Wild Bill

There are two obvious reasons, Waldo. One is that if you are a criminal a gun is a useful tool. The other is that if you are a citizen in fear of attack by a criminal, a gun is a useful tool. I have stated the obvious before, that it is impossible for police to protect you from attack. They can only react afterwards. It is a lottery game where if you win you lose, big time!

Low is a matter of opinion. In my opinion, even one is too many! How ironic that I am the one taking that position, the man who is constantly accused of being an evil conservative here on this forum! http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/07/16/toronto-scarborough-shooting.html?cmp=rss "Police have been dealing with a sharp increase in the number of shootings in the city of Toronto this year compared with last. According to preliminary statistics posted on the police website, there were 140 reported shooting incidents as of July 16. That’s an increase of 32.1 per cent compared with the number reported at the same time last year." We really should look at trends, to see if things are getting better or worse. We should also stop using the USA as our only point of comparison. There are many Asian and European cities FAR safer than Toronto! If someone wanted to play with stats, we could have an increase in one year of 300% and still find some city somewhere that was worse! Are we going to just play with stats so that we don't APPEAR so bad or should we actually try to LOWER the number of incidents and make the city safer in reality?

Why on earth would he think such a thing? The papers are full of reports of such shootings! Why do you think all the politicos and talking heads are lining up for the cameras?

You should copy your reply and send it to the mother of that baby who was shot during that Toronto street party. I'm sure you will make her feel much better!

If only it were so simple! We HAVE been throwing money at such problems, for a long time. How are we doing so far? More money in itself is not the answer. The problem with putting programs in place is that the type of people who can work in such programs and successfully motivate young people are rather rare. Most are just naive people with big hearts. Kids only laugh at them! Worse yet, nothing is easier to become corrupted than a social program. Politicians will shovel in money because it makes them look good to voters but nobody ever goes back and audits the money to make sure it was spent wisely! Google up "Toronto housing project scandals" and you will find pages and pages! More manpower for drugs and guns is futile. That's a war just too big to ever possibly win! You can't win with Prohibition laws. All you do is drive the prices up, making more profit for the drug lords. You could put every law officer in Canada at the borders to try to catch all the illegal guns and it would be just a spit in the ocean. The number of shipments across the border that you would need to search could be piled up to reach to the moon! Plus, community programs, even if they are done properly with competent people, only have a chance to help the NEXT generation! They are not going to change all the existing gang bangers today. I would suggest first of all to split up housing projects! Making huge projects is just making prefab ghettos. You end up with a community too large to police, filled with the people who most need policing. It would work far better to build a lot of much smaller housing projects, keeping each one small enough that it could be more easily monitored and managed. Why do all these projects have to be in certain spots within Toronto anyway? If McGuinty truly wants to do something more than look good he could take these projects out of the hands of Toronto as a city. Why not scatter small projects around the province, in more rural areas? Maybe if disadvantaged youths had to grow up in Owen Sound or Clinton they would fare better! If kept in small groups then the culture of the more rural town would likely make them adapt to better small town values. Right now Jane and Finch is simply a University community for crime!

"When in trouble, when in doubt! Run in circles! Scream and shout!" That way it LOOKS like you are doing something! Much easier than using your brain to come up with something that actually WORKS!

As usual, you pick at my model and completely ignore my point. Focus, Jaycee! You're like a fart in a mitt sometimes! Now, what about my point about perpetuating racism?

Who says that harsh punishment doesn't work? Would you care to cite some links to prove your point that the US has such harsh sentences? And don't just cherry pick one or two harsh states! How about you pick New York or California? Tell us the typical sentence for a murderer or the perp of a violent crime. I'm glad you think Toronto is so wonderful for only having 27 murders so far this year. I'm curious as to how many you think is a good number. How do you feel about the trend? Is it up or down for gang violence? Or perhaps we should be happy that overall such violence appears to be decreasing. All we have to do is include stats from communities like Owen Sound and it should be easy to swamp out the numbers from Jane & Finch.

