WIP

"has a right to?" This is the no.1 reason I am a socialist in the first place! People like you think those who have the capital to turn people into human components on a manufacturing or assembly line, have the right to dictate all the terms to their workers. The average workplace is a dictatorship, where the business owner is taking us back to the days before the beginning of the 20th century and the start of the union movement. And that's why real, effective unions are an essential to clawback some of the benefits that the owners will try to grab for themselves if allowed to. If you don't like unions, then the alternative should be workplace democracy, or an expansion of the cooperative movement, where the people who do the jobs and make the products share the profits and have a real say in how their labour is utilized. And, what a joke, calling CAW wages inflated, when auto workers have seen their average hourly rates eroded by inflation....just like everyone else in manufacturing. As globalization makes capital international and ready to cross borders, the earnings for workers are driven down to the lowest common denominator. If it's labour intensive, like textiles, it's 37c per hour, like those clothing makers in Bangladesh; if it requires some degree of skill and training...wages may be a little higher. But even skilled workers and professionals are affected by the race to the bottom....as are small business owners...who seem to be the stupidest twits of the lot...because they are oblivious to how much their little crapbox business depends on the discretionary income of the people living in their community...until they stop coming through their doors or paying for their services. It's worth noting that everyone who works as an employee is underpaid! And if you don't believe it, ask yourself how any business is profitable unless they pay their workers less than the full value of their work. That is the whole game of capitalism in a nutshell -- to get as much value out of people for as little compensation as possible!

I probably wouldn't have noticed the Black Keys until I heard them do "Lonely Boy" on Saturday Night Live about a year ago. The drums are front and center in this song: Here's something I thought of posting earlier but never got around to it before. This is a virtual cover band that could only exist in the age of the internet. Three Americans from across the U.S.A., a German and an Argentinian, who met online and whom were all fans of 70's progressive rock band - YES...and had all covered YES songs in local tribute bands, got together online and contributed the parts to "Tempus Fugit" from the 1980 album - Drama, which was the one album that didn't feature Jon Anderson on vocals. Anyway, here it is, and I guess it shows that the internet is good for things besides invasion of privacy and internet porn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dM08Saq8BMk

Only in your own head, because you claim that pro choice means advocating abortion. And that is what makes me curious and a little sickened by your approach to issues like these! You seem to be detached about everything, and feel nothing for other people. Most of us aren't able to detach our feelings, and have to try to use logic to work around them to arrive at practical solutions to moral quandaries. I don't trust anyone who doesn't feel any emotional stake in any issue or any story.

Aside from minor social issues, we are not going to be able to keep social programs like healthcare if our economy is hollowed out by globalization! Just in the news today: General Motors Canada to move new Camaro production to Michigan plant. Now that new U.S. GM workers starting on the assembly line are working for half the rate of employees under the existing contract ($14.00 per hr.), our auto workers lose their jobs, as they move back across the U.S. border....unless they are willing to join the U.S. workers in the race to the bottom! The fact that the American workers were forced into cutting wages in half to keep their jobs, was the great untold story behind the "Obama saves GM" headlines that Democrats trumpeted, and Republicans overlooked....because...well anything that drives down wages to slave labour is not going to be subject to criticism by corporate Republicans. So, should workers in Canada join their American counterparts, and the desperate in third world countries in the race to the bottom? As I pointed out among the overlooked backstories in that Bangladeshi sweatshop factory fire, the manufacturer was given incentives to drive wages even lower and cut corners on any safety measures because their factories were being threatened by Walmart and the other buyers, that they would cancel further contracts and find other suppliers elsewhere if they didn't continue cutting costs. This is the ugly story behind globalization, which has given corporate artificial entities the power to blackmail governments at all levels to provide "incentives" to get their factories and stores, and to keep unions out and wages low to keep those jobs. This is how the seeds for inequality were sown by the only international institutions with real power: WTO, IMF, World Bank, and unless there is an educated population who understands the game that is being played at their expense, and is capable of organizing to fight back, inequality will only get worse as time goes on. The only reason why Canada is more equal than the U.S. is because we have been slower than they are to embrace gangster capitalism and join them in the race to the bottom. But, thanks to Harper, we are about to sign on to a new and more intrusive globalization treaty, and here in Ontario - if we are stupid enough to hate McGuinty enough to elect Hudak, that will be the end of unions in Ontario and middle class incomes for the average worker! And then we will not have the tax base to support medicare, Canada Pension etc.. Europe is being forced to unwind and dissolve their social programs right now; if present trends continue, we will be joining them very soon.

