peter_puck

I don't know. The Republicans have described every Democrat since Carter as being the countries biggest Liberal. I sort of looses its sting. Obama does have an uber Liberal past (unlike the others) but they have tried, and it has failed to stick. I think they are voting because they feel they have just had one of the most incompetent and corrupt governments in modern US history. Go take a looking at the beating they took in the last congressional elections. That was an ass whooping. THe presidential election on the other hand is close. I don't agree with that. McCain is one of the most honest, respected politicians right now (among the independents). If he goes negative he looks like Bush, and everyone is fed up with Bush. I think his best bet is to go with the town hall debates. Obama gives very good speaches, but I don't think its proven he can debate. McCain is a very experienced candidate while Obama is a bit of a celebrity. It is hard to show this in a 30 second attack add, but it may be easier in a debate.

This senario already assumes that I am heating my house with electricity. If I put an electrical heating coil in a sealed barrel, it will be much more effecient than 70% (go check out an electric hot water heater). Since my house needs more heat at night than in the daytime, I am not really that concerned about heat leakage out of my barrel. If I need to store lots of heat for the day, I would also need lots for the night, because it is colder at night. If everything was property insulated, I would probably have to run a second heater for the house because the leakage would just not heat an entire house at night.

I doubt any of the schemes would really increase emissions. Power used at 4am tends to be nuclear or hydro. Power used at 3pm on a hot sunday is most likely coal or gas. Some of the schemes may use a little more energy. Hot water tanks slowly loose energy. Houses lose heat. But as I pointed out to RiverWind, the thermal mass (heating barrels) idea would not cost extra energy. Running up the airconditioner a little would probably use less total energy as well. The house would slowly lose "cold" at night when you didn't need it, but, the airconditioner would opperate more effeciently because there is less of a temperature gradient at 3am than 3pm. (the cost to cool a house by a degree depends on the difference between the temperature inside and the temperature outside. At night this temperature should be less). This is the same principle as making sure your airconditioner is in the shade). I suppose we would need a HVAC person to tell us for sure if improved operating would make up for the "cold loss". If you used thermal mass or some sort of phase change system, it should actually be more effecient. The timmers I mentioned would not consume much energy at all (they could even be mechanical). The device you put on the timmer needs to be consumed anyway. You also have to look at the effeciency of the generation as well. At peak hours on peak days, energy is inported from the United States (big ugly coal plants in Ohio) and from local gas and coal plants. Power imported from other countries (or provinces) has to travel a long distance. That is ineffecient (power lines are not superconductors - they do loose energy). The plants also have to be turned on and off - that is ineffecient as well. You also have the capital costs to construct plants that do not operate at full capacity for most of day/year. By using power on a more steady basis, we would need fewer gas/coal plants. From the http://www.ieso.ca/ Ontario has 11MW of Nuclear (Wikipedia lists 15MW) 8MW of Hydro 6.2 MW COAL 5 MW of OIL/GAS (less than 1 MW of wind/bio/solar/etc) The minimum usage was about 14 MW last nigh (which would be a fair bit higher than normal because it was hot last night) That would mean, that, even on a hot night, for a period, we would not have needed any emmision producing power. Only Nuclear and Hydro.

quote(peter_puck @ Jul 29 2008, 04:42 PM) If I had electric heat, I could use it to head a barrel of water at night, then the barrel could heat the house in the daytime. This would be easy to do (its already done in greenhouses). .... YOu do not "Convert energy to different forms" by heating up a barrel of water (as opposed to a conventional heating system). You create thermal energy and just store it for a while. Lets throw those laws of physics aside for a second and pretend you did have "large losses" in heating up a barrel. What form of energy would these loses take ? THERMAL!

