Moonbox

Dalton McGuinty is not all that well liked in Ontario. His record is bad and the only reason he won the last two elections is because his opposition is incompetent, much like how Harper won his majority this year.

Argus, that was one of the most brilliant posts I've seen on this forum in a long time. It was funny, concise and highlights how backward the OP was in a very obvious way. Well done.

The middle class, inflation adjusted, saw a $53 increase in median income over a THIRTY FIVE year period. That's not a good statistic Smallc. It's aweful. Productivity and GDP, even inflation adjusted, have grown FAR faster than that per capita over that time period. The average income in Canada from 1976 to 2009 increased by 17%, inflation adjusted. Sounds great right? Well...no. Median income, the stat that would show what the middle class is making, only grew by 5.5% over 34 years. Why's that??? It's because despite enormous productivity gains over the last 30 years, the wealthy have been pocketing those gains and the middle class, despite improved efficiency, has not seen much benefit at all. I'm not sure how I'd feel if I worked for 30 years straight and I got a 0.16% raise per year. What about you? http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/hot-topics/canInequality.aspx#anchor3

As are the bedwetting sensationalists who whine and fuss and spin every little possible thing into grand Tory conspiracies. What a boring thread.

smallc this was going on long before the recession hit. The middle class was making less in 2007 on average than they were in 1987 and, if I recall correctly, that wasn't even inflation-adjusted. It's enough to make you want to puke. The fact that the rich in Canada have continued to get richer, and that the poor are poorer (thus requiring more in the form of social servicing) leads us to a middle class getting squeezed on both ends. Things are not peachy in Canada for the average Canadian, although at least our banks didn't collapse.

As mentioned before, any court in the world would have trouble believing that someone firing a bullet at the window of the White House hadn't given serious thought that this was the residence of the President of the United States. Perhaps he was insane, but he'll still be locked up for good. Whether you want to call this an assassination attempt, or an attempt to make a statement (something akin to terrorism), he's toast.

I'm wondering why the world's ~13th largest military spender wouldn't even have a military satelite up in the sky. Is that the case?

Bingo. Wyly, maybe you don't understand what proxy means???

The US involvement in Vietnam was neither imperialistic nor colonial. It was idealogical and at no point were they interested in occupation or subjugation. They just didn't want to see communism spread any further. Except the US civil war didn't occur in a third world butthole, and one side wasn't massively supported with arms from one of the world's largest powers. To say the North Vietnamese invasion of the South was just a 'civil war' is beyond dumb. The sound of your own ranting? Oh...that's too bad. You must not get a lot of 'exercise' then....

wyly I know that using words like 'imperialism' and 'corporations' etc give you a huge hard, but this statement just shows how naive you are and how little you know of Vietnam. North Vietnam didn't go communist on its own. It did so with MASSIVE Soviet and Chinese support. The invasion of South Vietnam was supplied with immeasurable Soviet and Chinese equipment. South Vietnam had no chance without American help and it's idiotic to think that Vietnam was merely just a civil war. The USSR and China were fighting the USA by proxy.

To be fair wyly, it wasn't really a matter of the US imposing democracy on Vietnam. It was a matter of China and North Vietnam invading democratic South Vietnam in order to impose communism on them. If I was an American, I would have been pretty pissed off that my government was sending me and/or my friends on some stupid idealogical crusade in a third-world crap hole, but other than that I think it was one of their morally reasonable endeavors. The idea was right (and the UN has regularly acted in similar conflicts) but the cost in American lives and just plain $$$ was way too high.

I wasn't alive back then, no. On the other hand, I think you're giving far too much credit to Jane Fonda and the morons who followed her. South Vietnam went communist because it was right on China's doorstep and the Western world didn't have the political will to do what it would take to stop it. The jungle helped too. It wasn't the communists traitors in the US that ended the Vietnamese War either. It was parents not wanting to see their sons go die fighting in a country nobody gave a shit about. Vietnam was never supposed to be a prolonged conflict. The fact that it turned out that way doomed it from the start.

Barbarella was the worst movie I've ever seen. What's your point? How did a US sex symbol lose them the Vietnam War? I thought it was more a lack of political will to spend billions of dollars and tens of thousand of young American lives fighting for a 3rd world shit-hole nobody cared about. They didn't so much lose the war so much as US voters decided that there was no reason for them to be there in the first place.

not that I'm siding with Shwa, because I think he averages around 0.5 intelligent sentences for every 100 he writes, but what on earth are you talking about? Americans were siding with the North Vietnamese in the war? Please explain...

Yeah we've heard a ton about this bro-in law of yours. Unfortunately, you've never been able to reconcile his expert opinions with the fact that most of the world's biggest militaries are doing the exact opposite of what his (and your) expert conclusions would dictate.

Shwa we've been over this before. You don't understand the meaning of the word "reason". The fact that you even said the above shows just how poorly you're able to put the puzzle pieces together. You're a square peg in a round hole sort of guy.

Okay whatever your angle is, that's just funny.

The problem is that the planes, as of now, will not have built-in satellite communication abilities. This is problematic for Canadian pilots because there aren't a lot of communication relay towers in the Arctic circle (next to none). It's a pretty big problem for us and if it can't be fixed then the planes are more or less useless for us. That said, it's likely one of the easier problems to fix. It doesn't make the plane a lemon at all.

Cyber, I'm not sure what you're big hang-up is. They were permitted to pray. They were not permitted to pray and get paid at the same time. This is simply a matter of a minority group kicking up a stink over something that's EXTREMELY reasonable just because they think they can scare the politically correct into giving them their own, unreasonable way. As for employees screwing the pooch on company time, well of course everyone does that, muslims and non-muslims included. Muslim employees, however, I'm certain screw around during the work day just like everyone else does in addition to disappearing for prayers 5 times a day.

I think they had to leave. No good was being done there really. Obama seems to understand that US foreign policy was a disaster under the last few administrations and he's trying to do away with the perception (however correct it may be) of Imperial USA. The days of unilateral US world-policing are over under Obama. Expect US intervention over the next few years to be far less publicized, muted and as often as possible indirect.

Booya.

They are doing a "Wall Street Protest" in downtown Guelph next week. Really. Guelph. I'm actually looking forward to it. Maybe their noise will drown out the noise of all the crackheads in the Square.... Fun times.

Bureaucracies are notorious for resisting cuts to their funding. It's often almost impossible. The bureaucrats, in this case, are being given an incentive to actually find savings themselves. I think it's a wonderful idea. The public service is bloated and there are so many redundant jobs there that I would LOVE to see some cuts. Because the 'consultants' in this case are generally the best of the best in accounting and auditing etc You can't just hand Canada's books over to Joe the Accountant and have him find savings for us. He'd be buried in paperwork for the rest of his life. You'd need a of experienced professionals. $90,000/day will end up being a tiny sum in relation to the savings they'll potentially find. I'm sure he's positively quaking at the prospect of a bunch of 'activists' wetting their beds over this.

Godwin's Law. Well done wyly. Of course we can count on you for that...

I'd prefer that. I'd even be okay with the taxes being raised if they meant all the extra money went to tackling our debt. A little pain now for vastly better books in the future sounds alright to me.