A famous quote from Mark Twain:"everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one is in a hurry to get there." Pretty much sums up that what people profess to believe, and what they actually feel at an unconscious level are not the same thing. If these young children are innocent, and therefore automatically go to heaven, then Christians shouldn't be shocked by a few cases where mothers killed their young children because they feared they might grow up and live a life of sin....and go to the other place instead. The beliefs in heaven, ghosts and soul travel, are not much more than an unwillingness to face death and the prospect of not existing in any form.

Why bother discussing moral issues, if you don't believe in or follow any principles? And it's used as a strawman issue when it's implied that pro choice means pro abortion. I haven't read anything from a pro choice writer that preferred abortion to birth control. The so called pro life side is not following a moral principle on the abortion issue. They are just following a rule! So, when the rule says no abortions under any circumstances, then we end up with cases in Catholic countries like Ireland, where a man is suing the hospital for refusing to terminate his wife's pregnancy, and allowing her to die instead. Or the case in Brazil two years ago, where an 11 year old girl was pregnant with twins...which were aborted, because she wasn't physically capable of delivering a baby....let alone two at once. But, sure enough, the Catholic Church excommunicated the doctors for performing a life-saving abortion, and also excommunicated the girl's mother....but for some reason they refrained from excommunicating the girl! People who have really studied the abortion issue agree that a perfect solution is impossible; because a fetus's right to life can conflict with the mother's freedom to decide whether to continue a pregnancy. At one extreme, prolifers are trying to ban birth control that have abortifacient properties, while at the other end, most people agree that late, third trimester abortions should only be performed in cases where the mother's life is at risk, or the baby will have severe defects. It's kind of weird that you talk about this issue, but you don't feel any stake in it either way. But, then in other threads, you declare a lack of concern for the fate of the human race entirely. If you are that nihilistic, why bother with any subject?

You're dreaming in technicolor again! Doesn't the steady increase in foreign ownership tell you something about how far we will be able to go before the chain gets yanked? The globalization agenda of "free trade" treaties keeps chipping away at whatever sovereignty we have left. Once we sign on to TPP, we will have no control over our resources, and once we are indebted to the bankers, we will be stuck with the same austerity regiments that afflict most of Europe now, and will soon be landing on the U.S.

Usually, Democrats are option#2 for the corporate class. But, I'm not so sure about banking! Wall Street seems to prefer Democrats.

I'm talking about conservatism and resistance to change. Why didn't you read the following sentence?

First heard this story of Stephanie George on a Young Turks youtube video. In brief, she was handed a mandatory life sentence for drug trafficking even though her actions were little more than holding drugs for her drug-pusher boyfriend. This story seems hugely ironic and a testament to unequal justice today, after the lack of criminal charges applied to any executives of HSBC for money-laundering drug money....and laundering money for Al Qaeda and other declared terrorist groups by the State Dept.. Let's not forget that! Justice and democracy are meaningless slogans in a world where the owners of money control governments.

Yes, American culture is crumbling from within, and the spike in gun crimes and mass shootings is all the proof that's necessary. The gun nuts are churning over how back in the day, there were lots of guns around, but far fewer shootings. The difference is that now, people are losing their jobs, losing their houses, losing their health insurance (usually as a result of job loss), and lashing out in unpredictable ways. The picture of the suspect in Friday's horrendous crime is still a little foggy, but it appears that he was disabled to some degree by Asperger's Syndrome, and it appears that he had little if any treatment or counseling during his youth to help him adapt to this defect in mental processing ability. Not that there's a straight line between mental illness and grabbing a gun and going on a shooting spree, but a society that provides little support, and cuts back what is available....but allows lots of guns to be handy for anyone who feels like using one, is asking for more and more of these incidents in the nightly news report. I was just talking to my wife a half hour ago, as we scanned the latest shooting incidents in Alabama, Oregon and a couple of other places since the school shootings on Friday. My own theory for the meltdown is that, since the U.S. has become an increasingly divided, isolated, and individualistic society since the changes in culture brought about by new technology-starting with television, and more recently divided by the increased stratification of wealth and incomes, Americans, by and large, can't act collectively in any sort of mass uprisings like in Southern Europe, the Middle East or Latin America. Maybe it would be safe to allow free and easy access to guns in a saner, less stressed out nation, but that is not the America of today. And, I'm not gloating or chest-thumping about how wonderful everything is up here in Canada! Despite some somewhat misleading headlines on our economic health, and having a better social safety net....which we are also cutting back on....the main difference between Canada and the U.S. right now is the number and availability of handguns! I don't think, no matter how much money and how much squawking the NRA and Gun Owners of America do right now, that they are going to be able to stop reforms to gun ownership and sales any more....2nd Amendment be damned!