It's a big deal to the families of the victims. If I knew her email, I would forward your reply to the mother of that baby who was grazed by a bullet. I'm sure she would be impressed with your concern about the degree and scope of pain and suffering! YOU trying to make out like I"M the one who lacks concern! Unbelievable!

True! In essence I agree with you. The reason I did not make myself clear is that I forgot you would not know my definition of the military decision makers. After the services were unified it seemed that career advancement became more bureaucratic than based on military experience and demonstrated ability and leadership. In effect, I began to class the top brass as simply civil servants in uniform - just more bureaucrats! I have no problem with political framing of what is required. I just have no respect for government as a vehicle to actually do what is involved to make a product or service happen! A bureaucrat can send out a tender for vegetables. If he also decides to tell farmers HOW to grow those vegetables then I think the soldiers would go hungry! In this case I momentarily forgot that it was those military brass who arbitrarily decided to change the terms of the order. However, it's obvious that the order should have actually been cancelled! With no armour for IEDs and such it was just another case of our government finally filling a need from decades ago for a completely different situation, intending to give our troops something that only LOOKED useful and did not actually protect them at all! Excuse me, I feel the need to sing! "We had joy, we had fun! We had Sea Kings in the sun! But the engines are on fire and the Sea Kings must retire!" "Good bye Chretien my stingy one You could have bought the EH_101!" So much for governments being competent as overseers! They are run by political needs and obviously consider actual real world needs to be irrelevant. We still have no helicopters! We are still flying Sea Kings and pilots are still dying in them. Meanwhile, the ones on order are not nearly as suitable as the EH-101. Chretien cancelled them and then refused to allow anything like them to be on the bid list for the tender! Oh well. What else is new?

I don't think so, TD. Maybe you're right but I'm more inclined to think this is just a normal drop for an Opposition party. It's been long enough for people to get a bit bored and start to lose interest in what was really just an anti-Harper choice, rather than a choice FOR something! I'll bet that if we looked back at the results of previous elections the support for ALL parties dwindled between ballot box times! Only nerds like us pay attention between elections! Most people only think seriously about their political choices when they HAVE to, which is at election time! In between, why do you think politicians have to give people free food at BBQs to get them to listen to them?

There is a big difference between an overseer and a backseat driver, especially a back seat driver who has no idea of how to drive himself!

Perhaps I gave the wrong impression. I did NOT mean that regular commercial grade electronic parts were superior in quality to mil or aerospace spec's! There are higher grades of commercial specs, which are much cheaper and meet or exceed mil specs. The reason they are cheaper is simple - volume! The military and aerospace market is just to small by comparison. This doesn't matter if you are talking an expensive part, like a flywheel in a tank tread. That part is going to cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. A resistor might cost a penny! ONLY the military would use the same system with a penny part as with a truly expensive one. I know for a fact that most engineers would have no problem spec'ing in parts with higher commercial specs. I know - I've worked beside many of them! To an engineer, as long as it is of high enough quality for his needs that is enough. The problem is in paperwork! The military NEVER wants to change its paperwork! So instead it keeps demanding obsolete parts! The cost of NASA performing recertification is NASA's problem! If the manufacturing industry finds that its just not profitable to supply NASA with parts certified, then too damn bad for NASA! NASA never did change their specs. What they did was to start paying third parties to test and qualify the commercial versions of parts like Intel microprocessor chips. This is very expensive to the American taxpayer but hey, it's their NASA! If they don't like it then they should change it! The ultimate example of military tomfoolery with electronic parts has to deal with common resistors, the cheapest and most basic electronic part ever made. Originally, they were made of a paste of carbon particles, pressed and cut to size and value. For this reason they were referred to as "carbon composition" resistors and they were the only type available in that wattage class until the 60's. The military had certified these resistors all along and there were lots of resistor vendors who would play with them but in the 60's someone invented a better resistor using a deposited film technique. These resistors were thus called "carbon film" and in no time flat they had replaced the old carbon comp style. They were cheaper, more reliable, more durable and most important, if they were overloaded they simply opened up. Carbon comps were notorious for bursting into flame! Plus, carbon comp resistors could drift wildly from their proper value as they aged. Pretty soon, ONLY the military market was still using carbon comps! So the number of resistor companies that would make carbon comps began to drop. By the 90's, the only one left was Allen Bradley. I remember those days quite well because I worked for the sole remaining distributor of Allen Bradley carbon comp mil spec resistors. I called on the Litton, Garret/Allied Signal and other such accounts and sold them carbon comp resistor for a ferocious price! A commercial version might sell in thousand lot qtys for a penny. The mil spec I sold to Litton went for a dollar! I kid you not! Finally, the market was too small even for a sole source supplier and AB decided to pack it in. They did everything they could for those mil accounts. They gave 2 years notice, allowing their customers to make a "lifetime buy" before their machines were turned off. Virtually ALL of my mil customers didn't do a damn thing to get ready! When the deadline came and went, they just started crying! They cried for about a year and then finally the process began to get the carbon film resistors qualified. It was just SO typical! I have always understood that the military needs to have confidence in the quality and reliability of the electronic parts. People's lives may depend on them! I just have no respect for the boneheaded ways the military would attempt to accomplish such goals! If they had involved people who understood the way the world had changed and the nuances of the specific industry they could have come up with much more positive AND LESS EXPENSIVE ways to accomplish their goals! The world was not and did not stay the same to suit the military. A wise old man once said that you should never try to be a rock against the waves. You will only get ground down! Much better to be a surfboard!

