Wild Bill

You're wasting your time! There are 'faith' people' and there are 'reason' people. You can't argue against faith with reason. Faith people will not accept any facts or reasoning that deny what they've already chosen to believe. It's as simple as that. I've had 'Mr. Canada' on my 'ignore' list practically since he first showed up, for that reason. You might as well argue with a Jehovah Witness at your door. You can predict his stand ahead of time and you won't ever, ever change it! I'd rather watch paint dry.

I can only speak from my own experience and that was a LONG time ago! Back when we lusted after a Janis Joplin type of woman and would have considered a Paris Hilton type as just an airhead skank. I knew lots of fat potheads! I never saw any connection between smoking pot and weight. We did get the munchies but that usually meant the late night snacking was compensated by sleeping through breakfast and often lunch as well. I can accept the use of medical pot as a pain reliever but I can no more buy the idea of it helping our bodies to kill cancer cells than I can accept voodoo healing. No, I think we have extremists on both sides of the argument. Pot is not a miracle cure for anything, nor is it some deadly 'reefer madness' that will suck your brain and get you to try to fly off a cliff. It's simply an enjoyable intoxicant. Like any other, if you keep it a spice and not a vice it won't hurt you. If you overdo then you will get a problem, like going from a glass or two of wine at dinner to guzzling a whole bottle of Ripple at one sitting, as often as you can get it. After all, according to some, is not alcohol a 'gateway' drug? I would imagine most heroin users have also drank beer!

Well, anyone in business knows that if you REDUCE taxes to make more businesses healthier you will INCREASE revenues! When businesses are over-taxed revenues tend to fall. This is because businesses tend to suffer and also to simply pick up and leave! I live in Hamilton, Ontario. I've been watching the results of our silly-assed municipal councillors taxing and killing off business for years! Now we reap the whirlwind. When your major industrial tax base is gone you have no choice but to raise residential taxes! It seems to me that what Iggy is doing is just the usual smoke and mirrors. Not that I'm criticizing! It seems that's what you have to do to please your choir. Our lowest common denominator strikes me as pretty low indeed. I think he decided weeks ago that he would not bring down the government. That being said, he would be stupid not to try for some brownie points! He will say that for the most part he's happy with the budget but that's only because the Opposition had successfully forced Harper to be reasonable. Then he might try to get a couple of amendments, in order to claim that the Liberals had a more direct hand in making it 'better for all Canadians'. It's 10:30 in the morning as I type this. Give it another half hour and we'll all find out!

You've nailed it! I think part of the reason why certain computer fans are pushing for online voting is what has been called the "Gee Whiz!" factor. This is where someone can be so enamoured of a technology that they want to use it for EVERYTHING they can think of, whether it is a good fit or not. I had a manager back in the late 80's who was into the new fangled personal computing. He dazzled the higherups with spreadsheets for new projects, showing fantastic profits and sales figures. Me, I too was versed in that world but I saw the flaws. Any important figure in his spreadsheet was a wild-assed guess he had pulled out of his butt! The spreadsheet would instantly spread it all over the columns on the page but it was classic garbage in - garbage out. He did well with it for some years, until our branch went bankrupt and was closed, taking all our jobs. Many guitar amplifier manufacturers jumped into the transistor world back in the 60's, leaving vacuum tubes in the dust. Most lost their shirts. Why? Electric guitar is supposed to have some distortion, especially rock. Transistors work very well to cleanly amplify but their distortion is harsh and not pleasant. Online voting is just another "Gee Whiz!" technology. It's impressive when used on Canadian Idol. Hundreds of thousands of fans can instantly text their vote on their cell phones and Blackberries. Yet when all is said and done Ben Mulroney is still plastic and 'lame-ass'. The speed of tabulation is what impresses some folks! The ease of voting while sitting at home in your 'jammies. The technology is so bright that without shades these folks just can't wrap their heads around the security problems, blowing them off as easily solved out of sheer faith and not from any detailed understanding. Like a 'Dilbert' cartoon where their manager constantly comes out with impossible to achieve high-sounding goals and simply delegates them onto his underlings, who have to deal with the frustration. Online security is a problem overlapping many areas. It is constantly being improved to protect and encourage e-commerce. Perhaps within a few years it will have advanced to the point where we could trust it with election results, but not today!