Even if you feel that one shot can't do the job, there still are reasonable limits to clip size. It's been noted a number of times since the shooting of former Congresswoman - Gabrielle Giffords and others, that the crime would not have been near as large if not for that 19 bullet clip! Why was it reinstated under Bush II? And why was Obama able to do nothing more than make a condolence speech afterwards? And third question, and most crucial if we're talking about this story, will the Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress have the stones to confront the NRA and gun nuts across the U.S.A. who won't allow any reasonable gun control laws to pass, regardless of the circumstances?

We shouldn't be fooled by any snapshots of the economy that select specific start and finishing points to get the results more to their liking. The conclusions can be skewed as noted in the Canadian Press article: Income inequality steady by one measure, but absolute gains tell another story Read it on Global News: Global News | Income inequality steady by one measure, but absolute gains tell another story Income growth in Canada is not going to continue in a high oil cost environment after the money being dumped in right now in venture capital starts drying up. And even without TPP, the present free trade rules have hollowed out manufacturing in Ontario, and we are getting a replay of the same right wing, supply side bullshit that Americans first heard 30 years ago. I hope Ontarians are able to look at the disaster south of the border that resulted from stripping unions of collective bargaining power and giving more power to the corporate elite. Because the Americans in the rust belt states and the Northeast especially can be excused for falling for a novel idea, but if Canadians fall for the same warmed over right wing BS from Harper or a Hudak...if he ever becomes Premier of Ontario...we will be guilty of more than getting duped, like the American Reagan Democrats; we will have allowed the same fate to happen to us in spite of what we could learn from the U.S. example.

That's what I was thinking also! The main reason why the U.S. is experiencing mass killings, while being few and far apart in Canada and most western societies has little to do with the cultural problems, and more to do with the present inability to do anything about easy access gun laws. Who needs a semiautomatic for protection?

Even though I have pretty much despised everything about Susan Rice I have learned about since she became a public figure of note (she being one of the war hawks demanding an invasion of Libya according to the NY Times), it's what the Republicans object to and overlook, and the way they are attacking her, that I find totally despicable. That ageing senile clown - John McCain, who himself graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at Anapolis, and picked dimbulb Sarah Palin for VP, has the gall to say that Susan Rice is not smart enough for the job of Secretary of State. I would say that intellect is the last problem that we should have with Susan Rice! McCain, closeted homosexual - Lindsay Graham's, and other Republican attacks on Susan Rice's intellectual abilities look remarkably similar to the dog whistle racist attacks they turn to when going after any black Democrat, like Shirley Sherrod or Barack Obama himself....recall trust fund baby moron - Donald Trump demanding to see Obama's college transcripts - using the obvious implication that a black man is not smart enough to excel at the high levels of academia by his own merits, and must have been promoted through affirmative action. What's scary about this turn of events, is that the previous assumption that the Repubs were using veiled racism to motivate the white suburban voting base alienated by Republican economic policies, only because they decided that there was more to gain and less to lose in the strategy while running against a black president. But, now that the election is over, it's becoming clear that the Republican Party, despite the reports of so called moderates wanting dialogue with visible minorities, has plot its course to be the White National Party of the United States. Of course, maybe part of the problems in their assumption that blacks can't be smart or competent, is that the few blacks that the Republicans are able to enlist as allies usually are stupid and inept....beginning with Clarence Thomas...a total dud, who does nothing and says nothing on the Supreme Court, other than copy whatever other students like Antonin Scalia are doing. Herman Cain....what a jackass he turned out to be! It was even a misrepresentation to call him the chairman of Godfather's Pizza, since he was in reality not much more than a paid spokesman for the company. And this clown in Florida - Allan West, all the money that could be pumped into his gerrymandered district couldn't save his job! It shouldn't be a surprise that not many blacks in their right mind can find a home in today's Republican Party....even if they happen to be upper middle class and have their own businesses, they are in a similar predicament as Jews used to be until Christian Zionists allowed them entry into Republican Party. Before that, Jews felt stuck with the Democratic Party regardless of economic thinking, since the Republicans used to be loaded with rabid antisemites, who almost hated Jews more than they hated blacks. But there's not great odds for the same thing working for other visible minorities today in the Republican Party.

