WIP

The only objection I have with our system in Ontario is that it won't allow the people with bags of money to opt out for state of the art private clinics -- that's why Canadians go to the Mayo Clinic and other renowned American hospitals. I never said America didn't have good health care for the rich, but doesn't it bother you that for all of the money given to your health insurance companies, most of your countrymen receive a poorer quality of medical care than the average Canadian?

I wouldn't expect unbiased information from corporate shills like the Heritage Foundation, and it looks like I was not disappointed! I have three objections to your presentation of Bush deficits vs. Obama deficits: 1. When the previous administration sets programmed spending in place (like that prescription drug plan for example); the next administration has to carry the costs of these programs in their budget forecasts even if they are able to scrap the program on day one -- which is almost a total impossibility. 2. The Obama Administration is presenting a more honest budget that includes projected costs for war spending and INCREASING medical costs of injured and disabled veterans returning from the war zones. Bush's budgets were on par with Bob Rae's budgets here in Ontario, which tried to hide as much of actual deficit numbers as possible, by off book financing. 3. A health care plan sponsored by the government means that the federal government is assuming costs that had to be covered by employers and private citizens previously. Personally, I think that Americans would have been better off if the new government cut the insurance companies out of the picture completely, instead of proposing compromise solutions that enable them to continue profiting from managing a system that rewards executives who deny the most medical coverage. Regardless, these insurance and hospital costs had to be payed through high insurance premiums; so the average employer or employee's tax increase could be more than compensated by a reduction in health insurance premiums. The solution to America's budget woes will be easier now than five or ten years from now, but it is going to require ending the overseas empire of military bases and carrier fleets (many of which are used to secure access to oil) and billions spent each year for new toys from the defense contractors. One way or another, the empire is coming to an end, and the U.S. is going to have to end its dependence on oil and let foreign nations look after themselves. It's even debatable whether the withdrawal of American presence would make the world safer or less safe, but I'll leave that another time.

Just one! You mean this Michael Steele: GOP chief apologizes for Limbaugh remarks

I already covered that! I don't carry water for anyone, so if President Obama keeps the expansion of executive powers, like all of his predecessors, except for Gerald Ford, that would be typical of most presidents - Democrat or Republican. ?????? Well, you can choose to believe the disinformation from oil-company funded sites about global warming, but the human contribution to climate change keeps increasing every year anyway -- so, it's about time someone did something about it! But from what I've heard, Congress is already at work watering down any environmental legislation that will be approved. Like we have in Canada? No, from what is being developed, Americans likely won't even be able to get a public option. Any real healthcare reform would have cut the insurance companies out of the picture completely -- since they make their profits by denying health coverage wherever possible. They are also the chief reason why health care costs are twice as much as most countries have to spend on health care....and there are at least 50 million Americans who have no health insurance coverage at all! So the U.S. has spends twice as much on health care and has a substandard system for the majority of people -- judging from OECD and WHO statistics on life expectancy, infant mortality rates, and other health indicators that put U.S. health behind Europe, Canada, and even some third world countries. Why do so many Americans listen to the insurance company disinformation, and remain with the status quo that gives them third world medical care at twice the cost? Like the banks, who blackmailed the Bush Admin. to bail them out with the TARP funds? The banks should have been nationalized and sold off to new investors, like the Swedish banks! And that's where Obama stands to lose! Most of the political left are not sucked in with emotional appeals to faith and patriotism to follow a leader who does the opposite of what he says he believes in (do I need to remind you about George's spending increases, doubling the national debt, prescription drug plan, "No Child Left Behind" etc.). Conservatives were willing to make excuses for King George for his bad ideas and poor results, right up to the night of the Republican National Convention -- when they suffered a case of collective amnesia, and forgot that Bush/Cheney were in charge for the last 8 years! It was almost like that Dallas episode, where it was all just a dream. Saudi Arabia? An ally? With friends like these, who needs enemies! Where is Bin Laden from? And where were most of the hijackers from? Not to mention the jihad volunteers who fought in Afghanistan And whoever at the CBC put together this timeline of business arrangements that begins in 1970 between the Bush family and prominent Saudi families, including the Bin Laden's, points out that it is either by design...or is just an amazing coincidence! I guess Rudy sure ignored the warnings, when he put his emergency HQ right inside the Trade Center towers! And George Bush.....well, there are a lot of people at the FBI and the CIA who claimed they could not get them to take the threat of U.S. terrorist attacks seriously. I'm surprised that conservatives have anything to complain about! Obama has made cosmetic changes on foreign policy issues, and even on the homefront, the response to the banking crisis has been to leave all of the same players in place who caused financial chaos in the first place. There hasn't been any FDR-style banking reforms; it seems more like the Obama plan seems to be to just try to reinflate the credit bubble to keep the economy chugging along.

