WIP

You brought up Chretien's Catholicism and Catholic schools, which was not the point. When Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister, there was no difference between the Liberal social agenda and the PC social agenda. But in the last couple of years Stephen Harper has defunded Status of Women Canada, the Court Challenges Program, shifted our MidEast policy to unquestioning pro Israel, as well as the shift on abortion recently, all indicate that Harper is feeding a theocon base that he hopes to build into the kind of rabid, hardcore supporters that the Republicans rely on to get the vote out in their elections.

What's lost on a lot of these fools who adopt the what me worry attitude, is that nature often handles these problems with mass extinction. When too much oil naturally seeps into the ocean, it will create a dead zone just as likely as a man-made dumping of oil. The scary thing right now is that it is going to take years to figure out the effects of this oil, and the chemicals used to disperse the oil. The dispersents are untested on this scale, and no one knows the extent of the impact on the ecology, except that it will happen!

I hear crickets chirping! I'm not a big fan of Huffpo, especially with all the pseudoscience crap they run, but they have a good front page on the Senate strategy to block banking reform also: HUMAN SHIELDS FOR WALL STREET I'm assuming that when push comes to shove, they'll do everything in their power to block lifting the liability cap also!

Sounds like good suggestions, but I'm skeptical about keeping agencies like this Minerals Management Service from becoming pawns of the corporate lobbyists. Even if there is no direct quid pro quo, such as "gifts," there still is the problem of the end zone rewards that politicians cash in on after their service on behalf of corporate lobbyists. When a politician retires and ends up on the board of directors for five or six different corporations, or goes to work for one of these bogus conservative think tanks, a reward has been cashed in for services rendered; and there is very little that present system can do to combat this graft and corruption. The corporate death penalty proposed here is still a good suggestion for dealing with corporations involved in risky, high profit businesses like oil. BP recently announced first quarter profits of six billion dollars. And the oil companies especially act like high stakes gamblers. When they gamble with other people's lives and lose big, they should die! And their assets should be re-organized under new ownership. At one time (at least in the U.S.) corporations had finite life spans, and they had to prove that there was a public benefit to their operations or their charters could be revoked. Over the last hundred years, corporate citizens have become immortal and virtually omnipotent, adding every right that flesh and blood citizens possess. It's ironic that the corporate power that exists today was the catalyst for the American Revolution in the first place. Now that so called tea party patriots have reinvented their history so that they are trying to harness public outrage to support corporate power.

Okay, now since you are such a believer in big power, tell me what would be wrong with allowing businesses and private individuals put up their windmills and connect with the grid? During those times when the wind isn't blowing, they have to buy electricity (but they have to do that anyway under the current system), but when the wind is blowing, they are not drawing on the grid for power, and may have surplus electricity to sell back. The batteries problem is a fallacy, they're not necessary. Here's another example of bureaucracy missing an opportunity to harness waste energy for the production of electricity at Dofasco from last year: http://www.thestar.com/article/580739 Historically, the Ontario Hydro wouldn't allow any power suppliers into their monopoly, and there still seems to be resistance to allowing smaller players onto the grid.

The Liberals are already in pandering mode, looking for their niche in the religious right lobby. Chretien may have been a Catholic, but whatever his level of religious observance was, it did not become part of his government. That's why the Catholic Church was so unhappy with him, Paul Martin and a few other high profile Catholic politicians. In the U.S., where they are flexing their political muscles, they have started refusing communion to Catholic lawmakers who don't support their anti-abortion agenda.