Your points are moot. We are almost at the point when genetic testing will reveal any individual's propensity for most diseases. There are people who have never smoked and yet died of lung cancer. There are people who do all the right things yet suffer high blood pressure and cholesterol. Or MS, or CS, or a host of others. It's a lead pipe cinch that life insurance companies will obtain and use this information to set rates or deny policies to people born with high risks. Given that our publicly funded health care system is not self-sustaining and is out of control financially, it's also certain that it will be used as an excuse to tax people differently for their health care.

I remember several quotes from the PMO in the papers at the time the $1.95 was first revealed. They knew from the start it would hit them for $10 million! Did they intend to do it anyway? Of course! Why? Because the CPC can afford it! They would take the biggest hit because they received the most votes. The difference was and is that the CPC receives far more donations from the grassroots, from individuals. This is a holdover from the Reform days. i can understand why a 'Progressive Tory' would not have seen that right away. At the time the PCs were dying before they merged with the Alliance they were so poor they would have thought a donation from an individual was a rare blessing from Heaven! And even then it would only have happened in Halifax or Pictou, Nova Scotia. They were ready to rob a church poor box, for Pete's sake! This has been discussed before. The opposition parties were the only ones vulnerable to losing the $1.95, because they had made little or no effort for individual donations, before or after Chretien changed the rules. So the machinery was not there. Especially the Liberals, who with their present debt load would have been driven bankrupt the day the $1.95 funding was lost. It was that desperation that caused the formation of the Coalition, after all. Harper put them in the position of cornered rats! They had no choice but to fight, any way they could. $10 million would only have been a small hurt for the CPC. A cheap price to pay to bankrupt the Liberals. Perhaps they thought that only Dion would have controlled their response and having demonstrated himself to be a total "nob" would have been bowled over. It would seem Harper forgot that there were actually still some capable individuals within the Liberal party and they would step in to steer the ship off the reefs.

I think you misunderstand me. As I said, there are some assumptions here. First off, Kingspan may well have a good case but Brantford may also have a good defense. This to me seems a perfect example of where something may be technically legal but totally against the spirit of justice. The civil servants of Brantford have probably not seen a claim from natives since Joseph Brant was alive! The letter from SN would have appeared as a bolt from the blue. The legal department might have looked at it and not taken it seriously. After all, throughout this protest SN has had divisions within itself as to who speaks for them. The city may also have considered a challenge based on the Haldimand Tract to be frivolous, as the feds have already refused to recognize it. To many eyes, the basis for today's claim might seem to be an attempt by some partisans to rewrite history in their favour. The feds seem to have taken a stand against the validity of the Haldimand Tract claim. It's the province that refuses to stand up on the side of enforcement. A city could easily find itself in Brantford's position. Who would expect the province to refuse to enforce the law? As for the province being unable to control development in such areas, what you are saying would mean that the province is essentially no longer able to control development at all! The protesters have effectively stopped it cold! This is lighting a fuse. Brantford cannot survive a development freeze. They also cannot trust any deal with SN. SN has set a precedent for ignoring history in its own favour. You and I can argue about that but it doesn't matter. Brantford will already have decided. The Caledonia protest is now expanding. Things will be forced to come to a head. Unfortunately, this can lead to rushed and rash actions. If civic resentment grows, we may see things like economic embargoes against people from SN in Caledonia, Brantord and the other towns. I sincerely hope NOT, but I just don't have faith in human nature to not think it a possibility. Citizens are being used as cannon fodder and that HAS to inflame resentment! I truly wonder if the SN protesters understand this. They seem oblivious, like someone who would keep kicking a dog and then being shocked if it bit them! I am so glad I don't live there. I avoid going anywhere near there as well. That could be someone like me attacked for getting lost and driving down the wrong street! Better just to never allow the opportunity.