I'll spot you Olbermann and his bad Edward R. Murrow impression, but Hitchens doesn't host a radio or a TV show, and even if he did, I thought he was one of yours! At least on the War in Iraq.

Actually, they are better known as TV personalities; but these guys, along with Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, are the chief spokesmen for the conservatives these days. A good display of Rush Limbaugh's power is found in all of the Republican leaders who have been forced to issue apologies after criticizing him ( Congress - Eric Cantor, Phil Gingrey, Todd Tiahrt, Jim Tedesco, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford). A satirical online form letter was created for future Republican politicians to make the process of apologizing to Rush easier. So, who is the leader of the Republican Party? Maybe it's that intellectual giant who seems to be the only woman that Limbaugh has a good word for -- Sarah Palin.

I never said the Democrats or liberals don't also create myths from hero-worship, but the right has built a political ideology around emotional religious appeals and extreme nationalism. How does anyone have a rational debate with crackpots like O'Reilly and Glenn Beck? The conservative movement could use a new 'William F. Buckley' right about now; otherwise their hysterical approach to politics, combined with a possible economic collapse under the new Obama Administration, will make the Republicans a fascist party by any other name!

I could go into a lot more detail if the space was available! Hundreds, maybe even thousands of books have been written about the psychology of religious belief and its role in group behaviour, how am I suppose to summarize it into one paragraph without getting accused of being "simplistic?" My position still stands that religion may be useful for some, but it's based on a faulty method of understanding the world around us. It emanates from the basic human capacity for creating myth that begins in early childhood -- preschool children will use their imaginations to make up stories to answer questions that they do not have enough understanding of -- and myth-making is born. The desire for satisfying answers is often stronger than the desire to determine the accuracy or relevance of those answers. The reason I noticed your post, was the opening comment: And I responded: And I didn't get an answer. Personally, I would say that the record of mass extinctions over the ages is evidence against designed evolution, or evolution for a divine purpose. But, I wanted to know why you believe in guided evolution, and I am beginning to wonder if you ever considered the question before. Is it just because of a wish to harmonize religion or science? Or are there valid reasons for believing in guided evolution? But that is not my objection to the religious worldview. If religious understanding is confined to personal issues of meaning and is not used to apply to others, no harm is done. But, the reason why religion can be a "tool to manipulate people," as you said, is because religious truth cannot be critically examined, and questioning religious doctrine or the religious authorities who claim to understand the dogma is not well tolerated either! There are a number of areas, besides evolution, where religion collides with developing understanding based on empirical methods. When religious dogma declares that "life is sacred" and uses that dogma to try to prevent terminally ill cancer patients from ending their lives, then religion is harming others. At the beginning of life, when religious dogma claims "life begins at conception" they are causing harm by interfering with the birth control and abortion decisions of pregnant women, and forcing them into poverty by having children early in their teens - before they have a chance to get a good education, and having more children than they are able to support later in life. A magical doctrine of dualism makes rational determination of when to value new life impossible. In the last year or so, attempts by gay men and women to achieve full equal rights have been stymied by the religion-motivated conservatives who pull out their bibles as evidence that homosexual behaviour is caused by SIN, rather than accept the evidence that it is a normal biological variant that has been observed in every other mammal studied so far. The 'sin of homosexuality' dogma is responsible for this bizarre case in Connecticut church that produced a Youtube video of a "gay exorcism" of a 16 year old boy. The young man's age is apparently a factor in an investigation for child abuse over the incident. Nevertheless, if it wasn't for the desire to hold on to dogma-based beliefs that 1. sin causes homosexuality and 2. imaginary creatures called demons are blamed for causing the sin in this specific example, this bizarre story wouldn't have happened in the first place! Also in the news recently, Governor Mark Warner of South Carolina, has become the latest poster boy for how bad things can go wrong when someone is just not cut out for a lifetime of monogamous marriage. Hey, monogamy is not for everybody! If the fear of alimony and child support payments doesn't keep a guy from looking for some action on the side, the threat of hellfire and wallowing in self-pity won't do it either! An excellent article entitled "Red Sex, Blue Sex" by Margaret Talbot, published in the New Yorker, shows evidence that the Christian obsession with sexual purity may be behind the higher numbers of teen pregnancies, STD's, and divorce stats found in the Bible Belt states. Setting goals of unrealistic sexual behaviour leads to worse end results for problems with sexual behaviour, so the high profile Christian celebrity who falls from grace is more representative of his community than what the believers would like to think. These are just a few of the examples where beliefs that are based on religious doctrine rather than empirical evidence degrade the quality of life for many people, including those who don't share these beliefs! The problems of dealing with religious fundamentalism run a lot deeper than their hostile attitude towards scientists and scientific inquiry

