Wild Bill

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't your inherent premise that the coalition being legal is enough for Canadians to accept it? That because Harper once tried something similar that makes it ok for today's coalition? To me this is the sticking point. I think these arguments are both irrelevant and short-sighted. What matters is how Canadians would feel about it at whatever time they next get to vote. I'm not arguing with you about the legality or even the morality of a coalition. I'm suggesting that if they got away with it they would sooner or later pay a huge political price at the polls. Polls consistently show that Canadians would likely say "Yeah, it's legal I guess but Man! Does it STINK!" I'm not surprised the Bloc and the NDP were on side. They had little downside. Their type of supporters would be less likely to have a problem with ANYTHING to hurt Harper! The Liberals are in a different situation. Dion being such an academic seemed blind to future consequences, like a chess player who can't see more than one move ahead. Iggy obviously knew from the start how it could eventually damage Liberal chances and that's why he tried to keep out of the limelight. BTW, why do you keep dragging out the Airbus scandal? That was Mulroney. Harper had nothing to do with it. Reform had split with the Tories. Perhaps you feel that when they merged with the tiny rump that was left of the old PC party they had to take on the PC legacy of scandal. If so, I would submit that's just more proof that Reform/Alliance should have just waited for the PC's to die off by themselves. They only had a few Maritime seats and had ZERO chance of ever staging a comeback in the rest of Canada! Here in Ontario people still spit at the mention of Mulroney's name! The only politician more hated would be Bob Rae, which is why the Tories would have loved nothing better than Rae winning the Liberal leadership!

Well, I would ask if the Opposition supports breaking up Canada! An attempt at a coalition is an obvious kick in the groin to Western Canada. Mealy-mouthed excuses from coalition supporters that it is no such thing have no effect in Alberta. It's like having someone kick you in the head and then try to BS you into believing that you didn't really mean it and besides, it couldn't really have hurt you! Actions speak louder than words. Who really has such an agenda?

And instead of answering my point you do exactly the same thing again! You simply slam Harper but excuse the opposition. Well, a bit more time has passed and the GG would likely indeed call an election rather than allow the coalition. The coalition may be legal but it is obviously unusual. We have almost ZERO history of such coalitions! Iggy is not going to be so stupid as to force this issue. The polls have overwhelmingly shown that the biggest majority of Canadians hate the idea of a coalition instead of a vote. They may not be keen on early elections but the idea of NO election frankly pisses them off! You remind me of a driver who doesn't understand the old adage "He was right! DEAD right!" If the coalition was installed it would likely be the kiss of death to the Liberals the NEXT election! No one will care about your arguments about legality. They will simply vote against the Opposition for having done it. Scolding people and lecturing them is a total waste of the coalition's time. With all the numbers games going on the coalition supporters have ignored simple math. They will be up against those who support the Tories PLUS those who are offended by getting a government without an opportunity to vote for or against it! The only way around this would be to avoid ever having an election again. Hmmm...perhaps there's a secret agenda happening here?

I'm missing something here. Are you saying that since Harper may have done something similar as far as a coalition attempt that makes the present attempt morally justified? That because Harper may have done something you consider bad that it's ok for the "other guys" to do exactly the same thing? Wrong is wrong. If all parties have done evil then why should a tie go to the Liberals, Bloc and NDP? To my mind, things now cancel out. I have no pure choice. So I'm left in the usual position of having to decide who smells the least. It will take a long time before the smell of Shawinigate, HRDC, the gun registry and AdScam gets out of my nose. Harper has a fair bit of rope left before he's in the opposition's class!

Aren't you being a bit unfair? Perhaps people disagree with you because your arguments are not strong enough and not simply because they "root for the other team"? Who gave you the gospel?

Those are some practical ideas! I'm not denying there's NO way to do it! I'm just pointing out that what we hear from the wind power advocates never seems to address these factors. You've given some good links. How come we never heard about them from David Suzuki? He just told us that if we disagree with him we should be thrown in jail. Maybe it's the media's poor scientific understanding. It's easier if they hear we need an extra 10 megawatts to assume we can just put up 10 megawatts worth of wind turbines. And I wouldn't write off the carbon lobby. The most practical solutions may well be to continue to use some old fashioned methods, just in much smaller amounts. For many cities energy storage may not be cost-effective considering their own unique situation. Green generation for the larger percentage of their needs with perhaps a gas or coal-fired generator or two with the best possible emission scrubbers would be a quantum jump better than what we do now. 'All or nothing' approaches may show strong passion and commitment but good engineering couldn't care less about anything but the numbers. Does anybody know of ANY MP's with any sort of hard science background? Are we having the blind make the decisions of which paths we should take? According to which paths are politically sexier?

