Wild Bill

Eyeball, you are entitled to your beliefs but myself, I find them very cold. Take my example of a hypothetical rape victim watching her rapist walking away scot free. Could you look her in the eye and tell her that those principles were more important? I couldn't. Yet I'm the one often called a heartless rightwinger.

Hmm. It seems most are onboard with the questionable accuracy of evidence achieved by torture. Makes sense to me! However, nobody seems to want to argue with me about evidence obtained with errors in procedure. So far, at least.

Hmmm. Well my good Dr., I'm old! What's your excuse? :P I still haven't learned not to type before I've had my coffee!

Yes, I am! With the caveat that there are stiff charges laid against anyone who obtains evidence in an illegal manner. To me, BOTH acts are crimes against society, that is - you and me and everyone else. We are the victims. To throw the evidence out may let a criminal off the hook. How does that serve society? As I said, by making the cops feel guilty? Big deal! Someone who has committed a crime against society is off the hook! Who is the judge punishing? From my perspective, it is society who loses. Certainly, if it were a crime against a private citizen being considered, where is the justice for him or her? Suppose it were a crime of rape? How would the rape victim feel, watching her rapist walk out the door because some cop made an error in procedure with some evidence? I am NOT advocating torture or obtaining evidence illegally! I am saying that if someone must be punished, let it not be the crime victim.

I don't understand how the law is serving society when evidence is ruled inadmissable due to a mistake or an error on the part of the police. If a policeman tortured a subject, then charge the policeman with torture. If he makes an improper search of a car, have him reprimanded for not doing his job correctly. We don't seem to do that. Instead, we punish the cops by letting criminals off the hook! What is that supposed to do? Make the cops involved feel guilty? Frankly, I couldn't care less! Theoretically, if an improper search of a car finds a severed head then the head is inadmissable as evidence! This is just nuts! Evidence is evidence and truth is truth. Punish the cops for infractions that they committed. Punish criminals for the crimes they committed. Don't let criminals off the hook because some officer made a mistake! I just don't understand the reasoning here.

Corporations are legal entities now! The media is full of reports about corporations being fined for illegal activities or broken up for being monopolies. Many CEOs have gone to jail for fraud. I'm not sure just what you are saying here.

Punked, you and I can say anything we want and make any predictions we care to make but it doesn't matter a whit! It all depends on the voters in Quebec. The Pequistes have drawn more than a few votes for a long time now. That means there are a significant number of voters who back separatism. Many of the new MPs in the NDP Quebec caucus have some separatiste history. Those MPs have to attract enough votes to get re-elected! They are not all going to do that by ignoring the separatist element. What's more, it seems most of the votes they did get in Quebec came from people who knew little or nothing about the NDP. You can blow it off all you want but it seems obvious that Mulcair's problem is real. If he can't solve it, he will hand Harper a larger majority and perhaps the Liberal Party a new lease on life. If he can't succeed, it won't likely be a total loss. Jack gave his party a foothold in Quebec that they never had before. No matter what happens it's not likely they will lose everything and go back to the way things were. The NDP now likely has a permanent position in Quebec, IMHO. Their fortunes might wax and wane in the province over the coming years, just like the other parties but they at last are a player in a province with a large number of seats to offer. Things are more interesting now in Canadian federal politics then perhaps they've ever been.

Punked, that was then and this is now! Mulcair had no conflict of loyalties back then. He does now! It is a simple fact that to keep his Quebec support he is going to have to kiss some separatiste butt! He walks a tightrope. He has existing support in the rest of Canada which will not like to see any apparent favoritism towards Quebec, even when there isn't any! The Liberals often had the same problem in their history, when they had so much of their caucus from Quebec yet tried to claim they were the only true national party. Mulcair may indeed be a much better fighter for unity than his opponents but that's not the issue here. He has to be pragmatic if he wants to win. I am going to find how he handles this over the next few months fascinating, to say the least.

Well Michael, I grew up with software. I still remember writing a program in machine code to make a PDP-8 ring a bell. I would think both kinds of programs would have to be very similar. True, in an academic sense one type does not have to be flawed merely because of flaws with the other but one would be a fool to bet against it. The flaw is because of the quality of the input data. Such data seems to come with much opinion, at times. As for the OP poster having a history in other threads with other aspects of the climate argument, who cares? We are discussing the OP of THIS thread! What's next? Blaming it all on Mike Harris?

And how on earth could you ever get away with doing such a thing? We would become another Cuba overnight! I think the solution is even more basic. We need to restore a higher baseline of good character across ALL of society! That way, the people who run large corporations will be less likely to do scummy things. Character and integrity has almost disappeared in our society today. I'm not entirely sure why. I have some blame for parents and some for teachers but that's obviously too simplistic. Still, even if we did break up corporations without the replacements being of good character nothing would change.

Did I miss something here? The OP is about an article that mentions how flawed are computer models as to predicting the weather. Instantly, the usual suspects jump in trumpeting at how weather is not climate and implying that makes the writer of the article an idiot. Talk about moving the goal posts! I didn't see any claim that weather and climate were the same. What I saw was an admission that computer models for weather don't work very well. Now, all you folks screaming about the difference with weather and climate. Is it your contention that computer models about climate DO work? If so, please explain why we should trust one and not the other.