I think you missed the point. Since you appear to be an American ( Bush has few fans, even among Conservatives outside the US) you probably measure your returns in US dollars. During Bush's term, the Dow went from about 10K to 11.5K, so if you had 10K in stocks when Bush was elected, your stocks would have gone up 1.5K. Myself, being Canadian, I measure my returns in Canadian dollars. If I had 10K in US dollars when Bush came to power, I would have had $15000 in Canadian dollars. Now, the stocks are up to 11.5K, but since the dollar is near par,I have less than 12K in Canadian dollars. I could have had the same investments as you, but I lost money. This is played out all over the world, the Australian dollar, Yen and Euro have all made huge gains against the greenback. You may think you made money, but go try to spend your loot on oil, fruit from Mexico, that goddy IKEA furniture or a Prius and you will see that your buying power has actually gone down. Then you have to add to this the fact that all the massive trade deficit under Bush has put money in the hands of foreigners who are now buying up the US.

There is a massive slobbering attack dog called right wing media in the US (Rush, Fox, etc). They have failed to lay a glove on him. They end up attacking his former pastor (pretty weannie as that old guy would say on Cheers.) All they can do is run around calling his Osama and starting internet rumours. If the right wing press cannot find dirt (or even make up good dirt) how do you expect the main stream media to do so? While he may be the "junior senator" from Illinois, he probably knows alot more about foreign policy than Bush. I would also question the idea of "bashing right wing politicians". Regan was known as the "teflon president". Earlier in his term Bush was a telfon president too (until the massive weight of bull sht manged to change the molecular structure of teflon). The media has not brought up McCain's connection to the "Keating Five" scandal - and there is a lot more meat to that than to Whitewater. They have not brought up Cindy McCain's history with drugs. I suspect if Obama or his wife had those problems, they would be front page news. (It is amazing how there was so much attention to Clinton smoking pot, while it was okay Bush would not answer the question if he took cocaine.)

You can buy timmers for a few bucks. Hook up your dryer/washer/dishwasher etc to these and you would save a lot on your electricity. You use much cheaper/cleaner power. What is wrong with that ? Once these meters are in place, people will invent other devices to save power. Many commerical buildings have airconditioners that run at night and save the cold in the form of ice for daytime hours. They do this because they already have smart meters. This idea has not appeared in people's homes because their is no incentive. If I had electric heat, I could use it to head a barrel of water at night, then the barrel could heat the house in the daytime. This would be easy to do (its already done in greenhouses). You could get a hot water heater to drive up the temperature a few degrees at night so it does not have to click on in the daytime. Your freezer could drop the temperature a couple degrees just before the rates change. Dehumidifiers could run at night. You have a market based approach where people pay for the power they actually use. You prevent millions of dollars from leaving the province. You reduce the cost of peak power for companies (since less of it is used). This will make business more competitive. Your power is much cleaner (peak power is usually gas or col - off peak is nuclear or hydro) What is there not to like ?

I suppose by that logic, Robert Mugabe is a bigger success. He ran up a massive deficit and ran his country into the ground. But, hey, he had more than two terms. I could also point out that while Regan ran up the deficit, he also cut spending. He took over a lousy economy and made it great again. Bush on the other hand took over one of the best economies and stable treasuries in American history and ran both into the ground (while at the same time running the deficit to record levels). If you look at the US stock market in terms of world currencies it has gone through one of the biggest 8 year crashes in history. While most Americans do not realise this because it is measured in the free falling American dollar, ask anyone from Canada or Europe who bought US stocks or mutual funds how their investments are doing. I can tell you - very very BAD. There is an article by an economist out there somewhere where they remove the effect of massive personal and government borrowing from the US economy during the Bush years and find an economic disaster. Any real president would have tried to put a stop to fraudulent borrowing, but Bush new it was all the was keeping his economy going.

He was actually on his way to becoming the first US wartime president to lose an election until he was rescued by his "swift boaters". Kerry was leading before he got swift boated.