Yes, energy CAN be stored! Just not in the gigawatts involved in a national power grid. That was my point. Batteries as storage for your house are one thing. For a city it's quite another. How many 'AA' cells do you suggest for a steel-making plant? You seem to have misunderstood me about a backup system. I'm not talking about when the wind stops blowing. I'm talking about when dawn breaks, everybody's TV's comes on, air conditioning kicks in, offices and factories start rolling and your electrical demand hits a sharp peak. In a house system a battery storage system would have stored power when demand was low to provide it when demand is high. This allows a much smaller and less expensive generating system. It's a lot cheaper in solar cells or turbines to keep a battery bank charged than to be able to power the entire house at peak demand with NO storage system! You also may technically be right about a warp drive, in the future. The problem is (to quote Firesign Theater) "Yeah, but it's TODAY!" Not only do we need solutions for today's problems but to echo the original point, wind power advocates seem to add up generating numbers TODAY as if they are all that we need to consider! This tells us that they frankly don't understand what they're talking about. It's always the details! Blue sky talk is nice but any engineer knows that when it comes from non-technical people it usually is no more than "verbal diarrhea", where lots of ideas are spewed out but they're all based on crap. To make something WORK you HAVE to answer the details! What's more, details ALWAYS take more time and money than you would expect! In fact, they often make what sounded like a great idea just not cost-effective. Nothing infuriates a techie more than some artsie type making a decision based on inadequate technical understanding who then walks away after delegating the problem to those who DO understand and have to deal with the REAL problems! Anybody with hair in their ears can dream up something that WON'T work!

Well, they have their own agenda as well! Riverwind makes a good point that seems to have floated over the heads of 90% of the people who discuss wind power. If you're not a techie it's easy to make the mistake of assuming that wind power production is a lump sum. If the turbines can produce a megawatt then you have added a megawatt to your grid. Unfortunately, mother nature doesn't work like that at all. Electricity cannot be stored. You need it when you need it. If you don't have enough any excess you had an hour ago is irrelevant. Also, any excess from conservation is also irrelevant. This means that you have to take the MINIMUM amount of wind power generated as all you can count on, which is much less than the maximum! So the more wind generation you add to your system the more standby capacity you also have to add, from sources that can be almost instantly brought on line. This means methods like coal or gas-fired turbines. If your grid is big enough you tend to get some averaging of your power demands which helps the problem. The east coast demand is lower when the west coast is higher. Still, now you need a much more sophisticated distribution system that can monitor and adjust for those conditions. Not something we have today and not something we can MacGyver up in a weekend for $50. Robert Heinlein said it years ago. TANSTAAFL! "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch! If the sandwich is free then you overpaid for the beer!" Battery storage for national power grids are about as technically possible with today's technology as a Star Trek warp drive. The only practical use is with decentralized power generation. It is practical for your own house, perhaps. Not for even your own neighbourhoood, let alone a state or province. As someone who makes his living with a soldering gun and electronic parts, I find it interesting that I NEVER hear this point about wind power addressed in the media. Certainly not by politicians, who for the most part seemed to have dropped any hard science about Grade 5, after their beans in that jar of toilet paper barely sprouted and then died.

