Wild Bill

That makes two of us, Muddy!

Brace yourselves! I'm about to trigger the flames! It's not necessarily abuse of position. It may be much simpler. It likely is cultural! I've worked beside many people from India and surrounding countries. Getting desperate people to work for less than minimums is quite common. I personally worked at a firm in Toronto where the owner would use people from refugee families at less than minimum wage, treating them abominably, by the standards of my own culture. When it's cultural it sadly is not always a conscious act. I don't personally know Ms Ruby D so of course I have no way of knowing for sure in her own particular case. I just thought I'd mention it. Those who believe that all cultures are the same no doubt will be appalled at my words but hey, I've witnessed it for myself on a number of occasions. It's real! Deal with it! Maybe google India and the custom of 'tying'. Only don't try to make it specific to only that culture. Over the generations many cultures including our own have done similar things. Many orphans were exploited as farm labour in Canada not that long ago.

Geez, you did it again! Well, at least you're consistent. I think if we were playing poker it would be called a "tell". You only seem to do it when you don't have a good rebuttal. If you DO have a good rebuttal it always comes out well written and reasoned. Care to bet some money?

Forgive me, but I don't live in BC. Who's Campbell? Who offended? What's the issue? My psychic powers are not the best.

I saw a news item a few weeks ago that said Hollywood is finally going to Ayn Rand's novel 'Atlas Shrugged'. They have already started casting. The feeling is that with all the business and government actions going on today to do with this recession the novel seems to fit brilliantly! The parallels are staggering. Rand looks like a prophet who's batting 1000. The movie should be SRO in Ontario!

We didn't end as many missions as we should have! As for Harper's flagpoles, you do have a propensity to use "two wrongs make a right" as some sort of excuse. I used the same tactic on my mother when I was a boy, "My brother did it too!". Didn't work for me then if I recall and I don't see how it works for you. As I said, Chretien didn't end as many missions as he should have for all the photo-ops he strove for!

Actually, there was an area that wasn't cut in the 1990's. How about the missions that Chretien sent our boys to cover? That was perhaps the most distressing thing. It's one thing to cut budgets in the name of slaying the deficit. However, fewer people die for lack of a canoe museum or a golf course than soldiers for lack of modern arms. You cannot equate the two so blissfully. Even so, if the decision was made to cut the military budget they should also have refused to send them on so many missions. If you can't afford to equip them properly then a government has no business sending them in the first place. Have you forgotten all the talk about how Chretien might retire to a Nobel Peace Prize or a UN position?

I guess it depends on your particular political viewpoint. Reformers believed that power should come from the people. They should pick their own candidate and if he wins the seat he should represent THEIR beliefs, which may not always be the same as the policies of the party and/or its leadership. It seems to me that parties are denying open nominations in the name of protecting a riding from an undemocratic takeover while cheerfully exercising the right to deny a riding any democratic choice of candidate if it's convenient for the party. That's what I meant by hypocrisy. If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that if you join a political party then you should follow it. It will tell you where its going and if overall you agree then you will comply. After the delicious taste of the Reform philosophy I for one could never again become just a follower. To me it seems like we're debating two very different POV's. One is based on democratic populism. The other seems simply "Borg". Resistance is NEVER futile!

Perhaps some don't already know that was precisely what happened with Chuck Cadman, the MP who after he died became the focus of the "Cadman Affair". Some folks claimed that Harper or at least some of his people had tried to bribe Cadman (then an independent) to vote with the government on a very close confidence motion. Chuck had been one of the original Reform founding members. He believed strongly in the core party planks, such as voting according to the majority wishes of his own riding's constituents, as best as he could ascertain. For that reason he voted against the government, although there were rumours he personally would have backed them. Anyhow, the reason Chuck had become an independent is because one particular ethnic group organized and swamped his nomination meeting with "instant members" to install their own candidate. They got him in but they got more than they had bargained for. The riding executive all quit, leaving the newcomers floundering to get organized. All the workers left to help Chuck run as an independent. When the votes were counted Chuck had blown the "parachutist" out of the water! It was obvious that those who usurped the process had not thought beyond winning the nomination about the consequences of their action and the resources they would need to actually win the seat! Hopefully, they sent a strong message to anyone else who wanted to pull a similar stunt. Meanwhile, I find it ironic that parties worry about an open nomination not going the way they want yet all parties have routinely parachuted in their own candidate and ignored the local wishes for years and years! Hypocrites!

I feel like I'm shouting at a brick wall! If they don't vote for the CPC they get Liberals! They may not like the CPC but they think that the Liberals are WORSE! I give up! I'm putting you on "ignore", along with Myata and Charter.Rights. Life is just too short.

And neither do Liberals! Wasn't that the original point? Why are you arguing?

Another emotional shot! Oh well, if that's how the math looks to you there's no point in me arguing with you. I'm a 'techie'. To me, a volt will shove an amp through an ohm. To you, it would seem that folks could argue about the figures! How many Sea Kings have crashed recently? I can't think of any, since the Liberals left power! You might also ask, how many were deemed safe to be sent to our Afghan mission? How many maintenance hours does it take for every one hour of flight time? How many Liberals would be willing to fly in one? Actually, I withdraw that one. It's unfair. No one in their right mind should willingly ride in a Canadian Sea King!