The internet has provided us with a useful and effective means to factcheck suspicious claims, but at the same time, most people seem to blindly follow claims they hear by groups they support; so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that many Republican supporters are already at work creating the "Bush wasn't so bad" meme. Rightwingers are already acting like the economic collapse was Barack Obama's fault, and trying to erase the memory of the man who doubled their national debt to finance wars and keep the economy from collapsing during his presidency. These Republicans have convinced enough Americans that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president, that they are building statues and dedicating public buildings to the man who tried to destroy the federal government. Reagan tripled the national debt to help finance that much ballyhooed economic growth of the 80's (that sputtered to a halt when George the First inherited it); and an entire mythology has been created that the Soviet Union collapsed because of Reagan's push for new military spending, including the failed 'Star Wars' programs. He is always referred to as a "godly man" by the religious right, in spite of his divorce and the fact that he rarely attended a church service during his two terms in office (contrast that with FoxNews obsession over Obama's spotty church-attendance record) These are just a few bullet points that show 20 years is a long enough time for myth to overtake reality. Twenty years ago, even conservatives wouldn't have claimed that Reagan was the greatest all-time president -- now Republican presidential candidates try to conjure up his ghost when they hit the campaign trail.

McGuinty is protected as long as Harper stays in office! Ontario has a long history of reluctance to choose a Premier who belongs to the same party as the Prime Minister. McGuinty beat that rule in 2003 when he was elected Premier, but his first budget cost the Federal Liberals support in Ontario, and ended Paul Martin's brief reign as Prime Minister, returning Queen's Park to its natural state of opposition to Parliament Hill. No kidding! Much has been made of his support for the Harris economic philosophy, but there has been little attention towards his views on social policy, which are likely extreme right. We did learn during the campaign, that he wants to scrap the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. This issue split the four leadership candidates right down the middle, since even in the provincial Conservative Party, abolishing the tribunals is recognized as kissing off every non-white vote out there. Frank Klees and...I forget the female candidate's name...they wanted to reform the process rather than signal that a Conservative government is only interested in angry white voters who hate immigrants and brown or black people. Personally, I'll support anything that stands in the way of our new, Republican-style Conservative parties, including voting for Dalton McGuinty.