I suspect you're quite right, Kimmy. Most folks seem to inject their biases into their observations. We never seem to see any specific polls. We're told by one side that the American mfgrs missed the boat with a lack of small cars and by another side that North Americans actually wanted big cars and trucks! I suspect the true picture is a combination of factors. One factor is that ever since we took the OPEC shock back in the 70's Detroit has never seemed to be as good at building small cars as Europe and the Japanese. I remember the Chevette, which seemed to have a V8 chopped in half to make it a V4, which boasted a mighty 40 horsepower! Those of us driving German Rabbits laughed our asses off at them when we passed them on the highway. Import small cars always seemed to be quick and snazzy. Domestics were lumbering clunks. So basically domestics just haven't been competitive in the small car market. Meanwhile, of course we want big cars! Few of us enjoy being cramped! We just hate paying for the gas! For decades we've suffered price shock and then relief, shock and relief. It was like 'Charlie Brown and the football'. Every time we bought a bigger vehicle that was more comfortable and useful we just seemed to get a year or two into the payments and bammo! Gas prices would go nuts again! We'd swear that our next vehicle would be a gas miser but when the time came things had adjusted once again and the price was either stable or actually lower. I think that Lucy from Exxon just yanked that football away one too many times. Charlie Brown the public has given up! He's finally cottoned on to how he's being 'hosed', if you'll pardon the pun. The last spike in gas prices was so high and came on so quickly that he just threw in the towel. Now gas prices have plummeted but Charlie doesn't care! He's convinced that if he buys another SUV he's just going to get fleeced at the pumps again! So he's committed to buying gas misers. Unfortunately for the domestic mfgrs, they've been lagging the pack when it comes to having suitable offerings. It wasn't GM who came out with the Prius hybrid. It might shock some of us to realize that it's been 10 years since the Prius came out! The Big 3 are just starting to play catch up now. Why couldn't GM have led the way with hybrids? Well, I'd say it's because GM for some time has been run by accountants, with the usual tunnel vision that goes with it. You make more money running existing lines for as long as possible. My 1978 VW had fuel injection as a mature standard technology, followed immediately by the Japanese. The Big 3 didn't let go of carburetors until 1986! They didn't want to pay the retooling costs. I still remember my old Dodge van refusing to start on many winter mornings. Neither the dealership nor myself could ever get that automatic choke on the carburetor to behave. There I'd be, freezing my nuggies opening up the engine bonnet to stick a pencil down the carburetor to force open the butterfly valve and get the damn thing to start! I eventually ripped the damn thing out and put in a manual choke assembly. The accountants philosophy may have made more money at the time but it left their companies blindsided and unable to react to the changing circumstances quickly enough. You would have thought that a company as rich at the time as GM would have covered its bets by having a few alternative programs in the wings that could be quickly ramped up if needed. Sadly for them, they seem to have missed the boat on that one. It almost seems like the companies that had both invented and pioneered the automotive industry had reached a point where they wouldn't innovate if you put a gun to their head! They had good company. It wasn't Timex who invented the digital watch. Or Underwood Typewriters who came out with the first computer/word processor.

The "gateway' argument is so illogical I'm convinced whoever uses it must never have gone beyond grade 6 math! True, most heroin users at one time may have smoked pot. Does that logically mean that pot leads to heroin use? In a pig's eye! Most heroin users have also used aspirin. Or drank Coca Cola. Or beer! Is beer a gateway drug? Does it inevitably lead to heroin addiction? Talk about fanaticism over-ruling reason! I've come to believe that as a society we are getting more and more poor at basic logic skills but it doesn't seem to be the pot smokers who are leading the charge. It's being led by people who make 'gateway' arguments!