The problem is that a good portion of that 71% who believe in God, are worshipping a God that has been fashioned to their own liking: a God that rewards materialism and accumulation of wealth, while providing justification for abandoning the poor; a God that has decided for some reason that even though he has an entire universe to look after, two countries - America and Israel, were "chosen" by him to be occupied by a small, privileged segment of adventurers and immigrants....and specifically blesses those nations, while not doing a whole lot for anyone else on this planet! A God that says:'don't worry about environmental concerns...those people are pantheists who worship nature....go ahead, use this world for whatever you want and think nothing of the consequences of your actions in pursuit of wealth....it's all going to be over soon anyway, when I Rapture you and the chosen believers and blow this pile of rocks to hell.' If America's mostly Christian population were worshiping a God that took them to task for falling short and contributing to the suffering of others, and fouling this giant nest that we all live in...I would say that those God-believers would be several steps ahead of the hedonistic, self-centered, materialistic atheists, who mock the others for their supernatural beliefs, but share all the bad naturalistic assumptions about how a society should work that the right wing evangelicals believe in.

And that's one of the things that make it so hard to get involved in a hot topic on this board! There usually ends up with 15 different threads on the same topic. It's like with the M.E. and area threads; by the time I notice one, there are three or four others that are identical, and I don't know which one to drop in on. It's easier to get involved in a discussion on an ignored topic that fewer people are interested in. Some forums that are tightly regulated, will cut off redundant new threads on the same topic, and either close them or merge them together. Not that I don't appreciate having a more relaxed, looser management system here, but there should be some way to get people to search before they hit the New Topic tab. I try to look before I leap in with a new thread, it would be nice if everyone else did likewise.

Here's a tip to anyone reading propaganda from slavish devotees of corporate power like Andrew Coyne and the whole operation at National Post, which has been nothing more than a corporate-funded charity used for propaganda purposes ever since Black got the whole thing started........read the comments after the article! Because among the first five or ten comments, there will be at least one slip through that has taken a hard look at the story and the evidence presented. This one was four comments down when I checked: Andrew's headline and content misrepresents the report, but perhaps he doesn't write the headlines for his opeds. Here is what TD said. Income inequality in Canada has remained steady since 1998 according to the traditional benchmark, but absolute dollar gains by the country's highest earners have far outstripped the gains by those at the bottom. Even though the poorest saw a slightly larger percentage gain in income, absolute gains — the amount of dollars in a person's pocket — tell a different story, said TD Bank chief economist Craig Alexander. "Although the traditional benchmark of income inequality isn't showing an increase, the absolute levels of income matter enormously," he said. After a 20 per cent increase, the after-inflation level of income of those in the bottom 20 per cent increased to only $15,200 in 2010 from $12,700 in 1998. Meanwhile, at the high end of the income scale, the top 20 per cent have seen an 18 per cent increase in income since 1998, but that translates into $26,700 to bring their income to $171,900. "So part of the issue around income inequality is the fact that households at the low end of the income scale have extremely absolute low levels of income and that's a major challenge," Alexander said. And he points out, those in the middle of the range have seen the slowest pace of increases as the downward pressure on jobs and wages in the manufacturing sector has weighed on growth. In other words, we are just slightly behind the curve that the Americans are trapped in right now. I can attest to that last point about middle incomes being stagnant, because with working a significant amount of overtime each year, my gross income has been a little over $70,000 per year for the last five years. And most prices are rising, some like food and gasoline are never included in those inflation statistics that are put out....likely for the obvious reason that there still are a few people with benefits and pensions that incorporate a COLA, and phony inflation numbers help prevent increases from adjusting with real inflation. As soon as it starts sinking in a little more widely that the shift from conventional oil to tar sands oil is going to choke off the expected 3% annual growth rates, then we will inevitably end up with a fight for the pieces of real value in the economy....that the super-rich are the only ones winning in the U.S.. The only way to prevent the U.S. and European collapses in income of middle and lower income groups is to have an educated population, that cannot be fooled by BS about the billionaires being the JOB CREATORS, and prevents them from enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. And, needless to say, that the poor have the least amount of influence on economic policymaking of any group in society, and are not going to be able to keep up if cities.... especially here in Ontario, keep cutting back on benefits and supports for those on welfare and disability pensions, but the billionaires.....they seem to be doing just fine.....just like across the border -- Canada’s super-rich getting richer: magazine ranking CTV