Oh Boges, it goes back much further than that! Obviously, it started with Mike Harris! That being said, I am beginning to wonder if once again we are seeing the results of an actual difference in how some people's brains are wired. Could it be that those of a "liberal" persuasion, for want of a better term, are incapable of dealing with such problems? Many if not all of these social problems are getting worse, not better, despite all the money and different programs being thrown at them. People are being shot at street parties and the call goes up for more community centres! Perhaps (and only perhaps!) there is some merit there but at best it would take a generation to have any effect. We have babes in arms being shot NOW! It is simple reality that today a gang banger knows that the chances of his being caught are rather low. What's more, even if he IS caught the sentence is liable to be comparatively light! So where is the deterrence? It is impossible to have a policeman everywhere. How can the police possibly protect us as individuals? The answer is that they can't! They never could! Police protect us as a group. They cannot prevent those first few victims to some Marc Lepin type of wingnut. They can only respond after the fact, hopefully before the body count grows too large. The complaint on the Toronto news this morning was that no one will come forth as witnesses to these shootings. What an incredibly asinine attitude of the police to take! Those people are well aware that if they help the police the gang bangers will certainly hurt if not kill them! Including their children! The police CANNOT protect any witness who comes forth! It is certain that most if not all of those bystanders would love nothing more than to see the thugs arrested but it would be suicide to help the process. Especially when often a gang banger, immediately after being nabbed, is released on bail so he is free to go after whoever "tattled". Even if the perp IS held in custody there is no problem with his associates to find out who to "silence". In effect, Toronto Police are scolding people for not being willing to commit suicide to help the police do their job! Meanwhile, the calls go up for more basketball courts. Any practical suggestion in such matters is ALWAYS shot down by the "lib-left". Mandatory minimum sentences? Oh no, too cruel and what's more, unnecessary. Abolish the Youthful Offenders Act? Oh no, that is also cruel and unusual! To anyone of a logical, cause and effect type of mind, the situation is plain as the nose on your face. Criminals commit criminal acts because they think they can get away with it! You can only fight that with real deterrence. Unless they think there is a good chance they will be caught AND if caught they will face a SIGNIFICANT sentence then they will not just continue to perform such acts but they will escalate the severity of them! Calls to do nothing because "they don't shoot babies all that often - the numbers are down" is frankly reprehensible! Tell that to the mother of the baby! Secondly, we must abandon this false comfort of expecting the police to protect us as individuals. They may be wonderful, dedicated people but they can not do the impossible! To say that reactive protection after an initial murder or murders is sufficient is to condemn us all to a cruel lottery, where if you win you lose! People must be allowed to defend both themselves and their families and also their property. If the judicial system refuses to change to better protect us as individuals then we must be allowed to do what we can for ourselves. If necessary, we should be allowed to carry guns! Of course, some folks will go screaming yellow zonkers at the very thought but again, are they incapable of dealing with the facts at hand? Inevitably we hear that if allowed to bear arms people will start shooting each other over the slightest provocation! The streets will become a hail of bullets! Little old ladies will get drunk and shoot their husbands! Husbands will leave loaded rifles beside the cribs of their sleeping toddlers! Enough! You get the idea. I truly believe that those least equipped to deal with the reality of stressful factors like criminal violence have been in control of the system that is supposed to cope with such behavior. As a Utilitarian, I point to the very fact that such violence is happening today as proof that their methods aren't working! Unless they can come up with methods that DO work and TODAY, not a generation from now, then I say they should get the hell out of the way and allow someone to try other methods. Meanwhile, the next time some police spokesperson complains about witnesses not stepping forward, someone should let loose with an egg or a tomato or two. Frankly, it is a disgustingly callous approach and they should be chastized for it!