Your explanation is possible but we don't know all the factors, which are true or false, which are significant and which are trivial. Your premise takes some assumptions as gospel. We don't know for sure if the native land claims are valid or frivolous! McGuinty has clearly shown that he won't challenge natives over such issues. He prefers to simply hide and blame it on the feds. Meanwhile, Brantford would naturally have assumed that the rule of law prevails. Suddenly, protests are lodged and the province does nothing. This time it involves an outside company who CAN'T wait while governments dither! It involves large sums of money, which ultimately will be sucked from taxpayers. We can't tell if the natives have a legitimate claim! It seems that will take another 100 years of dinking around in the courts. Since the province and the feds refuse to face the issue we are going to see more and more such incidents. Job opportunities will be lost. Resentment and hard feelings on both sides will keep escalating and escalating. McGuinty left Caledonia twisting in the wind and now Brantford as followed. Native protesters are smart enough to have realized that they don't HAVE to make legitimate claims! It's enough to make any claim at all. When the province won't take a stand any claim will further paralyze development in that area, putting more pressure on governments to DO something! Of course, what the protesters don't realize is that the feds and the province DON"t have to do anything, no matter how much pressure is involved! As long as Fantino can say that things are peaceful the politicians couldn't care less what happens to Caledonia or Brantford. They can afford to lose a seat or two in their party rankings. To them its a cheap price to pay to be able to duck the situations. I'm making a lot of assumptions based on my personal opinions but then, so are you! That's my point. Who's right or wrong should be proven in a court of law. Since that apparently isn't going to happen in the reasonable and foreseeable future, at this point in time how can we tell?

Not sure of your logic. You seem to be implying that CPC voters are not citizens! Perhaps english is not your first language. Anyhow, I had no problem with same sex marriages and I also voted CPC. Am I the only one? That being said, I WANTED Harper to revisit it! I perfectly expected that nothing would be changed. I was just in favour as support for the principles of democracy. The Liberal vote was blatantly NOT democratic! Harper knew nothing would change as well. He too was just paying lip service to democracy. It doesn't matter if you support the idea or not. A government shouldn't rig the vote. There were many Liberal MPs who had publicly declared themselves against same-sex marriage and when the time came to vote their party whip FORCED them to toe the party line! I remember watching it on TV. Some Liberals had tears on their face but they did what they were told. Frankly, THIS was what I found disgusting! And also the reason why I didn't vote Liberal. As for pot, you may be right. Depends on who's doing the poll, I guess. I would support total legalization, myself. Still, if the polling question was "Do you think the marijuana issue is important enough to be dealt with RIGHT NOW instead of more pressing issues?" I think the result would disappoint you. Certainly if you expected me to back a Liberal government over Harper solely and only over marijuana I couldn't do it. Too high a price! I care about more than one issue. Frankly, I'm not sure what is your stance about that.