George Bush won because he had smart people working for him (or he was working for smart people), he had gobs of money from the people who bought him and he ran the dirtiest political campaigns in modern history. He also ran up MASSIVE debts to bribe the electorate with tax cuts the country could not afford. He refused to cut spending less he offend someone. He lied to gain support for his policies. He also benefited from Clinton's scandals, the massive buget surplus left by Clinton (and the Republican Congress). Remember also, that it took a bad ballot, Supreme court justices and Ralph Nader to give him the first election (even though he lost the popular vote). This guy, with no doubt a lot of coaching, managed to score only in the 25th percentile on a pilot appitude test! (He still became a pilot above much more qualified people however because his daddy fixed it). He was the idiot son of a bright man who had everything in life handed to him instead of earning it. Anyone points out flaws in your character, well you just have big money say they had black babies out of wedlock or lied about their war medals. He is, in presidental terms, STOOPID!

I don't think they problem is ideology. I think the reason the Liberals were able to wipe out the deficit is because the Conservatives had little chance of winning, so they could do the right thing for the country. When the race became close, both the Conservatives and Liberals felt the need to walk arround with their cheque books instead of doing the right thing. They needed to buy votes and the voting public is too stuipid to punish this sort of behavior.

SIGH. I think they should use articles like that for courses on critial thinking. You cherry pick a particular year, massage the data to fit your hypothesis and fail to consider other variables. First of all, you pick a year when the Democrats are outraising the Republicans. In almost all other elections the Republicans (and their surrogates) outraise the Democrats (and their surrogates). You subtract the money given to Ron Paul and Rudy Guliani (they are Republicans, aren't they ?). You picked a year when the Democratic race went on a lot longer than the Republican race did. (a longer period to raise funds). You compare an inspiring leader (Obama) and an uninspiring leader(McCain). Don't get me wrong, I think McCain is the best candidate, but nobody is really passionate about him. Do you think McCain could have drawn a crowd of 200K (or whatever it was) in Berlin. You picked a year when certain special interests had a deep, emotional interest in the Democratic candidates while there was little in the Republican candidate. The traditional black Democratic voter has an interest in Obama as president. Can you say the same about Conservatives and McCain. You pick a year when the Republican party is demoralized and the Democrats are confident.

You would probably wind up with them drinking, doing drugs and fornicating on your lawn.

What does Obama's position on Russia and the G8 have to do with socialism ? Last I heard Russia is no longer communist. China, on the other hand, is still communist, and it was Bush that let them into the WTO (which again proves he is the dumbest thing ever let into public office)

He talks about it on his weblog: http://www.garth.ca/weblog/2007/02/07/resign/ "If the prime minister calls a by-election in Halton today, I will resign my seat today, so the people of the riding are without an MP only for a few weeks before the vote" I think this is a link where he makes the offer - but I get no sound for some reason, so forgive me if it turns out to be a discussion about something else. They also mention it here: ttp://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070207/turner_070207/20070207?hub=Politics "Turner once again offered to lay his Commons seat on the line if Prime Minister Stephen Harper would promise an immediate byelection. "

The lack of free elections have been "bemoaned" for a while. The US and Europe first starting imposing sanctions at the start of the decade.

I see you point, but I also think that the job should go to the right person. What are the chances that the "right person" just happens to be one of your 10 MP's from Quebec ? Or one of your 100 or so MP's ?

I really don't think thats true. Turner has offered to resign he seat a number of times as long as Harper agreed to hold and immediate by-election. He has also offered to resign his seat if Emerson and Kahn would. Harper stated he felt if he quit, Harper would simply not hold the by-election. I don't know if thats true or not, but it would be easy for Harper to call his bluff. I don't really think it matters anyway. Turner would win. The other two would not.