I used to deal with DND procurement. I truly believed that all the government people involved had heads that zipped up the back! I sold them electronic parts. My first go around was in 1978. The government sent out requests for quote, that had a phone book's worth of pages to be filled out. We were expected to fill out at least half the pages to NOT quote! The first order I won was for 100 integrated circuits. They were cheap, so we were talking about $50 or so. Not a lot, even in late 70's dollars. Still, I was happy to win the order, until things got ugly! We shipped out the order and a few MONTHS later it was returned. The reason given was that we had incorrectly packaged the ICs for anti-static protection. I was confused, since our shipping methods of packaging were leading edge up to date and none of our thousands of orders to other customers had ever been rejected before, by anyone! So I went back to that phone book of paperwork and found buried inside instructions for packaging that had been obsolete for over 10 years in private industry! They were appropriate to the first ICs that had been invented, with techniques also primitive by contemporary standards. They required each individual IC to be wrapped in foil and other materials, involving hours of manual labour. To satisfy the order we paid someone to spend the hours repackaging the ICs but I learned that on any quotes for the government you had to inflate your price dramatically, to cover the extra costs of handling a government order, if not to pay for the hours spent even quoting orders that you might not even receive! It's as if DND WANTED to waste money! Many vendors simply refused to quote, since the total potential of government orders was mice nuts compared to the everyday orders they received from private industry. It just wasn't worth the effort! That left the smaller vendors free to inflate the prices as high as they wanted. DND didn't know or care what was going on. They were just happy to have someone return a quote with all the paperwork filled out to their satisfaction, so they could buy the part or parts. At the end of the 80's I worked for a small department in Westinghouse that among other things supplied parts for aircraft. I watched DND fight with the guy at the desk beside me for nearly 3 years over a generator for an F-5 jet. Even at the end of the 80's one would expect there were precious few of these still flying. My partner had scoured the world and had located perhaps the last such part available in the free world and had quoted it. However, he refused to agree to a condition that we would GUARANTEE to have such a part available for the next 20 years! If he had agreed to this condition, Westinghouse would have been in a default position, subject to penalties. That would have been a very stupid thing to do! DND just could not accept this! First the letters came and finally phone calls, from low level buys right up to high level managers. They did not care that they were making a request not just unprofitable in the extreme for their vendor but likely literally impossible to deliver. They wanted to be assured that they could keep an aircraft already over 30 years old in the air for the next 20, without the cost of stocking their OWN spares! Eventually they gave up, as my compadre was sticking to his guns. I never knew what they had done at their end but one thing I did know, DND procurement was not in the "real world" and moreover, cost the taxpayer FAR more than it had to yet delivered less than the private sector. When I was selling those ICs I mentioned I had naively believed that "mil spec" meant higher quality. In actual fact, at least in the new high tech electronics world, most commercial specs exceeded mil spec. This was dramatically shown when the Space Shuttles were introduced. By that time, many manufacturers had stopped offering mil spec'd versions of their products, since it cost them more money than their potential sales were worth. Also, they did not support old versions of parts like computer ICs, since they were offering new and more powerful ICs within not just a few years but often within a few months! So Intel stopped offering mil spec versions of its microprocessors. The Shuttles flew with '286 computer chips, the same as in an IBM-AT personal computer! The rest of the world was using Pentiums but NASA was bound by its paperwork and primitive, outmoded methods to keep using obsolete computing power. At least I knew that the American system was no better than ours! Misery likes company, I guess. Still, I have often wondered what would happen if a political rival country or terrorist organization chose to challenge our military in such areas. They could do FAR more advanced stuff for FAR less money, with parts that worked the same and were of higher quality even though they had commercial spec's. I have been out of that world for a while but I hear that the military has slowly been changing it's ways. Apparently you can get an entire electronic unit mil spec'd with no need to have certification of every resistor and part inside. That at least makes a little more sense. However, I'll lay even money they will screw that up too!