Well, that's your opinion. Even if those were his views, his concept of government representing the wishes of the citizenry regardless of his personal views more than offsets his 'evangelicalism'. I submit that he were a Liberal Prime Minister he WOULD impose his personal views! In 56 years I've never seen a Liberal leader consider a binding referendum. The closest ones ever faced were the Quebec independence referenda and they were not initiated by the federal government. Still, when you mention Mulroney's majority (actually, TWO back to back majorities that were the greatest in our history!) I vividly remember my own feelings and that of many others at the time. There was a feeling in the land of disappointment with the old Trudeau style Liberals. Trudeau-mania had been over for a decade and enough time had passed for us to see the negatives develop, like deficits and the like. We were all hungry for something new! Mulroney seemed to promise it! When he spoke it was always about change and new approaches for a new Canada! Sound familiar? Same old, same old. He swept the Liberals almost completely. Yet what happened? After two terms Canadians began to realize that he was really nothing new at all. Rather, he was the same as all the other old time politicians, just much better at it! Reform didn't just spring up overnight. Members of the old PC party like Manning and other long time progressive individuals had tried to change it from within but finally grew just too frustrated! The power was all in the leadership and they either weren't listening or were deliberately ignoring any dissent. So they started their own party. The 'market' for the first time had an option for their feelings of dissatisfaction with the old political style. The PC party simply fell apart. The saddest thing of all was that for some years they couldn't see it! They thought it was a temporary thing, like losing an election. In truth it was a structural change. All those generals who ignored their troops took years to notice that all their privates, corporals and sargeants had deserted them! Reform took all their key riding association people, the experienced volunteers. In short, all the people who actually knew what to do and had been loyal mules for the PCs, doing all the grunt work. That's what REALLY devastated the old PCs! As Toadbrother pointed out in another post, Manning blew it with the Alliance, perhaps by being too impatient. He fell from grace and was replaced by Stockwell Day, who not only thought the Universe was created in 4004 B.C. as written in his Bible but also thought that the 'silent majority' of Canadian voters really agreed with him and just needed an opportunity to vote for someone of his persuasion. Just a few years before Harper had given a speech to the party warning them that mixing evangelical religion with party politics was a recipe for disaster. I guess the bible-thumpers had to learn it the hard way. Day nearly destroyed the Alliance before he was finally turfed. Has everyone forgotten Chuck Strahl, Deborah Grey and the other rebels that sat with the PCs rather than stay under Day's banner? The fractured right gave Chretien and the Liberals a free ride for over a decade. Now things have changed again and there's a lot of confusion amongst the electorate as to what parties they want to back. From my POV, neither Harper nor Iggy have properly understood that the electorate is still hungry for something new! Just because our choices are restricted to 'same old, same old' doesn't mean that people are happy about it! This confusion could explain why polls are so volatile. People can get turned off quickly but they are flitting about seeking in vain for something that turns them ON! I submit that the tone of many of the posters from the 'left' on this board supports my point. Post after post heaps negatives on Harper. Very little positive has been typed about Iggy! Dion of course should be left unmentioned. Yet for all his ineptness even Dion illustrates how Canadians are hungry for something new and inspiring. Sure his 'Green Shift' was poorly thought out, if not totally out to lunch! When he first unveiled it Canadians seemed to be favourable to the idea. Finally someone was offering a new path! It was only when we looked close that we saw the flaws and backed away. It would have been interesting to have seen public reaction to a 'green shift' that was planned by someone more practical and down to earth, instead of just another academic. We are overdue for a Canadian 'Obama'. None of the present choices are even in the league. We don't see much in the minor leagues coming up either. That doesn't deny we're hungry! Surely, sooner or later we'll get a leader more appealing.

I find this thread rather amusing! First, CAMP and Eyeball imply that those who oppose their idea must be ignorant Luddites, who because they are not internet and network experts are not qualified to express their opinions. Then they find out that Toadbrother and Riverwind ARE experts! Just experts that know more than they do and don't agree with them! Now we are hearing "Ah, whaddyou know anyways! <grumble, grumble>" I smell zealotry here!