Actually, you've opened up a ray of hope! The mass emigration of Muslims to the western countries has mostly been the more educated and progressive individuals. There are certain exceptions, like some of the fanatic imams that preach in some immigrant communities but even those I suspect are fighting an uphill battle with their youth in their new countries, who for the most part are working their butts off to shed much of their parents' attitudes and to fit in to the domestic youth culture. I know it can be a trial for us older folks but take a moment to watch a pop music song and dance artist video. Watch the background dancers and try to spot how many different cultural groups are included in the overall picture. You'll see the mainstream "white bread" dance moves but intermixed will be dancers clothed in both hiphop styles and Hindu garments, doing dance moves that stress commonalities between them. I've seen some young Chinese representation as well. The marketing "suits" have made some obvious decisions about the values of today's western youth culture. Leaders of more primitive fundamentalist muslim cultures must be facing a challenge, even if they haven't recognized it yet. I've read Steyn's book and accept his point about population demographic changes and replacement birth rates but I wonder if he hasn't made a large enough allowance for the "rock and roll and blue jeans" factor that helped to bring down the Berlin Wall. Youth culture tends to strive to more freedom, not less. That means they would seek to shed some of their parents' values and adopt western ones in their place. "Taliban' type leaders face a drain of more tolerant citizens to western emigration, being left with an incumbent population that loses numbers to acts of violence. I'm describing trends of course and these are only generalizations. This doesn't mean that there are NO fanatics among many of the new immigrants! There are certainly a significant number and we must be vigilant towards them but it would be a mistake to ignore what is happening with by far the larger number of more tolerant and responsible bodies. Fanatical cultures are experiencing a drain of their better individuals, leaving them perhaps with an increasing concentration of more intolerant and for want of a better word, less sophisticated types. Using those that are left as suicide bombers doesn't help their numbers either. If this is the case our cultures may be changed less than some of us fear, and not always in negative fashions. We just have to keep the violence under control long enough to swamp it out and smother it. Meanwhile, as Hamas types keep destroying more than they build they obviously will end up trying to survive on nothing but rubble. They are inherently parasitical, in that they cannot produce necessities while so busy engaged in destruction. They are dependent on the rest of the world for aid. As long as their education is almost exclusively religious and anti-Israel propaganda they are never going to be able to build anything more than subsistence agriculture, let alone high tech industry. Luddites can't prosper on their own. The most they can do is rob or beg from others. We're taking their cream while they are foolish enough to make it happen themselves!

Because he would promptly lose the next election and then have NO power to steer Canada in what he feels is a positive direction, obviously! A lot of people believe in Global Warming. Perhaps enough to defeat the Conservatives. There's likely similar numbers of people who believe in astrology or the I Ching. Telling the truth has no positive value in maintaining political power in Canada. Decades of Liberal rule has taught us that! I learned it as a young lad watching Trudeau lambasting the Tories for suggesting price and wage controls, then imposing them himself when he got elected! Or poor Clark's "18 cents a gallon" gas increase, and then ol' Pete jammed it up even higher himself! My point is, hypocrisy works and truth doesn't! That's just the way it is and there's no point railing against it. Canadians must want it that way or they wouldn't vote accordingly. I'm sure if Harper heeded your advice your respect would be of great comfort to him as he sat on the opposition side of the house. Why don't you ask him to simply quit? It would make as much sense!

I had forgotten that thread and also that Hamas offer about the '67 borders. Thanks for reminding me. However, the reason I had forgotten them was that I never thought the Hamas offer was anything more than a red herring! Israel would be a total fool to go back to those borders. It would merely give Hamas fabulous new locations for rocket launchers! There would be absolutely no security for Israel in such a deal. In fact, it would be doubtful if it would be able then to withstand a first strike by its enemies. This has been perhaps the main permanent problem with any solution in this part of the world. Israel needs real security from rockets landing in their peoples' houses. They'd have to be dumber than Dion to simply accept Hamas' word on the matter. Meanwhile, the measures she is forced to take to provide that security cause collateral hardship on the mainstream Palestinians, feeding and reinforcing their resentment. I have no easy solutions to offer but I know one thing. It would be crazy to expect that Israeli citizens would keep voting for a government that allowed Hamas to keep firing rockets into their cities. The only explanation that makes sense is that Hamas must WANT retaliation! It's a crying shame.

Well, I'm afraid I don't see your solution as viable! How can it be, when we send our men out (both of them!) with bows and arrows against the lightning? Even if we adopted your suggestion, we don't have the resources to do it! Our entire armed forces would not quite fill SkyDome in Toronto. That includes every clerk, cook and bottle washer. There are only a few thousand actual combat ready and equipped soldiers. That's what I meant when I said "blue sky and wishes". If by 'viable' you meant if SOMEBODY were to do it then I would agree with you. I just can't agree that it could be done by Canada. No matter how much grit Custer had, he had just too few troops and there were too many Indians.

