Wild Bill

You said this before but I just don't buy it. I cant' see how we can participate without any modern combat aircraft in any peacekeeping role. Certainly, defending our own country off the coasts and in the far North would be impossible.

As I said, that affects his model but not his point. I understand your irritation about someone forgetting all about a Maritime province, however. My family is from Pictou, after all. Ontario is very prone to do this. Quebec of course rarely thinks about anything outside of Quebec at all!

Well, since we can't take a Russian or Chinese plane without getting kicked out of NATO, I guess this confirms my premise that we can buy F-35s or nothing at all. Unless Macker can tell me how we can create an entire warplane industry, complete with all the engineers with all the required knowledge and build a plane of our own, within the same budget and deliver before 2017 or so. I think the engineering skills would be the hardest. Few Canadian students take such studies, because there are so few jobs available. Those that do of necessity leave for the States. Once settled down there it's not likely they would pack up and move their families back to Canada.

"As one of the presumed mix.."? Didn't we already flog this to death, Waldo? Where's the mix? Where are all these alternatives? Haven't seen any that have stealth. Haven't seen any at all in the F-35's class. Wouldn't any country flying F=35s have an overwhelming advantage in any combat situation? Can you offer a valid alternative? One that's not a flying bulls-eye in the modern world? If not, then I say again, our choices are simple. F-35s or nothing at all.

Could be worse! Would you like a picture of Libby Davies?

Actually Newfoundlander, I found the Shakespeare quote to be quite appropriate. Anyhow, although you are correct that August erred by forgetting about PEI, so what? You are attacking his model and not his point. The Liberals truly have no SERIOUS level of support left outside of Metro Toronto. They show no signs of recovering support from any other area. What's more, the Tories and the NDP are doing a good job of consolidating their support in every area. Outside of finding a genie in a bottle, from where is any Liberal political recovery going to come? People do seem to be demanding clear choices. This has not been a Liberal forte for a long, long time. The Liberal Party in Britain faded away in favour of a Tory/Labour split. We may be witnessing the same thing here in Canada.

I'm starting to get confused by the line being taken by the critics here. First off, the claim was made that the choice was made first and the tender specs were then made to ensure that only the F-35 bid could win. Somehow, this is Harper's fault even though it was a Liberal government in office at the time. Now, apparently the F-35 doesn't meet the tender requirements at all! How could this be, if the original tender was written to unfairly ensure that the F-35 won? Of course, this is still all Harper's fault. It's a bit cold out this morning. I guess that's Harper's fault as well. Meanwhile, let's suppose the critics succeed in getting the F-35 deal cancelled. What will our pilots fly instead? Even if its true that the F-35 does not meet some requirements, what alternate choice has specifications that match more closely? The answer seems to be none! We are left with old, non-stealth aircraft. Would it not be cheaper to to paint bulls-eyes on them, along with a radar transponder to alert any enemy? Better yet, if they are attacked we could have a self-distruct installed, just to save time. As I said, I'm getting confused by the inconsistencies in the criticism being directed in this thread. Still, some things seem plain. To some in this thread, Harper is responsible for anything they want to pin on him, even things committed before he came into office. What's more, these people seem so fanatically dedicated to attacking Harper that they truly don't give a damn what planes Canadian Air Force pilots have to fly! Couldn't we accept that our F-18s are too old and focus on having something THAT WORKS for our pilots to fly? If not, could those who take that stand simply admit that they don't want us to have anything, instead of using useless aircraft designs as a diversion? In an age of stealth warfare, would you like your own son and daughter to fly in combat a non-stealth plane? When blind partisanship overwhelms even basic loyalty to your country, then I say screw you and the horses you rode in on! May you have to commute daily to work in a SeaKing!

"Fred Garvin - Male Prostitute!" Shades of Saturday Night Live@

Oh no, I would agree with you in general. I just didn't respect how they often pushed the pain onto the provinces along with any social backlash, instead of dealing more with their own spending. It's easy to make someone ELSE do the dirty work! I don't see that they deserve the credit for that. They did do SOME of their own and for that only they had my approval.

I would agree, Tilter. Belief in an afterlife with punishment for sins is an opinion not justified by any concrete evidence. It makes no sense to use it as an excuse to not deal with inappropriate behavior in life. To put it "in God's hands" is really just a copout. One of my favourite Scifi authors is Robert Heinlein. He wrote the book Starship Troopers, from which they took almost nothing but the title to make the movie about giant bugs. The book was actually a backdrop for Heinlein to express some of his personal social observations and his own philosophy of life. In one chapter he has a teacher telling young kids about our times and how things like young offender laws worked. He used the analogy of training a puppy. He asked his pupils how you trained a young puppy and they told him that you had to sometimes spank him to make him understand what he did was wrong. They agreed that this didn't mean you no longer loved your puppy, it was just the way you had to teach him. He then told asked them if it would be fair or make sense to let the puppy do whatever he wanted until he was full grown and then if he made a mess or broke something you took him out and shot him! The children were not just horrified but truly puzzled. They immediately told their teacher that the idea made no sense. He then told them that was how the law worked with young offenders in the late 20th century. They would be essentially unpunished until some arbitrary age such as 16, when at that point the full weight of the law would be brought to bear upon them as an adult. I've always believed that old Robert had it right.

