Wild Bill

Well of course you would, punked! Clark was always a Red Tory. He and his party at the time were Conservative in name only. They were always looking to steal votes from the left. It was far easier for a Liberal or even some NDP to drift over to the Progressive Conservative camp under Clark than it would be with the present CPC. We used to joke in those years how our electoral choices were really Red,Pink or Rose! Why do you think that leaders such as Mulroney and later Harris looked so different from the usual Conservative leader? Why do you think they won huge majorities? Why do you think Reform was formed and in less than a decade nearly wiped out the PC party? The conservative vote was fed up with not being offered a true choice. If Harper is not careful, a conservative choice could emerge in the form of some kind of federal version of the Wild Rose Party. At that point, Harper would despair and the Liberals would jump for joy at the thought of once again having a fractured conservative party. This is why I actually am cheering for the NDP to wipe out the Liberals. The Canadian people finally are starting to get some clear choices. Historically we always had shades of beige, from guys who wore brown shoes.

I blame the public sector unions, Argus. They always seem to focus on the most trivial of issues, demanding rule after rule after clause after clause. These are the people that would deny mail service to your home because your mailbox happens to be a few inches higher or lower than their union contract. They specifically rule out common sense! Nobody is even allowed to make a judgement call. Instead, there is a rule for everything. Anytime the rules don't seem to fit they address the problem by making more rules, until the rule book is so flippin' complicated that no one can understand it! Problems of course never actually get fixed. They just get diverted into a maze of conflicting rules. Still, if anyone ever asks, they will point to their rulebook as evidence that they actually have done something! These people have given us rules about zero tolerance for bullying in schools. Look how well that has worked out! Rush Limbaugh for once was right! The left plays with symbolism and not substance.

No, I did not! It was rude and uncivilized! It was more typical of the profane crap from rubble.com. We have some very good people on MLW from all sides of the political spectrum. We don't routinely tell each other to go to hell! Your ignorant comments would ruin this board, if they became the norm. The mods appear to have taken the long weekend but afterwards I;m sure this will be addressed. You are entitled to your opinion. So am I. You don't have to be righteous and rude if someone disagrees with you. The last thing I would ever want to see is a Canada run by people who have YOUR attitude! You act like an evangelical preacher spilling hate, only with politics instead of religion.

Punked, you seem to be forgetting something. Another country doesn't have to cross our borders in order to attack us. They can attack us halfway around the globe! They can interfere with our trade to the point where they get rich and we get very poor. Some countries compete with productivity and expertise. Others compete from the barrel of a gun. Suppose Iran goes nuclear. In a very short time they could impose their will on all their neighbours, including perhaps the Saudis. Only the intervention of western powers could have the strength to stop such a thing. If Iran controlled those countries they could control the price of a LOT of oil! Sure, we have the oil sands but we also desperately need the export money. Take that away and a lot of Canadians will be out of work and on the dole. Worse yet, this sort of thing could happen far faster than our economy could adapt. We would be in for perhaps a decade or two of suffering. Countries can rarely function in isolation. Look how well that works for North Korea! They have to use their nuclear program as blackmail for foreign aid to feed their people. International relationships are a complicated game. Like chess, if you can only react to one or two moves deep you will lose. You must be able to weigh the consequences a goodly number of moves in sequence to win, or at least remain a player. A nation has to be able to project its power in order to defend not just its borders but its political and economic interests. If you have no military capable of functioning at least at a reasonable level the world will not take you seriously. You will be just like the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, without a captured Q-Bomb.

How about if I throw in a large chunk of Pakistan?

Perhaps I am but maybe you should explain it to an Afghani girl who was disfigured and blinded by acid thrown in her face, just for going to school! If that isn't primitive and barbaric behaviour, then what is?

I would agree that some cultures in the middle east have successfully stayed primitive for centuries and will work very hard to stay that way. That job will only become more difficult as the rest of the world will keep seeping in across their borders. I'm sure the Iranian religious zealot regime is finding it increasingly difficult to stay in control, with a new generation that takes access to the Web and satellite TV for granted. I would also agree that our screening process will never be efficient enough to keep ALL the wingnuts out. After all, it is Canadian! Still, the numbers should be low enough to qualify as a rare news item, hardly enough to get Sharia law passed as the law of the land.

You ignore a very important factor - assimilation! It's not race that makes us different, it's culture. While it is true that many less advanced countries are of mostly non-white populations, that is just the result of the coils of history. That too is changing, as witness China and India. Perhaps Canada has done a poor job with immigration, favouring those from less advanced or even negative cultures, like those of fundamentalist Islamic states. Do you seriously believe that these people will come to Canada and stay the same forever? Or that their children, their children's children or their children's children's children, for every generation thereafter? That's just not reality! Environment shapes people and new immigrants can't help adopting some of OUR culture! This is proven by conflicts between some immigrant cultures and their born-in-Canada children over arranged marriages, dating and clothing styles. Why do you think so many poor women have been killed in "honour" killings? No, Canada will not change to become like those negative cultures. Immigrants from those cultures will become Canadian, if not so much the initial immigrants then their offspring. Sharia law can never compete with blue jeans and rock & roll! Western culture brought down the Berlin Wall. It can handle our immigrants.