And if the coalition took over how many Tory Senators would have been appointed? Don't forget, after all those years of Liberal rule there are only about 20 Conservative Senators left! The Liberals have overwhelmingly stacked the Senate in their favour. If you like the idea of represention so much, why not simply elect Senators? That way no one would need some stretched out convoluted argument that if we voted in Liberals then we are also supporting them as our proxies to pick our Senators for us. As for NDP or Green representation, the NDP want nothing to do with the Senate other than to abolish it. That's their own stated policy. And as for the Greens, shouldn't a party be expected to win at least one seat in the Commons before they should arbitrarily given a Senator? So many of these arguments seem to me to be just a smoke screen for an elitist agenda to avoid letting Canadians directly make their own choices.

Out of curiousity, are you implying that Canada has the resources to accomplish the task you've stated? Or that we have any chance of developing them in a useful timeframe? Frankly, you sound like you're running on blue sky and wishes with this one...

Where are you getting this idea that Hamas will recognize Israel under some kind of conditions? Have you a cite or two for this? I had thought it was common knowledge that Hamas has stated firmly several times that they do not recognize Israel in any way, shape or form and desire only to wipe it from the earth! You are the first to ever suggest anything different to my ears or eyes. Perhaps you could back your claim up a bit and perhaps educate me.

Again, I submit that American and Canadian cultures are vastly different and parallels between the two are of a considerable stretch! I've never been bothered by being compared to American Libertarians. I use a dictionary for my definitions and not a team name that some political ignoramus appropriated for his jersey. The Christian Right might hijack a movement for a little while. No big deal. If necessary, we would deal with them when the time comes, too!

Jdobbin, be serious! Both your examples had worked for the CBC! I find it interesting that with this block of appointments all journalists came from the CTV side of the spectrum. The CBC were shut out. Just some overdue balancing, I guess.

Is that a crime, to not be a Liberal and get appointed? I guess we're still wondering about Adrienne Clarkson and Micky-Jean.

Long ago there was a daily newspaper comic strip featuring political animals. One was a possum named Pogo and another was a turtle named Churchy La Femme. Every Christmas we'd hear Churchy caroling at the top of his lungs this little ditty: "Deck us all with Boston, Charlie! Walla Walla Wash., and Kalamazoo! Nora's Freezin' on the Trolley! Swaller Dollar Cauliflower, Alley-garoo!" Ah, nostalgia's never what it used to be!

well, one guy did it by being Trudeau's chaffeur! While you're busy slamming Harper's choices does that mean all the present Liberal appointees "sacrifice and work hard at making things work?" You seem to have an interesting perspective. You can only see evil through your RIGHT eye!

This is Canada. US politics are a poor parallel at best. As for Harper, you just won't let it go, will you? I've pointed out several times that your premise that he's some kind of bible thumper with a hidden agenda is totally contrary to his history and the facts. So you twist that into some kind of "gradualism" conspiracy. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that I've been following Harper for decades now and have heard him speak words that totally contradict your argument. I was a founding member of Reform in Ontario and find your implications about it being a bible thumper party to be totally contrary to anyone I ever met, spoke to or heard about. So if you want to persuade me to your argument you'll have to do a LOT better! And for the record, I myself am NOT a conservative but a Libertarian! I am NOT a bible thumper but a devout agnostic who's first real book was a science book about astronomy and physics! If you're right, I think I would have noticed even a little something during all those years!

And once they gain that control they turn the party into a loser! That was my point that I've made here several times. Stockwell Day was an evangelical christian and when he gained control of the Reform Party he destroyed their chances by pushing some of their agenda. This after Harper only a few years before had told the membership that mixing religion with politics was political suicide. So there's an element of Darwinism to the idea of evangelicals trying to hijack a political party. If they succeed they kill themselves off. Harper and his team are well aware of this and will NOT allow it to happen! If Mr. Canada's values were truly mainstream in Canadian politics then the Christian Heritage Party would have been swept into power years ago. He and his friends are just pipe-dreaming. Don't worry about it.