Is that stopping the Obama Administration from killing people they want to eliminate today? They are assassinating enemy Mujaheddin labelled as terrorists, accused drug cartel chiefs, and in at least one extra-judicial killing - the drone execution of Anwar al Awlaki's 16 year old son - nothing more than revenge and sheer spite....but for some reason, they can't pull the same trigger on criminal corporate executives who leave a trail of death and destruction because of their actions in pursuit of more money! And I would include former BP CEO Tony Hayward on that list, since his crime caused the immediate deaths of 11 men, and an untold number of people living along the Gulf, or eat fish and shellfish from the Gulf and will die in the next 20 or 30 years, because BP disregarded warnings about the indiscriminate overuse of Corexit - which will sank the leaked oil to get it out of immediate sight, while both the oil residues and the corexit chemical will keep seeping up to the surface and washing ashore for years to come. There are numerous potentials for criminal charges including manslaughter and murder as well, if BP's operations in Azerbaijan are included in the list of charges. Other major oil companies operating in third world countries are guilty of similar crimes that they are never prosecuted for! Who runs the corporate entity? And who profits most greatly from the corporate entity? And if corporations are granted rights of personhood, why aren't corporations subject to the death penalty like flesh and blood persons are in some states? Back before corporations became people, a corporation chartered in the U.S. more than a century ago, would have its charter stripped from the owners, and its assets would be auctioned off to new owners who were under the same obligations as the offending corporation. No surprise that bankers and billionaires of the Guilded Age made changing those rules priority 1.

Right. On a slightly different subject, CBC Radio had an episode awhile back on the series "Ideas" which featured psychologists and sociologists debating the nature vs. nurture claims regarding gender identity between men and women. In the last 10 years, there have been a flurry of popular books using brain imaging as evidence, which make varying claims about the degrees to which men and women are "hardwired" to follow typical masculine and feminine behavioural patterns from early childhood right through to adulthood. But what neuroscientists and evolutionary psychologists today are doing, is mostly cross-referencing social facts with the data from brain development, and concluding that the end results are natural and unalterable. And I'm not just talking about girls-play-with-dolls/boys-play-with-toysoldiers story. Back when I was young, there were relatively few women in high positions in scientific fields and engineering, and the story went that girls are naturally better at communication skills than boys and should concentrate their efforts in the humanities and leave the hard sciences for the boys...because those fields required more complex math skills that girls were not naturally adept at. Not many people have commented in the public arena that what was then a time-honored assumption about men and women has been turned on its head in the last 10 to 20 years, as girls are overtaking boys in higher education...including math, and even outnumbering males in engineering. The only time we here about this issue now, it's usually framed that the education system is more female-friendly and boys are being discouraged from learning at an early age. At least this is the BS that's put out by some social re-engineers who are pushing the notion of same-sex schools again. They even started a pilot project on same sex education in public schools in my city - Hamilton, if it's still running. What the gender controversies show, is similar to the ones about same-sex issues, the default position is invariably that our culture is natural as it is at the present, and does not need to be changed, nor should be allowed to change with the times. I used to follow a lot of those assumptions myself, but these days I find myself swimming upstream and bucking another presumption that comes with age -- that we become more conservative and averse to new and different ideas as we grow older.

No, but I read what you wrote! To you and Bonam, if gays are allowed to get married and to adopt children, or use a surrogate as in the case of a lesbian couple I met five years ago - how are they diminished or deprived by their sexual attractions? Think before you start typing at the keyboard! If a man is a homosexual, he does not want to get married to a woman unless he is attempting to hide it from friends and family. Same with a woman who's a lesbian. If she's sure that she does not want to marry a man, then how exactly would gays be deprived in a culture that recognized their relationships?

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If we can trust Michael Moore to have his facts straight, he said tonight that there have been 31 mass shootings in the U.S. since he made Bowling For Columbine. Our culture is sick and crumbling, but combine that with easy access to guns...and body armor also, for some reason is considered a God-given right.....there's bound to be mass shooting incidents as a result.

Since this thread was originally about the Hostess layoffs of 18,000 workers, and the OP blaming unions for job losses, and derailed somewhat by the endless bowing and scraping before the Job Providers, I want to make sure that this story about the company raiding the employees pension plan wasn't overlooked: Twinkie CEO Admits Company Took Employees Pensions and Put It Toward Executive Pay

Right to work states also have the lowest piss-poor wages, thanks to union-busting kicking the money up to the top....just like the Mafia! Like I said before, I hope you guys are getting paid for worshiping wealth and privilege: Economists: Right-to-work states have lower-income residents, poor labor relations When right-to-work laws were first implemented decades ago, those first states benefitted with increased employment because companies and jobs migrated there in search of the lower wages, Belman said. But that impact has faded over time as more states joined those ranks and as unions have agreed to concessionary demands from employers, he said. The data on wages tell a fairly clear story. Of the top 10 states in per capita income in 2011, seven were not right-to work states. Of the bottom 10 states with the lowest per capital income, seven were right to work states. “There is a lot of evidence that wages and benefits are lower in right-to-work states. There’s a redistribution of wages and benefits toward owners’ capital,” Belman said Thursday.