You don't seem to speak from a mathematical or scientific perspective. Did you actually read my words? "To a Conservative voter, their objective opinion is that the Liberals are still a worse choice than a flawed CPC. So far Ignatief has shown nothing concrete to change that. To be fair, he really can't do anything but make promises until and unless he has a term in power. At that point we can judge him by what he actually does. Right now Conservatives are not going to just blindly swallow promises." To put it even more simply, I'm saying that Ignatief has had no opportunity to actually SHOW us anything! Unless he's in power he can only make promises. What has that got to do with being a Liberal? Are you saying he HAS shown us he's different, even though he's never yet been in a position to actually govern? How is it emotional to make a choice based on actual deeds? We see what Harper does every day. What track record do we have with Ignatief? Logically, not emotionally, he's just an unknown at this point. We DO however have the history of his party over at least the past decade or so, if not more! It's all very well to tell us that "that was then and this is now" but that is about as definitive as someone at my door Sunday morning telling me that the Bible is the Devine Gospel because it says it is! Might be true I'll admit but some of us need a bit more than that before we'll believe it. Sorry, but so far you still sound "religious" in your argument to me.

I would think that the math is elementary. Of course I focus on GDP. It's the ONLY way to make a true comparison! Consider, if someone is poor and gets a $50 ticket it hurts far more than it does a millionaire in a Cadillac. If a country has a lot of money and makes a very small contribution compared to its GDP then it means much less than if a smaller country contributes a larger portion of its GDP. How else can we fairly rank NATO partners? If we go by your yardstick and only look at the total dollars a country spends then a small country like Luxembourg could not contribute a respectable amount if it gave its TOTAL GDP! I don't follow your logic when you equate pointing out our country's failings in one area to mean a critic must think that "everything Canada does sucks and is bad". The converse of your premise is that everything Canada does must be great! That is just jingoism and makes no sense. You just disallowed any criticism at all. I watched for decades as Liberal governments sent our men and women out ill-equipped. As far as I'm concerned, that clearly shows how much they valued their lives! You might want to google up the song "Sea Kings In the Sun", a satire written by some Canadian troops on how they are forced to fly in helicopters that are so old they keep crashing, killing those aboard. We've lost TOO MANY for no good reason than Chretien had a petty tiff with Mulroney and killed buying new ones! Hell SmallC, they sent our boys to Afghanistan with Arctic camouflage! The soldiers had to scrounge for themselves, with their own money! The Liberal party should have been forced to use a Sea King shuttle service around Ottawa during those times. If they wanted to BS us all that the copters were safe then they should have put their money where their mouth was. Instead, we witnessed how a certain Liberal Defense Minister somehow had a last minute kink in his plans that prevented him from flying in a Sea King. After all these years I'm still disgusted!

I've decided on the first target of my personal boycott. IKEA! Always did get frustrated trying to figure out their damned instructions anyway...

Not likely, jdobbin. It has been said before many times in this forum that the Conservative vote feels it has no other choice. They may be dissatisfied with the present CPC but they are very unlikely to consider voting Liberal, at least for another couple of terms to see if the party has truly changed from its present and previous colours. Nor are they likely to just stay home. While a Liberal supporter might do such a thing I don't believe that those that support the CPC are likely to do such. You see, if you listen to most Liberal supporters or better yet, examine their posts made here on this forum and you'll quickly see that they tend to pick their heroes on an emotional level. Ignatief is a hero 'cuz he's a Liberal. Harper is evil 'cuz he's not a Liberal. They vote for who they like personally, unlike the typical Conservative voter who tends to be more objective. Tories don't expect perfection and they don't fool themselves that their particular champion is perfect. They weigh the words and deeds and then cast their vote for (as I like to say!) whoever smells the least! Maybe it's because they tend to be older! To a Conservative voter, their objective opinion is that the Liberals are still a worse choice than a flawed CPC. So far Ignatief has shown nothing concrete to change that. To be fair, he really can't do anything but make promises until and unless he has a term in power. At that point we can judge him by what he actually does. Right now Conservatives are not going to just blindly swallow promises. For a Conservative voter to "stay home" it would be understood to be in effect a vote for the Liberals. That still would look to such a voter as a worse outcome. I can't see any growth potential for the Liberals in those regions of the country where the core of the Tory vote resides, at least for the next election. Central Canada might award a minority to the Liberals but that will only leave us in yet another term of a split country. Ignatief seems to understand this. He's actually been talking "civilized" to Western Canada - the first Liberal to do so in decades. There's just no way this can have an effect in just one election but nonetheless he's planted some important seeds and if he or his successors don't blow it it may come to fruit in 10-15 years! I'm surprised to see a politician with such forethought. I don't ever expect we'll see a Liberal sweep of the West but if they could ever pick up even 20-30 seats from Winnipeg to Vancouver I think it would be good for Canada as a whole.