You set a mighty low bar for perfection! What colour is the sky in your fantasy world? Bush, like any social conservative, was intent on invading the personal lives of citizens with his "family values" policies. He was benign to the Saudis, the source of Al Qaeda and the 9/11 plotters, because his family had a long friendship with the Bin Laden brothers and other Saudi potentates. So Bush and Cheney were asleep at the switch, since they ignored warnings of a possible attack on U.S. soil http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/911_wido..._over_1006.html And after 9/11, Bush wasn't shy about invading the people's lives when the Patriot Act, illegal wiretapping, suspension of habeus corpus, torture and secret prisons, went into effect.

Do you have a literacy problem or something? There were a lot of conditions attached to obtaining a corporate charter 200 hundred years ago that have been scrapped (as shown in the article cited), and the concept of "corporate personhood" is continually expanded upon. Unless you're a CEO or a major shareholder, you're a fool for blindly shilling for the system we have now, that rewards people gamble with other people's money. This unbridled capitalism that you are cheerleading for, is responsible for debt monster that will likely swallow up the U.S. economy in the next five years.

That's right! And that's why these republican hypocrites should be called to account for why they feel they should be allowed to preach Christian virtue and condemn others for what they try to engage in in secret. Newt Gingrich: the three-time married doughboy who thinks it's safe to run as a family-values candidate now, left his first wife on her deathbed for his second, and then started screwing around on her while he was condemning Bill Clinton for his sex scandals! http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Gingrich_I_h...inton_0308.html David Vitter: the Louisiana Republican Senator who like expensive whores, was one of the sponsors of the proposed 'defense of marriage' amendment; and like virtually all Republicans, condemned former president Clinton's infidelities, and even condemned fellow Republican congressman-Bob Livingston for his extramarital infidelity which forced him to resign....Vitter stepped over his body when he took Livingston's seat in the House http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...tter/index.html http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2007/0...monger-and.html And now we have Mr. Family Values - Governor Mark Sanford: In late 1998, then Congressman Mark Sanford was preparing to vote to impeach President Clinton. His analysis at the time, quote, “I think it would be much better for the country and for Clinton personally to resign. I come from the business side. If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he‘d be gone.” The allegations against President Clinton, you may recall, were that he had had an affair and lied about it though not in Argentina. Meanwhile Republicans in 1998 had chosen as Speaker of the House Louisiana, Congressman Bob Livingston, who then admitted to an extra marital affair. Congressman Sanford also gave Congressman Livingston a shove out the speaker‘s door when he told CNN at the time, quote, “The bottom line is, he still lied. He lied under a different oath, and that is the oath to his wife.” http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/31545521 The bad news for Republicans is that this lying, pompous sack of shit is trying to build his case for holding on to his job after doing a little 'sackcloth and ashes' routine similar to the one that worked for Vitter. So far, the MSM has given little attention to the religious references in his rambling, incoherent press conference; but invoking the name of King David can only mean that he is expecting to keep his job after doing a little penance: "I have been doing a lot of soul searching on that front. What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very very significant ways. But then picked up the pieces and built from there." http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...wont_either.php Yes, picking up the pieces can only mean that he wants to stay on as Governor, and when this scandal is forgotten, this Republican hopefull will see if he can find his way to the 2012 Republican Primaries, along with Newt and Sarah, and whovever else takes a run for the Republican nomination. In summary, these Republicans are typical religious conservatives, who are so conflicted by their own inabilities to follow their own moral principles, that they are always on the lookout to condemn others they perceive as enjoying a life of sin, while they have to suffer and toil away under their own Divine Command morality.

