Moonbox

Okay. Will do. Don't feel bad about how dumb you look after.

LoL! So...This post here from a week ago that you responded to (but I never saw and never looked at again) proves what here? In your mind, it seems that whoever has the last word wins! That's not suprising seeing as though your M.O. is brutal verbosity, overquotation and arguing your opponents down to exhaustion. The more you natter the better I guess!?

This is the sort of brain-dead justification that people always come up with when it comes to subsidies and public spending. Economically speaking (a field you struggle mightily with), the green energy movement is a black hole. The jobs created in it, either directly or indirectly, do not even come close to making up for the amount of public money being siphoned off to support it. The 'indirect' benefits argument is a crutch that people have used forever to support otherwise obviously broken policy proposals. It's akin to people saying that EI is good for the economy because people on EI spend money and support jobs! LOL Now this is funny. Here you are criticizing someone for flaring up at you, but it's VERY clear that you're purposely goading and provoking it with your mockery and condescension. What's especially frustrating is that you're not even clever about it! Using the thesaurus a lot to find novel words doesn't make your arguments stronger!

Okay cool, it was. I'm all for nuclear power as the clean alternative right now. It's the only thing that even comes close to being economically viable after fossil fuels and hydro.

The point I was trying to make was that with enough government money, a lot of goofy and impractical projects become possible.

This article is pretty hilarious. Congratulations. A town of <200 people is managing to stay off the grid thanks to huge government subsidies. What did it take? A multi-million dollar processing plant (for a town with ~50 houses) and 47 nearby wind turbines (also generiously subsidized). What an accomplishment.... You know what an even bigger accomplishment is? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraft_carrier 100,000 tons of moving steel and 4200 crew members, none of which is hooked up to the grid. Government subsidies can accomplish pretty impressive stuff.

We need to build a pipeline east first, to Ontario. Ontario is paying to import oil from the Mideast for higher prices than Alberta is selling it for. We should be building refineries here and importing it from Alberta rather than blowing our $$$ in Sandland.

So do Canada and the United States. Norway is the only Scandinavian state that has better standard of living marks than Canada or the USA, but unfortunately for your "point", its rate of government spending is nearly identical to the US and Canada's. http://en.wikipedia....velopment_Index In fact, 5 of the top 6 countries in the world in terms of standard of living have government spending pegged at ~40%. http://www.economics...ding-as-of-gdp/ I love how people keep bringing up Scandinavia trying to tell us it's a socialist paradise or something, when the actual numbers show that's not the case at all! It really sucks when the numbers get involved, does it?!?

Wrong. Russia very much considers Syria to be part of their sphere of interest. One of Russia's oldest stumbling blocks and one of their main ambitions during the Cold War was to control warm-water ports. The bulk of their fleet has always been based out of the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. The Black Sea Fleet bases are easily isolated via the Bosphorus, and the Baltic Sea Fleets could be contained via the straits of Denmark. This is an ENORMOUS impediment to the projection of Russian power abroad and it's the sole reason why Russia had so many wars with Turkey and the Ottoman Empire years ago. The ambition of controlling ports along the Indian Ocean is also one of the main reasons the Soviets invaded Afghanistan as well. The loss of the Syrian port in Tartus would be keenly felt by the Russians, and I suspect this is one of the main reasons that NATO hasn't made any moves against Assad. Putin has publicly declared the port of Tartus critical to Russian naval strategy. Would they go to war with NATO over it? Almost certainly not, but they'd do everything they could to make things difficult for the West outside of Syria, and there are many ways that Russia could damage NATO interests aside from overt armed conflict.

It IS pretty embarrassing. It's kind of funny how these morons, who barely even need to show up for work, still manage to screw up a golden ticket like this with stupid shit like this. It makes me sick.

The banks will round up. Other businesses can round to the nearest, or up or down, whatever they please. The denomination is so small now that it REALLY doesn't matter either way, unless you're doing 1000000 cash transactions a year or something.

You're right! Sorry! I've edited now. I'm pretty much with you page for page on this debate.

kairos let me get this straight...You're saying that people with strict Christian beliefs are lunatics? For the record, I'm 100% pro-abortion. That's nobody's business but the woman's. Saying people who disagree with this on religious grounds are lunatics, however, is the sort of brainless rhetoric that dumbs every political debate. A religious person's beliefs are as often as not irrational, illogical and impossible to prove. It's faith. If you're going to call it lunacy then you're calling the Muslim facing Mecca crazy for doing it, or a Hindu is bonkers for believing cows are sacred. Have some respect for religious beliefs. You don't have to believe in it yourself, but people with faith are generally brought up that way and know no other way to live. We can be thankful that our legislative system has evolved towards the practical and tangible and away from religious intangibles, and that our legal systems are based purely on logic and reason instead of belief.