No, it simply means that as you get older you tend to demand more practical proof of claims and arguments, rather than just the religious faith and zeal of youth. If you're lucky, of course. Otherwise you stay fooled forever, taking the easy route of demonizing your opponents and elevating your champions to an undeserved sainthood, instead of being objective about what they actually say and do. If someone is old enough to understand the term ad hominem then they should be old enough not to use those kinds of immature arguments.

Smallc, you might want to google up just where Canada stands percentage-wise for its population compared to its other NATO partners before you make such statements. You've just embarrassed yourself. I'll make it easy for you. Go here: http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RL32209.pdf Scroll to the 2nd to last page (page 26) and you'll find a chart showing NATO defense spending as a percentage of GDP. Apparently, there are 19 member countries in NATO with the additions of all those former Eastern European countries. The chart shows Iceland as dead last with 0%. Then comes tiny Luxenbourg. Then comes Canada as number 17. No one expects us to pay half but it would be nice if we even covered the tip! We've been pikers for years, sending our troops out with bows and arrows against the lightning so politicians like Chretien could pose for photo-ops. We should be ashamed!

So? Swallowing facts is not the same as having acquired wisdom. That is the perpetual mistake of youth, since we lived in caves. All premises must be tested before they are worth anything. Testing political premises takes time, usually years of time. At your present level of experience it is unlikely you have had the time to properly test your premises. You learn a "fact" but it really isn't a fact. It's someone else's opinion that in your particular group is treated as a fact. I vividly remember how my poli-sci prof would feed us his own opinions as facts and fail those who didn't agree. I don't mean to sound patronizing, because we've ALL been there! It's part of being human, of growing. As a "geezer", your premises to me have seemed admittedly clever extrapolations of incorrect assumptions. This is more of a "religious" way of seeing the world than an objective one. Still, your zeal is to be commended. Your innate intelligence outshines your youth. I suspect that you will eventually prove that old axiom of how being a Liberal at 20 shows you have a heart and being a Conservative at 30 shows you have a brain.

Then by your same reasoning, if we have no connection to the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka why should we support their protest? What is the use of their protesting if it is only logical that we shouldn't care? You can't have it both ways. Either we have the right to take a supportive stand with other Canadians over principle or we don't. YOU don't get to choose WHICH principle for us!

This is only a marginal change on Ignatief's part. His party years ago implemented what in Newfoundland is still called the "10-42". You work 10 weeks and you can collect for 42! Just for living in an "economic disparity zone". So he's carrying on the Liberal tradition but he's not traveling at warp speed, after all! The only major difference this time is he is finally conscious of Canadian unity. He wants to give the same deal to ALL Canadians! How can we possibly fault him for that?

Exactly! Also, I agree with Sir Bandelot that it can be difficult to identify "country of origin", or even "origin of all the pieces". Still, as an individual I can only do what I can. The question is, how many other Canadians feel as I do? We don't need a formal boycott organization. We can simply promote a trend or popular attitude that says "Do unto others as they do unto us!" Don't get me wrong, I've always believed in the overall merit of Free Trade. However, too often the concept is corrupted by countries that rig the game in their favour and to our detriment. You cannot practice UNILATERAL Free Trade and expect to prosper! It just can't work that way. Perhaps someone who thinks that everything is fair could explain to me how I can see Yugoslavian FRESH strawberries, obviously shipped by air, being sold in my supermarket MUCH cheaper than locally grown product? The Europeans have been prone to rigging the game for generations, especially with their farming subsidies. Now in the interest of winning votes from the politically correct their politicians have grievously hurt some of our fellow Canadians. Their action has seriously affected my own buying habits, within the limits of what I can do. Anybody with me?

Here's the link; http://news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca/abc/home/...eu_seals_090505 "The European Parliament passed a bill Tuesday banning the import of seal products, a move that is expected to cripple the Canadian sealing industry." For some time now I have been paying much closer attention to the country of origin of the products I buy. Mostly I've been concerned with food, since certain countries like China have shown they have some problems with inspection that have resulted in some epic problems. Some of it has to do with being closer to the source in case of problems. If I have a problem with a Canadian product I have some hope of recourse. The same with something from America. However, if it came from "Elbonia" then I'm pretty well "euchred". This seal product ban is different. It will have a devastating impact on some of my fellow Canadians. I have family in the Maritimes and have always felt the tie. Except for Danny Williams, of course! He's repeatedly shown that he doesn't give a damn about me or anyone else not on the Rock so why should I care about him? There are some great wines produced from British Columbia and also the Niagara Region. Not to mention Pelee Island. It will be a start. I'll be coming up with lots more. Anyone else have some feelings about this matter?

Don't sound funny to me! My family came from Nova Scotia and whenever I get drunk or too excited I tend to lose my Ontarioan accent.

Sorry, but I still can't agree. Technically you're right but tradition has never worked that way. Even so, there is a difference between garnering support for a minority party to stay in power and having all the other parties boot out the one with the most seats. Has that ever been done in Canada before? I'm not arguing that both ways aren't legal. I don't believe most Canadians care. They are DIFFERENT and will be perceived differently by voters come the next election. There are lots of reasons to be dissatisfied with Harper but I think this one is just a bit of a stretch. Next someone will be blaming Harper for swine flu and tsunamis.