You can call all theories "beliefs" for that matter, the distinction between good theories and bad ones is found in how closely they match the results of observations and empirical evidence. On that scale, I would say the Theory of Evolution is superior to the Six Day Creation Myth in the book of Genesis. My apologies to all of those who would like N.O.M.A. to actually work, but the fact is that there are conflicts between science and religion that cannot be papered over! Science conflicts with religion by positing a theory of evolution that contradicts religious creation myths, and by attempting to push further into Abiogenesis - the study of how life arose, and by developing cosmological theories that try to uncover the origins of the Universe. All of these scientific inquiries threaten religious dogmas, and that's why the believers in various dogmas take a hostile view of science. On the other hand, religion is responsible for the problems we have dealing with beginning of life and end of life issues, because of the belief in a supernatural soul, and religion is also the reason for discrimation against homosexuals, because religious dogma that insists that they are choosing to sin, rather than the scientific evidence that they are responding to genetic, hormone or even infectious agents early in life. Face it, NOMA doesn't work! Either the religiious will have to re-interpret their dogmas to accommodate new scientific understandings, or we keep getting stuck and even regressing, like we did back in the Middle AGes. The supernatural used to be part of the natural world at one time. In the Bible, the wind is a force of God's spirit moving over the land. The supernatural keeps retreating beyond the point of examination because believers want to hold on to these beliefs, and keep moving the definitions of souls, spirits, ghosts etc. out of reach of scientific examination to a point where they are irrelevant for us who do not believe they exist.

Why did you state that there was an atheist cause in your previous post? Once again, I did not say that evolution proves that God does not exist; what I said was that it takes away one of the commonly used arguments for intelligent design -- the diversity of life on Earth. Evolution provides a natural theory of how animals, plants and micro-organisms diversified and flourished, without the need for mythical explanations.

If you are able to control the number of entrants into your profession, you are able to determine your earnings, pure and simple! A union that can control membership also does not have to go on strike to achieve pay and working conditions. My father was an ironworker, and during his time at least, the Ironworkers Union was a "closed shop;" no one could work putting up steel buildings or bridges without being a member of the Ironworkers Union. Needless to say, they never had to go on strike. Their only hardship was periodic slowdowns in construction NO, but do the similarities between unions and professional associations really escape you?

Which is all beside the point! Jews attracted attention in centuries past, simply for being non-Christian, and opening an embarrassing issue for the Church about the authenticity of the Messiah - if he was rejected by his countrymen. But it doesn't matter what reasons why minorities may be at risk of vilification and discrimination -- the point is that a free society is obligated to protect the rights of those who may be too small in number to counter oppression of a hostile majority. I don't understand the reasons why a small number of people seem to grow up not feeling comfortable with their gender -- maybe it's hormones, who knows! -- but there is no reason why someone who has identified with the opposite gender, usually since early childhood, should not be protected from discrimination. You seem to view Jewish accomplishment as a kind of platinum card making Jews part of the ruling majority -- and I hope most Jews don't share your contempt for other minorities -- whether they are racial, religious, gender, sexual orientation or whatever. Back in the 60's, the Ku Klux Klan was quick to note that the majority of white marchers who accompanied Martin Luther King and worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center, were Jews. Would the same thing happen today?

Did you ever ask yourself what the purpose of veils and restrictive clothing are in the first place? In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and much of the Persian Gulf, where temperatures can hit 120 degrees, women are still expected to move about shrouded in all black garments. This garb is a portable prison that women are expected to carry with them on those rare occasions when they are moving about in public. So, here in Canada, and other non-Muslim nations, restrictive religious laws cannot be enforced by government and roving bands of religious police -- so the only coercion available is religious and cultural -- which is a powerful enough force considering that many are first generation immigrants who may not even speak English or know anything about their new home, outside of their closed circle of family relations. So, why can't our leaders grow a pair (like Sarkozy) and start demanding that new Canadians observe the same rights and values that are supposed to be our common values? I think the veiling issue touches a little deeper than the ability to determine positive I.D.