I was asking you what evidence you had that Chretien was a crook in the context of the Sponsorship scandal. I really don't see any here, but I will address what you have brought up. Evidence ? Yes a company owned by a cousin of a mobster did business with a company owned by Gagliano (SP). The RCMP investigated it and found out it was nothing. Yes there was some guy who said Gagliano was a "made man" and a "soldier" from some crime family, but the story was so incredible the opposition never even directly refered to it. Chretien's boys ? I am looking for evidence that Chretien was involved in criminal activity. I know low level memebers of the Liberal party and a civil servent were sucking cash for their own purpose. I am asking what evidence is there that Chretien was involved. Chretien looked "small town cheap", but Mulroney's explanations were just not credible. He said he took the cash because Schreiber told him this was how international business deals were done (Mulroney is an international business man and a lawyer!) He said it was for lobbying services yet can provide no evidence he actually did anything. Mulroney is a very bright guy, and he went in their and played stuipid. Patronage appointments are not illegal. Every government has done that. I think it should be illegal, but again, I am looking for crimes. QUOTE >Committed tax fraud to hide his transactions with the sleaze ball Did they ? When ? Shortly after Schreiber got arrested (and a former Conservative minister paid his bail) Mulroney took advantage of a CRA program that will not prosecute tax fraud if you voluntarily disclose it. Mulroney was not prosecuted because he reported it before CRA found out. Which makes me think he was afraid Schreiber would use it as blackmail material.

I think in a way he is actually emulating the US. While he has cabinet ministers, they are not as powerful as they were under previous governments. Both the Liberals and the prior Conservative government had very heavy weight ministers. Harper seems to concentrate power in his office, creating something like the US executive branch. I really disagree with you over Emerson though. He never "crossed the floor", he switched parties right after the election - which in my view is immoral. Especially after the Conservatives chastised the Liberals over Stronach. Stronach at least had an excuse. She ran as "red Tory" but the party turned away from "red Tory" values. She said she followed the will of her constituents (and she was reelected). Same with Garth Turner (he offered to resign) or Scott Brison (who was reelected). Each of them could claim that the party was moving away the views that got them elected. Emerson, on the other hand, changed sides the next day. The only possible reason was a lust for power. I think it was a huge ethical compromise when Harper brought him into cabinet, especially after asking for an investigation when Stronach moved in much more gray circumstances.

Of course not. The Chinese are still behind - my point is that they are catching up. I think Japan would be a good analogy. At the end of world war two, they produced cheap crap. Everyone laughed at their cars. Now they make better cars than the US does. It will take time, but thats the problem you face. Eventually Chinese scientists are going to catch up to your Chinese scientists. The question then is what happens when they catch up. Japan has the same problem as the US - they are a democracy. The prosperity gets directed towards personal needs. China is different, prosperity can be directed towards scientific and military aims. They don't have to go into debt because it is an election year- There are no "earmarks".They don't have the welfare state or prison problems that suck so much energy from the US economy. They don't have to worry about polution. There is little ethical restraint on their foreign policy.

It is also about the most secretive. So far they seem to be doing okay, but one wonders what will come to the surface. I really don't have a problem with Fortier, I do with Emerson though. The regional makeup of his party has forced Harper to compremise on ethics(Emerson) and talent(Bernier). He should either ignore regional issues, or take on more unelected cabinet ministers. There is lots of talented western MP's and lots of unelected talent, but very little to pick through in Quebec (because of the number of seats).

I don't think cash transactions are really what they are looking for. It may be something more like this senario. My name is Brian Mulroney and I have $300 000 that I need to launder. I buy a house for $200 000, wait a few years and then have Karl Schreiber buy the house from me for $500 000. (Karl would then sell the house to get the missing $200 000 back). Voila!, the money is now laundered (of course, attempts to trace the "buyer" would lead to a dead end because nobody took id).

Brian Mulroney >Let a certified sleaze ball has access to the government. >Lied under oath about knowing the sleaze ball >Took envelopes full of 100 000's in cash from the sleaze ball. This cash apparenty flowed through swiss back accounts before coming to Mulroney. >Committed tax fraud to hide his transactions with the sleaze ball >He made an utter ass of himself trying to explain the above There are also the statements by Schreiber and some of Mulroney's former collegues. Now that the little strawman is dealt with, again, what evidence is there that Chretian was involved in fraud ?

What is more effective, David Szuki telling people they should go green, or the government telling you "go green or pay more tax" ? How fast would people drive if the police officer beged you to go slow ?