ABC News reports that new Miss USA Rima Fakih will keep the Miss USA crown and go on tour in spite of the revelation of these so called scandalous pictures taken at a Detroit radio show's exotic dance contest three years ago, which the Toronto Sun has graciously provided for journalistic purposes. Now, if you've noticed the two pics of her doing a pole dance in the slideshow, she's wearing shorts and a t-shirt...so where's the scandal? Yesterday the usual conservative wags who are never happy, were comparing this to Carrie Prejean and her sex tapes! Their reaction to this story, especially anti-Muslim writers and bloggers is surprising. Wouldn't you think that the people who are always bitching about burqas and what they're doing to their women, would be happy and see this as a positive development? Well, certainly not Daniel Pipes, Debbie Schlussel, Greta van Sustern, and a whole host of others are claiming that they asked Miss Oklahoma an unfairly difficult question - the new law in Arizona. Okay maybe that's a hard one, but from my angle, looking over some of the bikini pics, I'd rather see something different than the constant parade of blonde barbi's with fake tits! And in the interests of journalistic integrity, I found a blogger with no popups that has four comparison picsof Miss Michigan and Miss Oklahoma side by side...you be the judge. Back to Pipes, he has a new cause: Why are so many Muslim women winning beauty contests? Are they never happy?

To hell with Barbara Kay! She's another conservative wag who's trying to push Canada into adopting the same bad ideas that the U.S. is grappling with. Are we to believe that women who seek abortions are so stupid that they do not know what they are getting into without a panel of anti-abortion advocates pushing their propaganda at her? And oh yes, let's defund abortion just like they've done south of the border, where abortion is available depending on income level! What happens when the anti-abortion agenda is preeminent and there are no alternatives to their morality? A pregnant woman with a life-threatening development during pregnancy may die even now in situations where the doctors at Catholic-run hospitals dither about whether the threat to her life is great enough to allow an abortion. When there are no other alternatives, it's a game of Russian Roulette: Hospital policy dictated that to qualify for an abortion, a woman's risk of dying had to be greater than 50 percent if her pregnancy was carried to term; a committee of physicians ruled that Lee did not meet this criterion. http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/05/17/when-catholic-care-isnt-care

How the hell should anyone who's not familiar with NYC know how many Muslims live in the area, and how many just work there? Nevertheless, if they are more religiously observant than the Muslims who live in my neighbourhood, and do the five prayers a day thing, then maybe they need a mosque close to work. If it's to be built on land they own, two blocks away from the site, then where's the problem?

Is this a reading comprehension thing? I thought I made it pretty clear that a hotel shouldn't be built in the middle of the site. On the other hand, you haven't answered my question why you consider building a mosque two blocks away from WTC to be an equivalent violation!

To put it bluntly, blacks were considered an inferior race, so anti-miscegenation had roots deeper than social consideration. Race-mixing was considered a violation of proper Christian marriage because blacks were the cursed offspring of Noah's third son Ham - who was cursed by being given black skin and banished from the family. Intermarriage was a violation of the ban on race mixing. No one is asking you to change your definition of marriage, just to refrain from trying to apply your definition to others. Unless you can come up with something that the trials and inquiries have not so far, that shows clear evidence that allowing gays to marry will harm society, then it's nobody else's business how they define their own marriages. If there is no evidence for harm, they should be allowed to receive the benefits that legal marriage provides to everyone who's heterosexual. You never know where problems will crop up. A former neighbour of mine about 20 years ago, who was an RN told me that her opinion on these matters changed as a result of an incident she observed in the hospital - where a gay man in his 60's was being visited daily by his gay partner of more than 20 years until the man was near death and all of a sudden the family started dropping in, demanded that the gay partner get lost because he was not a family member and banned him from attending the funeral. The lack of legal recognition removed the life partner from any decisions regarding funeral and management of the estate. Obviously the family who never visited and had nothing to do with the man until he was near death, were just there to collect the money....and that's why their relationship should have had legal recognition and protection. Rather than go through a laundry list of laws and create something separate for same-sex partners, why not just allow them to get married and leave it at that?

Well for one thing, a pregnant woman will potentially be putting her life at risk again by getting pregnant if the religious authorities get their way again. For example, in a recent story a U.S. nun who was administrator of a Catholic hospital is under threat of excommunication and being removed from her position for allowing an abortion to be performed on a woman that doctors had advised would be fatal if pregnancy continued. http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/05/17/roundup-saving-mothers-life-gets-excommunicated Nonsense! If there is clear indication that the public welfare is harmed, then interfering with personal rights is justifiable, otherwise it should be avoided.

