Moonbox

To me, and the majority of the country, it appears as though she's trying to pull a fast one on us. If she's not being dishonest then perhaps she's just having a hard time disguising her contempt for the average born-and-raised Canadian. This proposal has so little merit that either her concept of fairness and what's right for Canada is all screwed up, or she's every bit as stupid as people perceive her to be.

My sarcasm radar is going bonkers.

That will show 'em! Seriously though. You'll vote, and more than likely it will be LPC.

Obviously. You can also be made irrelevant by constantly being left out of the balance of power. The Bloc has accomplished nothing lately and is not likely to accomplish anything for awhile. The only way to keep Bloc MP's out of power is to marginalize the party. A majority will certainly do that but so would avoiding the unfair appeasement of Quebec by ALL the national parties.

By the way Mr. Canada, quit it with all the mundane threads. We get it. You are in love with Stephen Harper. I would pay good money to put you and Jdobbin in a room together and watch you two have a cheerleading fight. It would be good old fashioned LPC vs CPC fun.

That was funny

It's pretty logical that governments should grow as they move on. I won't say Harper's not a big spender, but the only exception of big spending we've seen in 40 years is Jean Chretien, and all he did was pass the buck to the provinces. Trudeau was by FAR the worst and most excessive spending PM.

We'll all remember you said that. I'm sure there is a long way to go, but it'd be interesting to see your predictions pan out. Yeah...tax cuts totally discourage corporations from doing business here.....

I agree with this. The Americans, believing themselves to be the centre of the world, didn't feel they needed Canada. I think Obama realizes that in the interest of friendship and future support for Canada it's better to exempt Canada from this agreement. Our economies are so intertwined anyways that restricting each other didn't help anyone. Buy American makes sense to keep Mexican and Chinese garbage from putting people out of work. It doesn't make sense when Canada by and large plays on a level field with big brother down south. Obama knows this.

The advantage of being well-funded PRIOR to an election being called is pretty big.

Oh please. Where there are sheep there will always be a shephard. That goes for all the parties.

Some people think that to have an independent voice you have to automatically not agree with anything the US says. Unfortunately Canada can be independent AND agree with the US at the same time. We're probably the two closest and most integrated countries in the entire world. It's not really all that strange that the US and Canada share some VERY similar goals and interests. I know it got really popular bashing Bush and the (lol) neo-cons, but that doesn't change how close we are to the United States. We never lost our independent standing. The fact that Canada's foreign policy doesn't mirror your own is simply too bad for you.

What on earth are you talking about? What have we lost in the last 3 years that we hadn't already lost before? Get real.

I suppose it doesn't matter that this was Liberal practice for a VERY long time as well...

Perhaps, but as we all know politicians often set standards for themselves that they can't fulfill. Promising health care improvements during the Chretien years were 'standards' the Liberals promised to run on. We can see how that turned out. Not raising taxes was a McGuinty promise. We see how that turned out almost immediately after he was elected. Politicians say a lot of things and a lot of the time do the opposite. As Shady mentioned before, you seem to hold the other parties to a higher standard than the Liberals. You have a VERY VERY VERY well known history of this on this forum.

I'm not going into this again with you. I thought you and I at least had come to some sort of understanding. At least we agreed that mutual recognition of each other's rights for peaceful co-existence is necessary to move forward. I have pretty low hopes that I'll get anything else out of you. I still don't understand why you can't say Israel at least should have a right to exist, given that there are numerous generations that have been born and raised there. That, however, is your perogative and it seems fairly clear that you're not interested in changing this position for whatever reason. Personally, I believe Israel has the right to exist. I also believe that they are not acting in a peaceful manner with their expansionism. I don't pass judgement on them exclusively, however, because I won't pretend to know what it's like to live there and be surrounded by enemies. The reverse, however, is also true. I believe that the Arabs have legitimate grievances against Israel and I at least UNDERSTAND why they feel the need to launch attacks against civilians. Neither of these are justifiable, but both sides have to figure out they have nothing to gain through continued conflict and that they are better off with peace. It might be that neither side is even interested, in which case the whole process is just appeasement of the West. Eventually, however, and I don't believe it will happen anytime soon, they WILL figure it out. We'll see how many people have to die before that happens. I won't be responding in this thread anymore but thanks for the good discussion. 87 pages is too much!

Closing the straits would turn the world against him. China and Russia would both turn against him, the West would retaliate. He has nothing to gain by doing this and he knows this. It's not going to happen, and even if it did, he wouldn't be able to keep it closed. Yeah they have a pretty long history of this.

I don't really care anymore. Honestly, this is such an anal argument at this point it's not even funny. As a closing point, and you can disagree if you like, I would suggest that it's not an unfair position to say you can support Israel's right to exist while at the same time condemning their aggression. Confirming their right to exist doesn't necessarily excuse what the British etc did in creating Israel at the first place, but it's a pretty crucial that at least Israel's neighbours acknowledge that the people living their now have a right to be there (inside whatever borders are agreed upon).

Yeah Topaz what the hell? This is the first time I've ever seen someone derail their own thread in the opening post....

I was going to say st....delusional.

Well to be fair you're refusing to say they have a right to exist. If you believe in the peace process, you also have to believe that both sides have to acknowledge each other and agree to live in peace. If even you won't acknowledge their right for peaceful existence, what hope is there that the Arabs in the Middle East will?

Gates decided to ramp up MRAP orders after the Marines reported in 2004 that no troops had died in more than 300 IED attacks on Cougars Wikipedia link haha The MRAP's the US are using in Iraq have a 99% reduced casualty rate. As of June 2008 they'd only had 8 fatalities in these vehicles. Our fatalities on the road are largely due to the wrong equipment for the job at hand. There are certainly mines out there that can beat these vehicles, but the militias we're fighting against aren't really using them and probably have a hard time finding them.

They can build APC's and vehicles to withstand AV mines. There is always, of course, going to be someone who develops a weapon to beat those, but the Taliban aren't going to be the ones using them. I'm reminded of reading about an M1 tank that the Americans got stuck in a mudhole in Iraq back in Desert Storm. The armour on it was so advanced and thick that a squad of American tanks themselves couldn't even destroy it.

The only problem with this is that the CPC can define the LPC now while they don't have a platform, which is what they have been doing. This is media spin from one camp vs media spin from the other. Last time the CPC picked apart the Liberal platform into nothing, but that wasn't because it was released early, but rather because the LPC did a terrible job articulating and defending it. Just because you don't have a platform doesn't mean you have immunity to media and public perception. You still have to identify yourself to the electorate and define yourself before the opposition gets a chance to. Right now Ignatieff isn't doing anything, falsely believing that he's immune to media spin because he hasn't taken a stand on anything. The problem is that instead of dismantling his platform, now the opposition can criticize him for his bluster, flip-flopping and relative ineffectiveness in the House. You don't get a free ride for not telling people what you stand for. Whether you poorly articulate a controversial platform, or you fail to provide a platform at all, the opposition will still make you look bad. It's your job to make yourself look competent, effective and principled. Popping out of nowhere with an election platform after a year (or more) of watching the electorate's confidence you gradually erode is not sound political strategy, and we'll see this if we have an election soon.

It's all relative. We've seen several models come and go and only one has lasted the last several hundred years. It so happens that this is our model. The fundamentalism of the bible-thumping right wing is a LOT different from the fundamentalism that we're talking about here. Neither are a good thing, but the official adoption of the other as state law and the oppressive enforcement of that law is something altogether something else.