The Senate as it stands is a joke. As long as these positions are appointed and have lifetime terms they'll never function as they are meant to.

So what we can expect is that the garbage from Japan will float around for awhile...sit on beaches etc, and eventually be forgotten. Good talk.

I'm not terribly worried about plastic particulate ending up in my food, sorry. This doesn't disintigrate overnight. Also, considering how dangerous the flotsam and jetsam is on our coasts, it's interesting to see how few accidents there have been. If this was the crisis you claim it to be, the government can hire people to fix it.

The volunteer firefighter isn't earning a firefighter's hourly wage. He's earning a tax credit and the government has recognized the importance of having volunteer firefighters in reserve in the case of catastrophe. The tax credit is an incentive to make sure that good people fill those positions. They're usually not necessary, but we want them there if they are. Most volunteer work does not share that criteria. No, it's not better. EI is way more expensive than welfare. I don't want to pay the higher EI benefits for the chronically unemployed and underemployed. As for these people being able to opt out of paying EI, no, I don't agree with that either for the previously mentioned reasons. People making subsistence wages pay bananas in premiums anyways, and the government has no way of knowing whether or not that person will at some point in their life become eligible to collect. Everyone who works pays premiums.

There have been a lot of proposals for people to do some sort of work to receive social benefits. For some reason that never seems to catch on. Also, eyeball, you need to give that 'paid volunteerism' a rest. The idea is moronic, sorry, not to mention completely contradicting.

I don't think you read anything I wrote, which is unsurprising given your tendency to stick your head in the sand anytime something comes up you don't agree with. Go back and read my post again, because I addressed those workers and the fact that nothing is stopping them from moving or changing careers and then becoming eligible for EI.

I have a problem with your views on mostly everything Topaz, because they're rarely based on clear-headed thinking. You protest and throw tantrums at everything the Conservatives do, whether it's smart or dumb, important or trivial, fair or unfair. If you showed even a slight sense of objectivity, things might be different, but you've yet to figure that part out. At least you're not starting 8-10 threads a week anymore about how Harper burnt his toast. As for this particular discussion, let's look at the merits (or lack thereof) of your proposal to allow people to "opt out" of EI. First off, it's not a savings plan. It's not something where what you put in you're going to get back. Most people never use even a fraction of what they put in. That's the way the system is supposed to work. It's supposed to help individuals and families that are having temporary difficulties to get back on their feet. The system relies on Canadians who will never use EI to fund the people who do need it. A tenured university professor pays EI, though he'll never use it, and so does a student cashier at a grocery store. Allowing people to 'opt out' based on their eligibility to use it in the future is a fundamentally broken idea based on that fact alone. Another point to mention is that nothing is stopping someone from going 15 years working seasonally (after opting out) and not paying EI, to then eventually getting a full time job (in a factory let's say), where he works for 12 months only to have the factory shut down, at which point he starts earning benefits. In this case, his contributions to the plan were next to meaningless, but his benefits kick in anyways. You pay premiums for the right to collect EI at any point in your life and your job unexpectedly disappears if you're eligible . None of this addresses how EI opt-outs would affect the businesses that pay these people either.

That is kind of damning...She's like...30 maybe. EI five or six times... This is exactly the sort of person who should be cut off.

So let me get this straight...You're saying that because wealthy Canadians can go south and pay top dollar for the best doctors in the United States, that means that US care is better overall? What was the life expectancy ranking again??? That's classic US political thinking.

I REALLY got a kick out of this yesterday. This guy is pretty clever. He'd make an epic forum troll.

Busdriver...+60k/year. How does that make sense?

The website's info is flat-out incorrect. I know this for a fact because it says a bus driver in Guelph on the high end makes less than $52000/year. I see their tax returns, and I know with certainty that a long-term bus driver in Guelph makes over $60,000/year in pure salary. I can think of literally zero scenarios where a profession like that, with no literally no required skills to speak of, merits a $60,000/year salary. This does not include benefits/pension.