Because the same theocrats that support Harper are also in the provincial parties, as I mentioned when John Tory tried to win them over here in Ontario by promising to send some of our education tax dollars to faith-based schools.

Wind and solar power seem to be working in Germany, where alternative energy is becoming a greater and greater share of energy production; so it makes no sense not to encourage alternative energy suppliers. They can be an important contributor in the U.S. and Canada, where lower population densities cause a lot of power to be lost because of the distances the grid has to stretch. That said, replacing coal and oil will be a lot quicker if a serious attempt is made to bring nuclear power back into the mix. I mentioned in a post elsewhere about new reactors that are being developed, and how they eliminate most of the safety concerns regarding nuclear power. The Third Generation reactors are starting to come online now, and proposed fourth generation reactors operate at such high energy levels, they produce negligible amounts of waste and would be able to process present day spent nuclear wastes. This would eliminate the nuclear waste problem and the fourth generation reactors have the added benefit that because of their high operating temperatures, they nuclear reaction will cease if there are malfunctions. Since the nuclear reaction is unable to continue, the risk of nuclear accidents can be taken off the table. Much of the present day fear of nuclear power and reluctance to develop newer, better nuclear plants is due to irrational fear of radiation. When that coal slurry containment pond of a so-called "clean coal" plant in Tennessee overflowed last year, it poisoned all of the land the spill went over as long as an unknown quantity of ground water. Would any of the farmers living downstream allowed a nuclear waste pond on higher ground? Not likely! Even though the coal slurry is loaded with every toxic chemical imaginable, they still would have considered it less threatening than something radioactive! For info on nuclear power, my main go-to site is the Atomic Insights blog because it's written by someone who is not directly connected with either the nuclear industry or anti-nuclear activism. It's by a nuclear naval officer at Annapolis, who's day job is looking after the small nuclear reactors that the U.S. Navy has in its fleet of carriers, destroyers and submarines...and that answered another question that always stuck with me: if nuclear reactors are so dangerous, how has the Navy been running these small reactors safely for over half a century now? Rod Adams explains some of the problems present bureaucracy presents to nuclear power. For one, the licensing costs by the AEC are at a flat rate and make no distinction regarding the size of the reactor. This has made small atomic reactors commercially unviable and relegated them to military and space applications.

Regardless of these laws, many provinces in Canada have overturned the old Protestant and Catholic education systems in favour of public education, because many courts have applied the principle of separation of church and state....well, at least that was before Harper came along! Now we can expect Catholic schools, Evangelical Protestant schools, Muslim schools, Sikh education schools, Jewish schools etc. etc.. because the Tories are trying to buy immigrant and minority voters the same way conservatives do in the U.S. -- by using religion. They already tried this and failed in Ontario, but no doubt they'll try it again. Now that we are seeing the same creeping influence of religion in politics that the U.S. has experienced over the last 30 years: The Armageddon Factor by Marci MacDonald, sounds like a book on the Christian Right in Canada has come out just in time! There's no point in just letting the same process that turned U.S. conservative politics into an article of faith overtake us without objection!

That article doesn't explain the background of the story, but I suspect that the reason the state is stomping all over freedom of speech has something to do with the Concordat Agreement reached with the Catholic Church. Since the deal gives the Church power over law, education and even taxation policy, there's no doubt that laws against blasphemous speech also apply. The final word is Muslim majority nations aren't the only ones that face the prospect of theocracy.