I'll buy some of what you say. Reform was stronger in the West but so are the Tories today! Reform did pull nearly 2 million votes in Ontario alone. That's far from an insignificant number and it was growing. I didn't sense the anti-Eastern sentiment you describe but I did find that the Calgary HQ were prone to try to run the show in Eastern ridings. They always failed spectacularly, as they did in the Sheila Copps byelection over the Liberal promise to axe the GST. They pushed their locals aside and proceded to run a national issues campaign in a riding full of Italian mamas who read and spoke little English and tended to vote loyally for any locally popular candidate, like Ms. Copps! Not only did Reform lose, they actually lost ground over the previous election. Those cowboys always complained that the East didn't understand them but they themselves were like Martians when it came to understanding the East! I agree the Alliance was a mistake. I think the party got a bit too impatient. Stockwell's gaffes cost us dearly in membership and volunteers in my riding. That's when I bailed myself. Where we disagree is that I don't think Harper had to be so ferocious in bringing in the PCs to the point where he seems ashamed to mention any Reform roots at all! This is a disturbing echo of a tactic that was an open secret during Mulroney's terms. He and his people were well aware that there were large numbers of voters that didn't vote for them because they truly loved them but only by default, considering the alternatives worse. The catchphrase was 'disenchanted conservative' meaning a conservative who had no real choice but to vote for the Tories for lack of anything more closely matching his own values. I think this is an exceedingly dangerous marketing scheme! It only works as long as your marketplace has no other choices. If a more attractive option DOES appear you instantly can lose shovelfuls of marketshare! This is essentially why Reform was able to decimate the Tory support at the time, except for a tiny rump in the Maritimes. Too many people were fed up for lack of a real choice. When Manning spoke up they flocked to him in droves. So now Harper is trying to capture that fuzzy 'middle'. I can understand that. It's just that meanwhile he seems to be breeding 'disenchanted conservatives' all over again, taking his core vote for granted, just like Mulroney! Mulroney may have won the two greatest majorities in our history but a lot of that can be attributed to anti-Liberal dissatisfaction at the time. The very next election the Tories went down to TWO seats! Have all Harper's advisers forgotten that? I know that if another Manning populist comes along I'll be gone like a shot! Still, I'm just one vote. The big question is, how many other Canadians feel as I do? Given the present choices, how can anyone tell? It's only if something attractive appears that we would see the results. I suspect that Harper's Tories might be in for both a savage shock and a bitter disappointment!

I can appreciate voting for the most appealing candidate but I haven't been able to do such for years now. The reason is, with the total lack of free votes and ruthless party solidarity practiced by ALL parties I don't see how the individual candidate makes any difference! His campaign office staff may differ in effectiveness. When you visit some MP or MPP's riding office some staff are more capable at helping out a constituent than others. What I see is that if my MP was of the ruling party and the party thought that all of us in his riding should have their property confiscated and sold to buy votes in some other part of the country, my MP would either vote along with his party or be allowed to dissent as a 'token', after the party whip had done a nose count to be sure that it wouldn't affect the outcome. Manning would have changed that. Chuck Cadman proved it! I understand the need to be pragmatic. Also the need for flexibility. However, that is not the same thing as having no principles at all. Or no common set of values and beliefs. Oh well, I'm not dead yet! Someone inspiring might come along again before I'm gone. I just don't see anyone in today's bunch!

Interesting perspective, Molly. I bailed on the PCs in favour of Reform. I had felt that the Liberals and PCs were too similar and was attracted by the populism streak espoused by Manning. Frankly, I had done riding work for the PCs and found them very elitist. Lots of party platform work groups that were always totally non-binding and ignored. I felt like just a mule for banging in signs and raising money for others to tell me what was good for me. From my POV, the PCs won the war! They were down to a tiny rump when they merged with the Alliance. Now virtually everything that Reform stood for and had printed in their Blue Book is not only gone, it's never mentioned! "Down the memory hole, Winston!" This was the party that had destroyed that of Mulroney and now Harper sucks up to him??!! Why are you complaining? The Tories today are virtually the same as the old PCs! They have no populist mechanism that is binding from their membership. They have no published binding equivalent to the old Blue Book. They have campaign planks to cater to what they consider their most marketable demographics. At the moment they are closer to my own values than the Liberals, but not by that much. Iggy seems to be morphing the Liberals into something totally different than the vision of Dion and he may well carve support away from Harper. The parties are now just like they always were. Opportunistic power brokers willing to wear any coat that works. Once again, they are all fighting so hard for the middle that voters on either side of the mean are turning away. I think I should change my signature to read: "WHY DID MANNING EVER BOTHER?"