Well, that's your opinion. Not everyone shares it. Ever read William Golding's "Lord of the Flies"? It's my opinion that family and society shape a child's "blank slate". While morality is based on social conventions, ethics is based upon logic. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a very logical concept. It's logically consistent to have a society develop civilized standards of behavior just from that basic idea. While some people are born with actual differences in the wiring of their brains that causes them to be sociopaths or have other problems, in the main we reflect the standards of our society. The average Aztec no doubt saw nothing wrong with human blood sacrifices. The MORAL standards of western society have been developed over hundreds if not thousands of years. Raise a child in isolation and who knows what behavior you could expect? Our society is presently having a problem with often much less parental supervision than with previous generations. With both Mom and Dad working, children are left on their own or with less intimately related supervision. This has given rise to some problems. When we were young, if we shoplifted we were likely quickly caught and marched by one of our parents back to the store to "fess up" and learn a lesson. Today, a kid more often wouldn't be caught! Or if caught, would not receive what the child would consider true punishment. It would be perfectly logical for such a child to grow up thinking that shoplifting or other such petty crime is "no big deal". It's not a big step from childhood petty criminal behavior to an adult committing far more serious crimes. We still are willing to keep highly dangerous criminals like a Bernardo in jail forever but lesser crimes rarely receive long prison sentences. It would be interesting to study the history of these criminals to see what percentage of them had a history of escalation of their behavior and how many straightened out entirely on their own, due to some instinctive built in "moral conscience".

Smallc, perhaps you've forgotten but in the late 90's the feds cuts to health care funding became a huge issue with the provinces. It was all that federal transfer money that kept the provinces involved in the idea of equal health care standards across the country. The cuts became so deep that some provinces began to question whether they should just pull out of any agreement with the feds and go their own way, giving them much more control over their own budgets. This is what finally stopped the depth of Martin's cuts to the provinces. The feds and particularly the Liberals have always considered having national health standards to be sacrosanct.

Quite right, Bryan. Some folks don't seem to understand that without punishment there is no real deterrent. If a negative act has no bad consequences then there is no reason not to repeat it, if you are so inclined. There is this strange idea out there that Man is born with a social conscience and just needs a nurturing environment to bring it out. This is simply not true! We are born blank slates and our environment shapes us one way or another. If a criminal personality learns that he can get away with something then all the rehabilitation efforts often become just a snow job on his part. He knows that if he makes the right noises he will get away with things. I would concede that in the odd instance a criminal might be basically good and respond to efforts to bring him back to the right path but that would be an exception. The problem seems to be that the "system" is extremely poor at telling the difference between that sort and the career criminal.

The best definition of a politician I ever heard came from Nikita Khrushchev, oddly enough. He said: "A politician is a man who promises to build you a bridge, even when there's no river!"

What a racist statement!

I've been hearing that line of crapola from politicians of all the parties all my life! What always happens is that taxes go up for EVERYBODY! They raise in the new area and somehow never get around to cutting it in the other!

Uh, because it's run by artsies and not techs?

Sez who? Show me the math! Anything else is just wishes and dreams.

Do the math, CC! It's as plain as 1 + 1 = 2! Once you've done it you'll see it's like arguing about if the sun rises in the east or the west! It's literally that plain, CC. Math doesn't lie!

You missed it completely! If you had actually done the math you would have seen that you could take ALL money the rich have and it would be a drop in the bucket compared to what governments can get by taxing ordinary people. I actually said that before but I guess you are reading as well as math challenged. My point still stands. There are FAR more ordinary taxpayers than millionaires! Talk of making the rich pay is all emotion and no sense. Making the rich have no money left at all wouldn't change a damn thing. It's just too small a percentage. So why talk about it? Listening to a poltician (usually NDP but not always) tell you he will "make the rich pay their share" is just a scam to appeal to your emotions and not your brain.

I think you're quite right, stopstaaron! It sounds not just politically correct and racist in itself but incredibly patronizing to me!

Smallc, you are being too rational! Unions virtually always assume the company HAS to be there! It may appear unprofitable but this is just a scam, a negotiating tactic. Companies are always rich and the only reason they refuse to meet worker demands is because they are mean-spirited and nasty! If Air Canada were to go out of business and all those jobs are lost the union would just dismiss it as a conspiracy. They might also blame Harper for being too stingy in not bailing Air Canada out with sufficient corporate welfare. Myself, I don't fly much anymore but there are always lots of airlines. If Air Canada goes bust I really couldn't care. If Air Canada got bailed out with our tax money I WOULD be upset! I see nothing so special about Air Canada as to deserve that.

Thanks Max but I don't think it will help. To some on this board I forever will be a total Tory supporter. They will never understand how I can be anything different. In their world if you support a given party then you must think that the party and all its MPs can never do anything wrong. After all, that's how they view things for THEIR party! Once again for the record I never was all that warm to Fantino but after how he handled the Caledonia situation I have absolutely no respect for the man's values. Anyhow, again - those folks that think I'm a conservative will always think I'm a conservative for a very simple reason. They define a conservative as anyone who doesn't support THEM!

You're right, Max! I happen to be poor. Very poor! I barely get by. I drive a 13 year old minivan and live in the cheapest part of town. However, when any level of government decides it needs more money, I'm guaranteed to be on the list to have their taxes raised!