A Polish friend of mine who went on vacation to his homeland about six years ago said that his home country is starting to look like Iran....except with crosses. I would have thought he was joking until I read some of the details of the Concordat agreement the Catholic Church has with the state authorities http://www.concordatwatch.eu/showtopic.php?org_id=931&kb_header_id=1331 But this little story about a Polish pop singer who is threatened with two years of incarceration for blasphemy because she said that: "the Bible was written by drunks and people with a fondness for "herbal cigarettes," illustrates once again the folly of secularists believing that they are safe taking sides with Christian fundamentalists against Muslim extremism. Both of the world's largest religions have moderates and hardline fundamentalists, and now Poland is giving us a glimpse of what a Catholic country will end up with if they give the Catholic Church everything on their wish list.

No! Lots of people said everything's fine besides Barney Frank; and it wasn't because trusted advisers were saying the real estate market was strong either. The reason why banks, pension fund managers and financial analysts still thought the market was stable or at its worst, would make a "soft landing" was because there were huge sums of money pouring in, and even buying the riskiest parts of mortgage securities. One hedge fund in particular is credited with keeping the subprime bubble going another three years and making it worse than it would have been if investor anxieties back in 2005 had taken their course. "By the end of 2005, the general sense was that the CDO market would slow down. These trades continued to fuel the fire," says Bill Tomljanovic, who worked for a firm that helped build a Magnetar CDO. Magnetar was "a driving force in the market." http://www.propublica.org/feature/all-the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble Magnetar was a relatively new and fast growing hedge fund that started making increasingly aggressive purchases of the lowest, riskiest portions of mortgage securities -- the "equity tranche" of the collateralized debt obligations - CDO's, were full of bonds made of bundled subprime mortgages to high risk purchasers. As long as most of the mortgages weren't in default, an equity tranche buyer could collect interest rates of up to 20%. But equity was usually difficult for investment bankers to sell; so having a company like Magnetar was manna from heaven for bankers who usually didn't create a CDO unless they had already lined up a potential buyer. Apparently, most of the other firms thought Magnetar was taking on too much risk, but since they were so confident in buying subprime mortgages, there was a general feeling that the rest of the market must be good in spite of the run up in real estate values. But, only the insiders knew that Magnetar was hedging their risk through the purchase of credit default swaps. As long as these quasi insurance contracts were payed off (and they were, thanks to the bailout of AIG) Magnetar stood to make more from CDO's that failed, than from the ones that continued to pay. How could Magnetar hope to make money on such risky stuff? It had a second bet that was known only to insiders. At the same time it was investing in the equity, the fund placed bets that many of the same CDOs it had helped create would actually blow up. It did that using one of the most opaque corners of the investment world: credit default swaps, which function as a kind of insurance on CDOs and other types of bonds. The SEC conducted an investigation of the Magnetar trades because of the appearance that they were created to fail, but even if Magnetar was unethical, there trades likely weren't illegal, since credit default swaps were unregulated and using them was a strategy that was available to other hedge fund managers and investors. In late 2005, the booming U.S. housing market seemed to be slowing. The Federal Reserve had begun raising interest rates. Subprime mortgage company shares were falling. Investors began to balk at buying complex mortgage securities. The housing bubble, which had propelled a historic growth in home prices, seemed poised to deflate. And if it had, the great financial crisis of 2008, which produced the Great Recession of 2008-09, might have come sooner and been less severe. At just that moment, a few savvy financial engineers at a suburban Chicago hedge fund helped revive the Wall Street money machine, spawning billions of dollars of securities ultimately backed by home mortgages. When the crash came, nearly all of these securities became worthless, a loss of an estimated $40 billion paid by investors, the investment banks who helped bring them into the world, and, eventually, American taxpayers. If anything, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and every other lending institution, were swept along in a false bubble created by a market that is still unregulated and ready to blow up again at any time.