And sometimes the problem is that the other choices seem to be worse snakes, or perhaps more accurately, 'snakier"! We Canadians rarely get inspiring choices. It's our lot to only get to choose who smells the least! Polls still show that despite the rabid hatred of the left mainstream Canada still is behind Harper, even if they don't see him as a saint. It's not enough to smirch your opponent. You also have to give people a reason why your choice is better! It could be worse. We could have proportional representation. With a 'pizza parliament' we would have a multitude of parties. The smaller ones would be able to wield disproportionate power by trading propping up a minority power for having portions of their own agenda enacted. Forever more it would be the 'tyranny of the minority'. If you are of the left this probably would seem attractive. You wouldn't have to worry about achieving high levels of popular support.

Tit for tat! How many Canadians have any confidence in Jack? I mean, wouldn't the number of votes each received reflect that?

"Give the natives whatever they want"? Ah, no! That's hardly my position. Don't put words in my mouth. I gave up supporting Six Nations for their land claims when they resorted to terrorist tactics against the townsfolk. That being said, the land claims there haven't gotten to the courts! They've been pending for a hundred years! Federal Indian Affairs makes molasses look like warp speed! Because of their inaction they have now amassed such a huge backlog of claims across the country that it could take another 100 years to sort them out, even if the courts DID start to move! The problem is that the feds have refused to get involved and simply dodged the issue. Chuck Strahl has the entire country's worth of land claims on his slate and it would appear that Caledonia is not considered important enough to his ministry to get bumped up the list. There is also the obvious position implied in your very post that it's McGuinty's problem so let Dalton squirm! The problem there is that such a strategy is incredibly naive and short sighted for a politician to take! The people of Caledonia are not going to blame only Mcguinty. They also blame the feds! This affects their vote and that of any others in Ontario who are following the situation. It's like the old traffic adage: "You were right. Dead right!" If the feds seriously negotiated and then told the natives to get stuffed that might work in putting the ball back in McGuinty's court. So far the feds have merely dinked around. Unfortunately, this has let Dalton make great strides in winning the propaganga war, making claims that its the federal inaction that is solely responsible for the situation continuing on and on and on. A surprising number of people believe him! The feds inaction does nothing to counteract this. As for Fantino, I agree he's a toady. Still, he's a toady with a big stick! Dalton may be able to stall any inquiry for quite some time but if I were Fantino I would be worried about a change of government next election. That would remove his protection. This still doesn't change the situation for the townsfolk of Caledonia. They have been shown that NO level of government will protect them! All they get is fingerpointing and passing the buck. Somehow, I don't think that your words would be of any comfort to them. They don't want simple blame! They're looking for someone in some level of government to be their champion! Maybe Dalton is not their champion, but it's not Harper either! I wouldn't want to be a Tory party funding canvasser in that town.

Kimmy's right. Most of those who claim to have been there are liars. I was supposed to be there but at the last minute my pals and I wussed out. It was supposed to be only a middlin' sized folk festival. We were going to go but then we thought about the hassles of longhairs like us crossing the border and stayed home. Ever since I've regretted missing out! That could have been me, sliding naked in the mud!

Well, not voting is not as bad as one person voting many times by controlling the PINs for his entire family. And yes, we have and have had problems with our historical system, what with dead people voting and Elections Canada people at your door who take your word for it as to who in the house is really a Canadian system. It's a total honour system and of course that means its abused. Still, instead of cleaning up an existing system should we abandon it in favour of one that can totalize different flaws much faster? The most powerful advantage of our present system is the use of scrutineers. There is an excellent chance that a scrutineer from the riding might catch someone lying about who they were, because they actually knew the people of that name! Not always, but often enough to catch some fraud. Enough such cases for one specific candidate could result in charges. As the old saying goes, any judge is an honest judge as long as he's being watched. With online voting nobody could be watching. Yes, Yorkville sound was my account also! Great bunch of people. Last year I got to spend supper and an evening with Pete Traynor and his lovely wife Suzanne. He's one of my heroes! I may not be as surprised as you think about seeing electronic voting. The appeal of the time and cost-savings is enormous. However, I'll bet a shot of good scotch that we will see it becoming a problem in some ridings, with disputes from some candidates.