No, Mr. Canada. We don't hate you. We just think your views are negative in the grand scheme of things. Kimmy said it with good satire but I suspect it went over your head so I'll state it more plainly. A religious right may be forming but their numbers are nowhere near high enough to represent mainstream Canada, particularly here in the East. The evangelical movement has always had a curious tendency to believe that they are part of some "silent majority" that shares their views. This POV has never been proven in reality. The logical inconsistency is that just because "mainstream" Canadians might share many of the values of evangelicals that doesn't mean they share ALL values! There are some HUGE differences in thought! Evangelical christianity has a history of forcing their views on others. Such as Creationism and outlawing the teaching of evolution, to give a recent example. Their very righteousness can be an attack on someone else's beliefs. Evangelicals have their own definition of when human life begins and accept it as a fact of the universe, with no empirical evidence to support their view. Yet they would make it the law of the entire land. Evangelicals have their own views on sexuality. Here also they would make them part of the penal code. Yet again, they have no proof but only opinion, based on historical texts that other members of their faith wrote. The only defense I have ever heard for this circular logic is that somehow these texts were "divinely inspired". Try getting some proof of that! No, Mr. Canada. Mainstream Canadians reject evangelical christianity for a very simple reason. Although they may share many values there are a few that in business we call "deal breakers". In other words, they are so strong by themselves that they cancel out all the others, no matter how many there may be. These "deal breakers" tend to boil down to one common theme: a reduction or limitation on personal freedom. Not the freedom to lie, cheat or steal. Most folks agree on those. Rather the freedom to live their own life for their personal happiness, without restrictions based on some solely religious-based "morality". I've written before about how Stockwell Day got a big reality check about "silent majorities" when he won the Reform leadership. Seems to me that you ignore his lesson. It's a virtual certainty that no champion for evangelical christianity will EVER win political power in Canada! You're welcome to try. You can also try to make Canada a leader in genetic medicine while outlawing the teaching of evolution. You've got about the same chance of success. I don't mean this as a personal attack Mr. Canada but simply as a statement of fact. I believe that the majority of Canadians think that the only difference between an Islamic radical blinding young girls with acid to keep them from attending schools and an evangelical christian is how violent they are willing to be in order to force their own views on their entire society. Evangelical christians would not likely use violence but they have already demonstrated that if they could they would have laws changed to accomplish their social engineering. I am not a religious man Mr. Canada but I consider myself a moral one. If I were a religious man, quite frankly I would be suspicious as to which side of the good and evil split is REALLY behind the evangelical movement!

Interesting you're making this claim, particularly with a party led by Harper. I still recall years ago when Harper addressed the Reform Party membership about the danger in trying to use Reform as a vehicle to advance religion into the political arena. He flat out told the membership that if they tried using the Party for issues like abortion, homosexuality or any other biblical-based beliefs they would condemn the party to eternally LOSE! His point was that mainstream Canada wanted nothing to do with mixing religion and politics and no party that wanted mainstream support should ever consider going against that. It wasn't long after that we saw Stockwell Day take the party leadership and try to do exactly what Harper had warned us against. It was the dumbest political move Canada had ever seen! The capper was Kinsella's allusion to Barney the Dinosaur, after Day was foolish enough to tell a reporter that he believed the Universe was created in 4004 BC or whatever. Day and his bible thumpers nearly destroyed the Reform movement. I really doubt if Harper has had a change of heart and wants to agree with that demographic today.

My wife works for our City. I don't know what is the average wage for a CUPE city employee. I know that professionals like nurses, dental hygienists and the like make in the $40's, much lower than the private sector but the benefits must also be considered. I would guess that the 'unskilled' workers are in the $30's. Meanwhile, the number of managers making well over $100k is astounding! What's more, we have had things happen like a serverance package of $972K(!) for the head of hospitals, who left VOLUNTARILY YET GOT TO CLAIM SEVERANCE!. This instances have become common these past few years, inflating the total wage budget. There also seems to be million dollar wrongful dismissal claims from managers improperly fired a couple of times every year. When discussing such issues it's important not to paint with too broad a brush. Given the pay scale established where my wife works, if you rolled back the managerial wages to the levels you're arguing then to be consistent with the yardstick my wife would have to PAY THEM to be allowed to work there!