And all we need for evidence that conservatives want a more stratified economy is go back to the work of conservative icon - political scientist Leo Strauss, who argued that the majority of people needed to be led, and could not be trusted with too much political or economic freedom. Sociologist Robert Barker points out in his essay, that Strauss was following in the footsteps of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton - two founding fathers who represented the authoritarian wing of the revolutionary movement: Then, in the 60s and '70s, a group of alarmed conservative ideologues viewed the predominantly middle class US social upheavals as detriments. Women demanding equal pay and reproductive rights, African-Americans standing up for voting rights, working people pushing for fair wages, activists screaming for a clean environment, anti war, all spelled bad news for extreme conservative ideologies. Suddenly the far right ideologues thought what they were seeing were indications of our social order disintegrating. It confirmed their trepidation, which echoed an alarm of the early founders like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, who argued that augmented democracy could lead to social anarchy. A ruling elite op erating under the "pretext" of democracy loomed as the most steadfast form of government to these people. And a strong middle strata like we developed in the '60s and '70s meant people had too much time on their hands; and too little fear. As a sociologist it is obvious to me that the industrial, commercial, service rendering mid social stratification is the hallmark of national economic success. And citizen's standing up for their Constitutional rights is to my thinking very American; to the right wing ideologues it caused trepidation. In reaction to the liberated sixties enters the philosopher and far right ideologues, disciples of Leo Strauss and his elitist, nihilist, domination theory. Reminiscent of Nietzsche, Strauss beli eved in the ruling eli te or autocracy as the best form of government. Illusions of nationalism morals religion and democracy he taught them to practice, while surreptitiously tearing these populous precepts and paradigms apart. In the sixties and early seventies {He died in1971} Leo Strauss preached a feigned adherence to the principles of democracy while causing the weakening and ultimate demise of the same. http://www.populistamerica.com/neocons_leo...he_middle_class Yes! Thank God those lawyers are only concerned with the public good! Sure, those wages are inflated in comparison with people in China working for a dollar an hour. But manufacturing workers here wouldn't have to compete with desperate throngs in third world countries if our political parties (Liberal and Conservative) hadn't allowed corporations to outsource production and intellectual capital, in the case of India, without any economic penalties.Most working people are realistic about their expectations, and the unionized workers in steel manufacturing and auto production have made a string of concessions as a result, during the last decade or so. The problems with these industries are being blamed on the Steelworkers Union and the CAW/UAW by greedy corporate elitists; greedy investors only concerned about their share values; and jealous fools working in non-union workplaces who would rather try to knock down everyone who makes more than they do, rather than doing something proactive to improve their working conditions!

Hurts whose cause? I get tired of being lectured not to upset the fundamentalists by asking what evidence they have for their beliefs. In some ways, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are right when they say that liberal religionists enable the fundamentalists by attempting to squelch any probing questions about the value of religious belief and religious affiliation.

Why? And what is God? What evolution does prove is that the diversity of life on earth was not "intelligently designed" as described in Genesis, and believed by those who insist on religious literalism. God is the convenient explanation for questions that cannot be answered by observation or empirical evidence. People define "God" in many different ways that suit their need to remove unanswered questions. One thing I am sure of, is that God seems to want to hide from being discovered and leaves us with a world that does not prove his existence.

Okay, so bashing Jews and acting as an apologist for German nationalism and the subsequent rise of Nazism is your hobby. I'm not going to pursue this very far since it has nothing to do with the topic theme of left wing political parties using religion to counter the right wing use of religion....nevertheless, you can't give Imperial Germany a free pass in the leadup to WWI with the excuse that they were caught between two rival European powers. For one thing, just prior to German unification, the Prussian Empire sowed the seeds for enmity with France by invading and occupying Alsace-Lorraine on the excuse that up to half the people living there were of German extraction, and challenged England's naval superiority in an attempt to become the dominant colonial empire in Africa. Germany had been expecting to go to war with France and Russia decades before the outbreak of WWI, since the Kaiser had the Schlieffen Plan that proposed an invasion of France through Belgium drawn up after the Franco-Prussian War. German leaders realized that they were surrounded, so they planned a war strategy that would enable them to fight a war on two fronts.