Well, as I said, the PC party leader has twice snatched defeat from the jaws of victory! I'm not sure just what is wrong with Tim Hudak. I think maybe he is just too young and comes on TOO middle of the road! It could be him or he could have bad advisers but he always seems so "beige". Mike Harris may have been a Mr. Burns but Hudak always seems more like Principal Skinner. If you want a power plant to be run successfully you choose the former. If you want the students to run your school you go for the latter. Hudak keeps losing because he just seems boring, at least IMHO. His whole approach has always seemed to be "Vote for ME! I'm not as bad as the other guy!" Ontario desperately needs another Mike Harris. All the focus has been on how non-working people are hurting. Harris focused on helping working people and more than that, trying to INCREASE the number of working people! You have to bake the pie before you can share it.

Not to nitpick but of course you meant Mr. Burns! Smithers is his gay, overworked personal assistant.

Parties today seem to be using call centres for such calls. The person on the phone is likely not even a member of whatever party they are boosting! They are simply being paid to get money, for a base plus commission on every donation. Back in the Pleistocene Era Reform used their own people in every local riding.We had a level of volunteerism that had never been seen before or likely will be again. Even if it was a volunteer that called you , Scribb, keep in mind that with volunteers you get what you get, not necessarily what you would like. An organized party would keep an eye on their volunteers, to make sure that they are not ticking off more people than they are getting to donate. An aggressive amateur can do a lot of harm. Sometimes it just requires training. Sometimes the volunteer should be steered to another job. Of course, this sort of auditing presupposes some good management going on. I don't know how well the Ontario PCs are organized in your riding. Hopefully for them, the guy who called you was just a fluke that got corrected. I have received calls from all 3 parties over the years and I have always found their callers to be charming. In fact, even though I wasn't a good prospect for them, the nicest are always from the NDP! And after I explain that I am not likely to change my mind, they have always politely wished me the best and moved on.

Well, you can have any hope or wish you want but an INFORMED opinion is based on reason and evidence! IMHO, the NDP have only a weak chance of taking this KW seat, unless the Tory candidate does something incredibly stupid. After all, for the past two elections the party leader has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory! This is not likely to change over the years. The more the NDP becomes identified with 416 Toronto the more the rest of Ontario will become alienated from them. The culture of old Toronto is VERY different from most of the rest of the province! The NDP has found itself walking a tightrope in many areas. Having all that support in Quebec gives rise to some very fundamental differences. Mulcair has his work cut out for him. Plus, he has to continue Jack's path of becoming less of a fringe socialist party and more like a modern Labour Party a la Tony Blair. The key to winning elections in Canada is not the way of Syd Ryan or Buzz Hargrove. The centre is all!

Man, I wish I had your energy sometimes Waldo. Jumping to all those conclusions sure keeps you in shape! If you had actually read what I had said, I personally had no problem with Layton's family feeling any need for privacy. My issue was with all the NDP supporters who practice a double standard. I would be happier if the NDP folks just all shut up and treated their political rivals in these personal situations as they themselves would like to be treated. From my experience and perspective, they are the ones who demonize their rivals while claiming to be saints themselves.

Well, the last one of that crowd to do that was Stockwell Day and he managed to destroy his party over it! Understandable if it spooked any others in their caucus.

Tilter, you shouldn't be too hard on them! The Left are heart people, not head people, as a rule. I have seen the face of the Left - and it is Oprah!

Well Fletch, I spent years selling electronic parts to manufacturers in that area and I would tend to agree with you. Still, never underestimate the NDP. They have very hardworking followers who will roll up their sleeves and work from dawn to well after dusk.

Patrik, I predict that your party will go nowhere! Why? Because you are coming on with a pitch geared to high brow academics. Maybe you can get BOTH of them in Canada to vote CAP but that is not going to win an election. If you don't learn how to appeal to the mainstream Canadian you are just wasting your time. The voters are in the local Tim's in Canmore, not in Queens University.

Waldo, I stand by my words! I have always liked Jack as a person. Anyone who plays guitar can't be all bad! Still, his supporters have long shown a double standard. They would never have accepted keeping the details of the death of anyone among their political rivals a secret from the public. I just think they have no right to demand of others a respect they never show themselves! The NDP and its supporters are people just like the rest of us, not some self-appointed elite who think they have a monopoly on morality.

Any death is a tragedy, except perhaps the death of disco! There was much to respect of Jack Layton and it is understandable that so many mourn his passing. However, with this issue I truly believe that the NDP are being hypocrites. Personally, I would respect their desire to keep secret anything Jack's family wants about anything to do with his death and its cause or causes but the Left has lost the right to do such a thing long ago. You see, the Left has shown no such respect for privacy with its political rivals for generations, if ever! If it had been a Tory or even Liberal in such a position they would have been howling like wolves for "transparency" and "the public's right to know" and "what are they hiding?". Hell, look how they treat Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, for not being available for the Gay Pride Parade? Or virtually any aspect of that man's life, for that matter. The Toronto Star has become Mayor Ford's "Spanish Inquisition", So the Left has set the precedent. As far as I am concerned, what's sauce for the goose...

That is an irrelevant statement. The fat cats don't amount to nearly as many votes as the ordinary worker in the private sector. When they are looking at how well the teachers are doing and thinking about how things have been for themselves, pointing fingers at the fat cats is not going to make them change their minds and love the teachers!

Ted, those conservatives that respected Layton respected the man, NOT his politics! It is a significant point that most NDP supporters seem incapable of making that distinction.

The double standard is obvious! "Pur laine" is really code for racism.