Ok, let's assume you technically are correct. Are those revenues a significant or a trivial portion?

Just out of curiousity Reefer, are you nuts? What do you mean by " When you're incompetent, don't try to change. Be proud of who you are and revel in it! " You make it sound like I was personally responsible for the system! I was just a buyer in a small Canadian branch of a no longer big American company. What did you expect me to do? Lead a revolution? You obviously are dreaming in technicolour if you think that I would have had the slightest chance of effecting change in that system. Perhaps you've never worked yourself so you have no experience. Oh well, if you seriously want to blame me for the foibles of the entire military procurement system then I have broad shoulders. If it makes you feel any better, the fact that I was young and made my own criticisms of the way things were done was part of what eventually cost me my job! Yeah, I can see the benefits of your approach! I must be blind!

Well, I've been both a buyer and seller. I bought electronic parts for a military arm of Westinghouse. Military procurement is old-fashioned, primitive and woefully inefficient. Those are just its good points! It makes everything ever depicted in a Dilbert cartoon pure gospel. However, it is what it is! And it WON'T change! You can rant and rave all you want but its like trying to move a mountain with a mouse. It's just reality. American, Canadian, or anywhere within NATO is all the same. So you might as well just accept it and deal with the real world. The alternative is to keep slamming your head against the wall.

I knew that the CBC, being a public service, receives its entire zillion dollar budget from tax money, Topaz. However, it's news to me that the other private broadcasters get money too! How much do they get? Is it anywhere near what the CBC gets? Would it buy a case of beer? Seriously, I'd like to know. Perhaps you could be good enough to tell me just how much money we're talking here.

Hey, it wasn't me who told someone to go to hell! Take a gander at the banned list sometime...

We've had this discussion before. I still believe based on personal experience that the Left has FAR more offenders than the Right for being intolerant of views that disagree with their own. A Harper, Harris or Limbaugh is always not just someone who disagrees but someone who is at best mean spirited and at worst outright evil. I would think if you just counted the ad hominem attacks from posters to MLW and linked them to the originating posters political slant the numbers would make it obvious.

Privatizing wasn't necessarily a bad idea, Max. A private company could never in a million years ran up a debt of over $35 BILLION DOLLARS! It takes a corrupt public company to play in that league! Besides, you're talking two separate things here. Privatizing Hydro and picking which company takes it over are not the same. Picking the technology to generate that electricity was even loopier! I wonder if anyone has an example of a large scale alternative power generation plant that is profitable on its own in the marketplace, without artificial subsidies? One that was built with its own money and earns its own way, at no cost to the taxpayers? I'm truly curious!

Reef, anybody can criticize or say 'no'. Have you got any alternative that will actually WORK? If you don't, then you leave us with nothing! That may be a valid option but at least be honest and say so.

There was a time when the entire country of Russia was a prison, punked! Those days could come again. Ask someone who lives in Georgia. Putin hardly comes across as a Russian Jimmy Carter.

Well, then I guess we disagree on what sort of military is truly useful or just symbolic. That's a fair debate! Me, I'll admit to being a bit cranky about the issue. It's my Utilitarian gene that kicks in. If it doesn't really WORK then to me it's just hot air and crap!

That was uncalled for and clearly against the rules! Another example of leftist love and tolerance, perhaps? Agree with me or go to hell? I rarely do this but I have reported your action. Not that I can't handle such invective but I am just worried this board will end up like certain others...

Hey, they just put on a circus! Of course they had a big bounce in the polls! Let's revisit your post in a month or two and see what it looks like.

Don't blame you! I live here! It's pretty well solid NDP!

As I've said before, we could always re-arrange our fiscal priorities. Judging by their perpetually poor ratings, we could scrap CBC-TV and save a fortune without ticking off a very large number of voters. Most of those would probably be non-Tory supporters anyway so it would make no difference at election time. You talk like a military defense is a luxury, Dr. Dre. If you ever need one and you don't have it, it was a necessity.

F-15s? Jerry, in a modern world of stealth aircraft, what the hell could we do with F-15s? They couldn't see any intruders but the intruders would see them lit up like Christmas trees!

What choice did he have? If I knew that someone was going to kill me I would not simply let him do it! If the kid can defend himself then he has a chance of living. The fact that he CAN defend himself might be enough to deter a gang member! In that scenario nobody dies! Your way, the kid dies! And please, DON'T try to tell us he could go to his teachers for protection! We have lost too many kids to bullying lately for anyone to believe that pile of fuzzy wuzzy crap!

Excellent geographical defenses? If Russia wanted to start resource drilling and mining in the Arctic, just how do propose we'd stop them? As for tax hikes, why would they be necessary? Why not scrap other programs? How many F-35s could we buy over 20 years if we scrapped the CBC?