And what percentage of the population do non-union professionals make up? Conservatives want to keep the middle class a small segment of the population. They want the majority of people to be impoverished.....although I should add that many professionals, including lawyers, doctors and chartered accountants ARE UNIONIZED, since practicing the trade means membership in their professional societies that regulate the number of new entries each year. By any other name, it's a closed union shop. Labour is disappearing due to globalization, since unfettered import of goods will lead to production being done in the cheapest market available. Canadian and American workers should not have to compete with Indonesians making 50c an hour. Globalization has led many corporations to close down their manufacturing operations and move them overseas. Automation may have reduced the number of employees needed in manufacturing, but it is not responsible for closing the factories? Or, it could be because the former steel workers and auto workers are now working at Walmart and Tim Hortons! I'll explain now. A house is the most expensive thing the average person will buy in their lifetime, so what sense does it make to remove real estate from a comparison of purchasing power? Technological changes obviously cannot be compared with periods prior to their existence. The basic needs of a family: their house, car, groceries, education, health care -- the comparison of today's average family with the typical family of 40 years ago shows most of us struggling to accomplish with two incomes what used to be done with one! And middle class people can afford this? These gadgets hardly qualify as necessities of life, and do not make up for the fact that food prices are rising....and so is the cost of post-secondary education; I can't help noticing that you didn't include that on your list. Bullshit. Women started entering the workforce to supplement the family income, and over the last 25 years have felt the pressure to work longer hours to maintain the same standard of living. There may have been social pressures to keep married women out of the workforce before 30 years ago, but the main motive is still economic necessity, not gender equality......otherwise, married men would have increased their share of the housework. You realize that up until about 25 to 30 years ago, banks wouldn't normally include the wife's income in the mortgage affordability calculations. The assumption was that most working mothers would not be in the workforce on a permanent basis, so the husband had to demonstrate that he could afford to carry a mortgage on his own. Needless to say that this prejudice of the loan officers helped to keep real estate prices from spiraling out of control. I'm guessing that you don't work with you hands! Okay, now if it's all about supply and demand, could you explain to me why CEO salaries and compensations have increased exponentially both here and in the U.S.: In the past 12 years, there’s been a 444 per cent salary increase for Canada’s top CEOs. The top 10 earners collected a total of $60.7 million in 1995—by 2007, that number had jumped to $330.3 million. http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/05/01/the-ris...as-top-50-ceos/ Yesterday we learned that Citibank -- yes, the same one bailed out by the U.S. government TARP Fund -- is planning pay raises as high as 50% for some employees. Market forces of supply and demand only seem to apply to those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display.../06/24/pm_citi/

And the Tienanmen Square Massacre was a figment of everyone's imagination! Here's filtering at work...courtesy of Google in a comparison of a Google search page of the "Falun Gong" carefully filtered for the Chinese citizen opposite the same page without the filtering software: http://blogoscoped.com/censored/ Over the last two years, there have been numerous reports of riots in Chinese cities over factory closures, environmental disasters and the aggressive enforcement of the one-child policy in rural villages. Does it make the country more stable to try to cover up information about dissent and unrest? Not if we start doing what China does with its own domestic economy -- putting up tariffs to stop the flood of cheap imports, so we can rebuild our own manufacturing sector.

Yet you adopted all of the markers of movement conservativism by identifying every conceivable enemy as a "liberal." But they are worse than the Democrats! Rush's brand of conservatism only benefits the wealthiest segment of the population, while it tries to cloak itself as a populist movement by appealing to race, religion, nationalism and greed of the average citizen. No, the Germans were empire-building, and trying to topple England as the dominant naval power before WWI broke out. And the problem with Jewry! Give me a break! Germany's Jewish problem was the same as Europe's Jewish problem -- their religious dogma taught that Jews were holdouts who rejected Christ and the Christian gospel. But they were not content with the priests' assurances that Jews burn in hell at the end of their days on Earth -- they were intent on stamping them out for 1500 years. Martin Luther wrote a book that became an inspiration for Hitler: "Of the Jews and their Lies," where he advocated burning all of their synagogues, driving the Jews out of Christian lands, and killing those who remained behind. So, after centuries of pogroms and ghettos, because of resistance to religious indoctrination -- who was assaulting who? Which was Soviet Russia under Stalin. It's hard to imagine that the German communists could have been worse than Hitler's fascist party! They were awful damn anxious to go to war with England in the first place. They should have checked to make sure they had superior firepower to start with!