia. We moved to Ontario when I was 8 years old. Now I'm 57 but still when I get drunk or excited I lose my Ontarioan accent!

I'm wondering if once again do the stats tell the whole story? After all, it's been about a year since the start of the huge layoffs. EI benefits must be tapped out for a large number of those people. So they go off EI and we say "Yay! Fewer people on EI! The jobless rate is dropping!"

If I follow your logic correctly, Mr. C, then we should not give proportionately more funding to a cure for sickle cell anemia. Should not everyone get equal funding? Is it not wrong that we are doing it according to race? Who cares that some races are more susceptible to specific diseases than others? It's looking more and more like your real problem is that you don't know enough from a medicinal standpoint to give an informed opinion. You know, if you keep using this forum as your own personal playpen you may find that no one wants to play with you!

Actually, the official number is more like 50%! Since this sort of thing is very hard to track we can expect the figure may actually be higher. To charge a trucker is obviously the same as FORCING him to quit! Truckers often drive for long hours. What's more, there is no rationalization that it is protecting non-smokers from passive smoke if the trucker is alone in his cab. It is simple fascism, by definition! Anyone who expects that a trucker would meekly submit because some anti-tobacco advocate tells him to do it "for his own good" is dreaming in technicolour! I would not be surprised if it's NOT a setup! Much of the anti-smoking movement is really a thinly veiled attempt to FORCE your neighbours to do what YOU think is good for them! There is nothing so popular to many people than being able to boss others around. Cops are not immune to this syndrome. In fact, some of this sort of personality might be attracted to the job! Once again, for the record, I am NOT a smoker! I just don't believe in FORCING my neighbours to live by MY values!

Yes, but why should they have to spare the time and effort? That's like tossing your garbage onto the grass, expecting someone else to clean it up! Don't you think you're being a wee bit presumptuous? Do you think the moderators have nothing else to do and that cleaning up threads and stuff is only a few minutes of their time? Do you think they are being paid for it? How would you like it if someone else did it with YOUR time? If I were a moderator, I wouldn't just beam at the compliment you gave them and not mind having to spend the time merging all your duplicate threads. I would begin to resent it! Frankly, I think you're just excusing your own laziness! Terribly bad manners!

Get used to it? That's what we were told during Mulroney's reign. When you limit people's choices they don't simply swallow it in time. They just fester and get more and more tee'd off! It's a short term strategy. It only works if there are no other better alternatives. If and when one comes around, you lose a huge chunk of your support almost overnight. That's what happened before. It could happen again.

It proves what I said in another post, Mr. C! Toronto HAS become a city of 'politicians, beauticians and telephone sanitizers"! Hell, in Toronto you don't even have to be a citizen to vote! Anyone who has been or watched an election scrutineer has seen how when those nice ladies come to your door and ask "How many who live here are citizens?" it is totally an honour system! Sure, it is an offense to lie. So what? It is never audited or enforced. A scrutineer at a polling station can make a challenge over a particular voter but that is such a publicly negative thing (especially if you're wrong!) that in practice no party risks the bad press to do it. It's really kind of a joke...

Thanks for your in-depth rebuttal! It's nice to know the skills of debate are still flourishing in the younger generation. Without such contributions how can we ever prove anything?

Not necessarily! Every so often a society has to be reminded of reality, the hard way! It's been said that one of the reasons the Roman Empire fell is that once they gave the vote to the 'rabble' they immediately started voting bread and circuses for themselves, until there was no more bread and no more money for circuses. I believe there's much truth to that! Man always wants to take the easy path. He instinctively is more of a 'grasshopper' than a 'worker ant', like in the old fable. However, in the end there are always enough of him around to escape the hole Man collectively digs for himself and rebuild. One constant is that Man only smartens up when he is at the end of his rope! As a society, he's just not pro-active. When a society starts from a frontier there are so many reality factors that things tend to be reasonably practical and sensibly run. That's because the common baseline of the people that make up that society for practicality is much higher. John-Boy Walton has to deal with reality every day. He knows instinctively that if the seed doesn't get planted the family starves over the winter. He gets a rough idea of physics from everyday work on the farm, learning very quickly that you need to put the fulcrum close to the rock you're trying to move and not the other way around. People stop respecting the tradesman, who understands how things actually work. Everyone wants their kid to be an accountant or a lawyer. If he or she just isn't smart enough they become 'politicians, beauticians and telephone sanitizers'. THESE are the people who eventually are running things! In their haste to politically be in charge they WILL throw the only man who knows how to bail out of the lifeboat, as it is slowly filling with water! They don't know enough about practical things to even recognize the danger! Once a society matures people as a whole don't have to worry about such things anymore. They start to believe that if you have an electricity shortage you just need to put more outlets in your house, or that if there's a lack of bread you just need to open more variety stores! As the baseline keeps falling things so do services and institutions. Sewers and infrastructure start deteriorating. They may have been built well but they haven't been kept up. Those big electrical generating stations now are insufficient to your needs. You can play games with yourself about conservation being the answer but that only works for a short time. Conservation in that application is really just another word for efficiency. You may reach the impossible goal of 100% efficiency but if your demand keeps increasing you just won't have enough! So things eventually fall apart but just before the worst happens some folks are always smart enough to get the hell out of Dodge! They go up in the hills and come down when its all over. Or they spread the word about the 'B Ark', if you're a fan of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy! So never fear, Mr. C! Man always survives! 3 steps forward and 2 steps back but he keeps progressing. Sometimes he stops for long periods but always progress starts up again. It's just a shame for most individuals who are still in that deteriorating town when things go boom!

You have to have lived through it to understand it. Ontario would elect Karla Homolka before they would vote in an NDP government again! You can argue about if the rep is fair or deserved but it simply doesn't matter. That's how the vast majority of Ontarioans feel and until a few generations grow old and die it's not going to change. It would be easier to have Brian Mulroney make a comeback! If you're going to dream, dream about winning the lottery. Your chances would be better!

Are you suggesting that members of a particular race are all consistent and homogenous with certain racial characteristics? Really? And how do you define 'superior'? Scientifically and not as a personal value judgement? I'm beginning to suspect there are people from the Human Rights Commissions trolling on this board. It has been reported often enough in the media that HRC employees have been doing this to be considered proven. If the HRC can't find enough racism to justify their existence and their methods then they go out as trolls and try to spark it!

That may well prove to be, jdobbin. Still, to have Harper resign, turn us over to "the other guys" who then would likely raise taxes even higher would be just plain stupid! BTW, shoving the debt onto the provinces counts as a tax raise, in my books. How much was that raise in gas taxes that the Liberals used against Joe Clark? 18 cents a gallon, wasn't it? And after the Liberals used the idea to beat him in the next election, how much did they raise it?

Once again, it's NOT race! It's culture! Often a particular culture may be made up mostly of members of the same race but that really isn't relevant. Raise a Jamaican child in a Scottish family and you will get a child of Scottish, not island, culture.