Hey, a busted clock is right twice a day!

Well, most folks recognize that they just don't matter but the NDP folks always have a bit different take on it. They seem to think that if they get even one poll that gives them a lead, however slight, in the dog days between elections, then their victory will be assured and all their political rivals should just give up in despair and allow it to happen!

Once again, you put words in my mouth and twist my meaning. I NEVER said that! There are likely a lot of good choices. That's not relevant! You are insisting on looking at the situation in terms of having the best man for getting the job accomplished in the best manner. That is NOT the way things work in politics! To believe otherwise is to be naive in the extreme. If we wanted the job done in the best and most cost-effective manner we would never allow the government to manage it! We would simply define the goals of a contract and turn it over to the private sector. If we were not happy with the results we could go to the courts to sort it out, like any contract.

Well, I've no doubt Harper is keeping a close watch on him. Also, trading McKay for Baird would only leave Baird's old role vulnerable to McKay's incompetence, possibly even more damaging to the country. What's more, they are all politicians after all and my experience once again tells me that politicians don't worry so much about the job being done right and proper for the country as how they themselves APPEAR to the rest of the country! The ship might sink but as long as they looked like good officers they don't really care! Remember, I lived through Bob Rae's term here in Ontario and now see pictures on the news of $180 million dollar power plant fiascos all for political advantage during an election. I drive the Red Hill Creek Expressway here in Hamilton quite often, the one that ole Bob screwed up after over 30 years of effort by so many here to get the damn thing accomplished, in a useful way. My sense of outrage has been blunted over the years. Bang your head against the wall long enough and you can't help but become a bit numb...

I don't know how old you are, punked. Or how good of a memory you possess. I'm surprised that you attribute McKay's longevity in cabinet to some sort of skullduggery when the answer is open and obvious! Harper owes McKay for making the Alliance/Pc merger happen! That is a debt that will run in perpetuity! If Harper were to ever appear to demote McKay it could open a giant rift within their party. Perhaps after all this time a rift would not happen but there are also other powerful political factors. It was Mulroney who coined the famous term "you dance with who brung ya!", meaning that you should never forget who helped you in politics. The merger might never have happened if McKay had not have greased the wheels! It even took a double cross of David Orchard, although many if not most would have argued that even a double cross of Orchard was justified, since allowing Orchard to have his way would have spelled the end of the PC party that much faster. Anyhow, Harper really has little or no choice. If McKay were truly competent there are other more high profile cabinet posts but he's not, so what else can he do with McKay?

Peter, do you realize you just used the exact same argument in favour of Francophones that Argus had pointed out was used against Anglos? Are you suddenly agreeing with him?

Are you saying that the natives at that time considered the entire land mass of Canada as theirs, to be an object of trade? Are you saying that non-natives agreed to have natives as their landlords, forever? I guess you didn't bother reading where I said that I agree there are valid native land claims. Ipperwash was an out and out ripoff by the federal government. However, the feds are NOT we ordinary citizens! The feds have been screwing non-natives far worse than natives since the country was founded! I never said they should give up their heritage. I never said they had NO valid land claims. Go have a coffee, CC! This kind of one side or the other type of thinking is not usual for you. Don't you see that SOME land claims can be valid and SOME are not? I took exception to how you seemed to be saying that natives had a claim ON THE ENTIRE COUNTRY! If you are going to argue with me can we stick to what I actually said? Sheesh!