I suppose....but I don't know where you're going with this analogy. The official line has been to avoid applying collective guilt for 9/11 to all Muslims, but that seems to be the thinking in New York if they want to keep a mosque from being close to the WTC. Part of the reason why I find a desire to keep Muslims away from the area a little ludicrous is that back during the time of the 9/11 attacks, it was mentioned that Muslims working in the Trade Center Towers had leased an office in the South Tower to set up a prayer room. So, in a sense you could say they already had a mosque there before the buildings were destroyed. Isn't Roe vs. Wade already on shaky ground? Especially with the conservative skewing of the Supreme Court over the last 20 years. And those others from my pov show me that conservative fundamentalists can't feel satisfied following their own rules until they can impose them on everyone else. And preventing Christian conservatives from imposing their will...like the gay marriage thing, is considered a violation of Christian rights. Okay, I guess I don't get why replacing the old building is an unreasonable request. None of the articles say why the other building is only used once a week, but there must be some reason for its limited use. A NY Daily News article said there was a sizeable Muslim community living in the area, so its not like there all bused in to the area.

I thought I already made that clear that I consider the objections to the hotel to be legitimate since the article I read stated that the proposed hotel would be right in the center of the Babi Yar site. On the other hand, the NYC mosque is going to be two blocks away from the former World Trade Center; therefore, my question is: do they own the land where they propose building the mosque? If yes, let the digging begin!

Those European nations that you cited in the post-opener are anything but consistent in their application of abortion laws. Which should we follow, Sweden or Czech Republic? The last time I got drawn into an abortion debate, I discovered from a little looking around, that the lack of an abortion law in Canada does not equal abortion-on-demand for women seeking an abortion. The way the anti-abortion freaks portray the issue, you would think there's thousands of women having abortions the day before their due to deliver a baby. There are many non-legal obstacles facing women seeking abortions in rural areas or provinces like PEI and Nova Scotia, which have no abortion clinics. I also recall a recent wikipage stating that Quebec has no doctors performing late term abortions, except in cases of medical emergency. It's ironic that many Canadian women actually have to cross the border to the U.S. for a late term abortion considering how big a political issue abortion it is down there. Final point, every forum abortion debate ends up with pages of arguments from mostly men - who are never going to have go through pregnancy and childbirth btw, yet feel no qualms about trying to decide if and when pregnant women should be allowed to make this decision. Even in situations like late term -- when there is significant brain development and beginning to look like an actual baby, I am still more inclined to back off and let the one having the baby have the last word on this subject.

"Marriage is defined as a union of a man and woman" until the definition of marriage is broadened to allow same-sex couples to get married. Changing the definition to include same-sex unions does not change marriage for the majority of heterosexual couples, and that's why conservative objections about infringement on their rights is totally bogus and not worth any consideration. This same argument used to be used in most U.S. states to support anti-miscegenation laws. Once the laws changed, the accepted wisdom changed to view inter-racial marriage as no business of outsiders whether they accepted inter-racial couples or not. Same here! Those who don't like gay marriage are still free to carp and bitch about it, but unless they can provide some substantive evidence that gay marriage causes harm to others, then they should not have the right to impose their morality on the minority that want to marry someone of the same sex. And it should be up to them to decide whether they want their own unique rites and rituals, or they want to follow the trappings of conventional wedding....except for that cake with the two grooms or the two brides on top!

According to that article you linked earlier, they are planning to build a hotel in the middle of the site, not nearby as in this case, so where's the comparison. How far away from WTC does a mosque have to be before you would consider it acceptable?

It is not necessarily based on deceit and dishonesty. A lot of them may be living in denial, and write off their occasional homosexual flings as stumbling and giving in for sin. Many of these anti-gay gays have a fundamentalist upbringing, and are taught that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination. So, for all of those that leave their families and their religions behind to start a new life in the big city, there are others who stay closeted, get married and try to hide it. Some believe that sin is causing them to feel homosexual thoughts (since that is what they've been taught since early age) so they may be more inclined to become a minister than the average person. Many of the gay priests claim that they entered the priesthood in an effort to cure their homosexuality....so you can see where this is going! If you want more self-professed gays, remove the penalties and taboos that prevent them from being fully part of society.

But even the biggest optimists don't believe that the Gulf is going to absorb all of this oil without any consequences to marine life; especially since the flow rate looks much greater in an analysis of the underwater video: Gulf Spill May Far Exceed Official Estimates