Well, I'm afraid I'm the wrong person to ask about the Bible. I do read a lot of fiction but the Bible is not on my list.

I KNEW you were a Reformer! That's straight from their Blue Book!

PDP-11? Perhaps you do have me beat! All I ever did with a PDP-8 was to write a simple program to make the bell ring! However, would I have you trumped if I said that my granny was named Babbage? We may have online voting soon for things like voting within a party membership but we are still some years from it being used for federal and provincial elections. You state that it is private and secure but not HOW it is so! I don't know where you live but if you are in Toronto you would be well aware that the number of women who would NOT be private and secure while voting at home could be in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands! Not every neighbourhood is the same as where you grew up. I would agree that it would be convenient. So what? That still doesn't address the problem of secrecy. Or security. With a paper ballot, you always can have a physical, audited recount. We both know that software is prone to hacking. Particularly any GOVERNMENT RUN software! Hell, every time we pick up the paper we hear how some nitwit dumped a few cartons of confidential tax records on the sidewalk, or hacked into a government database. Do you expect us to trust them with the electronic votes during an election? Your enthusiasm reminds me of the words of a Motorola engineer who gave us disti salespeople a training session one evening. It was the late 70's and he told us "Within 5 years there will not be a single vacuum tube made or sold! Solid state will have replaced everything!" I just smiled. He had no idea of all the applications out there. Even 5 years later 10 kw was the limit in output power for a solid state AM radio transmitter and even then it used lower powered modules in parallel. Any higher power or higher frequency like FM or television still required tubes. Audio never gave tubes up! Not just hifi audiophiles who prefer vacuum tubes but musicians. Most professional guitarists won't use a solid state amp if you put a gun to their head, except for a few clean jazz cats. Why? Because electric guitar is SUPPOSED to be distorted! Transistor distortion is harsh, unlike that of tubes. It's just the physics of how the devices work. There's still millions of dollars of vacuum tubes made and sold today. The industry where I sold that engineer's products has collapsed to a shadow of its former self, at least in Canada. Meanwhile, I make my living building and repairing music equipment like guitar amps...that use vacuum tubes! As Gildna Radner often said "Details, always details!" Online voting is no different. Someone will have to solve those details.

"Try and make a quality post next time"? If you're going to be so arrogant and elitist as to insult me for questioning you then I suggest to go over to rabble.ca. Those kind of manners are popular there. If you're just going to be insulting then I will put you on my 'ignore' list in the control panel and not play with you anymore. Could happen? Are you unaware that there are people of male dominated cultures here in Canada? If women are forced into arranged marriages why do you think one would need an 'active imagination' to think such a thing could happen? You mentioned if I was a Liberal that I would feel a Conservative vote is of poor quality. I could comment on the quality of YOUR post! You put words in my mouth and then insult me for what I never said! You are castigating people for not "getting with the computer age". I was there when the first computer chips were invented! I sold Intel, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Zilog and others. I sold the very first personal computer, the Osbourne. I was there when Intel got the design win for the IBM-PC. I was pre-DOS using CPM, let alone Windows! Go teach your granny to suck eggs! A quality vote is a CONSIDERED vote! If someone won't get off their butt to go to a polling station then the odds are that making a considered, educated choice is not that important to them. Perhaps they should spend less time with their Xbox or Wii. See? I can be insulting too! What has that accomplished? Do insults change truth? One of the cornerstones of our system is the secret ballot. That means secret from everyone! Including members of your family. Hell, most times the local parties will cheerfully give you a free ride to the polling station! We are not all bachelors fresh from university living by ourselves. Unless someone comes up with a method of electronic voting that addresses these concerns then I believe we would be paying too high a price for simple expediency.