How can we possibly debate a "what if"? What if their culture stayed the same? Scotland had tribal culture over the same few thousand years and they advanced much further than North American natives. Seen any metal Claymores from Iroquois tribes? What if it had advanced beyond the Europeans? What if they had developed spaceflight and left to colonize the asteroid Belt? When did you stop beating your wife? You are arguing something totally separate - a non sequitur. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that many Europeans at that time were scumbags by modern standards, what has that to do to support this notion that natives have a right to ALL the land? Seems to me you are simply saying "Gee, the Europeans of that time were not nice, therefore we today should give you EVERYTHING! We non-natives are totally responsible for the sins of our fathers, even those of us whose fathers were living in completely different parts of the world at that time!" So to right the wrongs of long ago we are supposed to punish a completely different group of people today? No wonder racist feuds can last for generations! I well understand what Bruce Cockburn meant when he sang "If I had a rocket launcher, I'd make somebody pay!"

This is what has always puzzled me in the claims of many who support the natives. I don't deny that the natives have many claims with validity but this idea that they had a right to ALL of Canadian land just doesn't make sense! At the time Europeans started colonizing the New World the natives certainly had not surveyed and colonized the entire continent. There were relatively few of them by today's standards. Certainly, there were never enough to cover every square foot of territory. Most of Canada was open and undeveloped, some of it even unexplored by natives, for the simple reason that there weren't that many of them compared to the size of the country! Yet we are to believe that they have a right to be considered the landlords of the entire country. Certainly, if land had been unfairly taken from the natives, like Kettle Point for just one example, then the native claims are not just valid but obvious. Still, it seems that some take the idea to the point of ridiculous. Also, this idea of the land in many areas being worth far more due to development never seems to get fair consideration. Look at what happened at the Douglas Creek Estates in Caledonia. If the natives were to get possession of that land, why should they have a right to all the houses built on it? Should the land not be razed and reforested? Should it not be restored to the condition it was first in when the natives supposedly unfairly lost it? If a land claim is in a native band's favour in Northern Canada, should they be entitled to any operating mines in that area, for free? How much mining were natives doing when the New World was being colonized by Europe? I am not trying to deny that natives have legitimate claims. I just can't understand this idea that they are entitled to EVERYTHING! What's more, most native bands do not possess the infrastructure in people or resources to keep running things like gold mines. Certainly not without buying and using equipment invented and manufactured by people OTHER than natives! I won't deny that there are some natives that can do this but I don't think there are enough of them for the scale of what would be involved. I also don't see why Canada should be the only country in the world expected to be held to the standards of today for what happened a couple of centuries ago, much of which happened before there was a Canada! I've always believed that if you personally had no input or power with a decision then you are not responsible for it. This idea that somehow everyone not native belongs to some "tribe" with a collective guilt is totally bananas, as far as I'm concerned! I have enough problem dealing with my own sins. I do not accept responsibility in anyway for those of anyone else! Frankly, I find the idea of collective guilt due to sharing race a fundamental cause of racism in the first place! Should I refuse to have a Japanese Canadian for a friend because his great grandfather fought for Japan in the Pacific theatre? After all, is he not of that "tribe"?

Once again we see the real and true ruthless cold heart of the socialist! Are you living in a cartoon? Most Canadians I see are so damn poor from being over-taxed and from repeatedly losing their jobs from plant closure after plant closure that they can barely afford gas to go to the grocery store. I realize you probably think that they should be taking all those bags from the weekly purchases for a family of 4 on a bicycle, even in the middle of winter. Still, people are doing the best they can as life gets more and more expensive. It is very hard to be an eco-warrior while your kids are hungry. Thanks for your in-depth POV and most of all, your compassion! I drive a 13 year old rusty minivan. I can only dream about an SUV! What's more, I am FAR from unique!