Moonbox

Project democracy makes me laugh. It's funny to see the anti Harperites wetting their beds and fussing.

The left has been humoring the right? Don't you mean wetting their beds, screaming, fussing and crying for the last 7 years? Yeah that sounds a little more like it.

Is this the same Jack Layton who was living in subsidized housing while working as a city councilor? Yes. Yes it is.

I hope you're still posting here after the election so we can all make fun of you.

Despite what I've always thought about the Toronto Star (always following the Toronto vote) it is impressive that the NDP finally got a major media endorsement. That's basically the last friend the Liberal brand had and it ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS endorsed the Liberals. No more.

It was a clown show of a ruling made by an angry opposition. Nobody cares because the ruling was made by a partisan opposition. Is anyone surprised? Nope.

Go back to the numbers Derek. I keep telling you that. They don't have the budget for more. Nothing in your citations suggested otherwise.

The Japanese aren't replacing 125 Phantoms with 125 F-35's. They don't have the budget for it, particularly after the F-2 program which cost them about $10B for the whole order.

So is that why last year the Toronto Star endorsed (lol) Dion and then one of its subsidiaries, The K-W Record, endorsed Harper? Something doesn't add up there.

Jack has taken his seats mostly from the Liberals and the Bloc. How likely do you think it is that they'll want to legitimize him? If they did support him it would only be long enough for him to embarrass himself with a budget which would fail and provide them with the ammunition they'd need to roast him.

Because it's a 50 year old airframe and costs about 1/15th of what a CF-18 does and about 1/60th of what an F-35 does. If Great Britain was still flying 25000 Spitfires would you still consider them a potent air threat or would you realize that they'd be shot down in droves with no chance of retaliation by more modern fighters? You can't air forces by number of units. South Korea is modernizing their fleet with updated 4th generation craft. If they wanted to triple or quadruple their air force budget, then maybe they'll spend the money on the F-35's because that's what they'd need. Something tells me that's not likely. Japan and Korea can't match Chinese spending. The best they can do is make sure they're a sharp thorn.

That's where your math pretty much ends there. If the NDP wins 100 seats it would be at the Liberal's and the Bloc's expense. Considering the Liberals ended with 77 seats with 26% support last year, and that they'll be splitting a vote with the NDP, the math doesn't even come close to 60 seats. They're looking at catastrophic losses and ending up with at best maybe 50 and possibly as low as 30. Best case projections right now are 100 seats for the NDP but history has shown us that the vote doesn't usually materialize. The Conservatives would still be able to run the government and Harper would place nice with Quebec throwing them favors in order to get the Parliament votes needed to pass law. Duceppe could support Harper based on these favors saying he is doing things for Quebec and both parties would probably end up gaining support in Quebec. Regardless of the math I highly doubt that the Liberals would survive joining up with the NDP. It would further legitimize them and set up Layton as the natural alternative for Harper. I think it would be far more likely the Liberals support Harper than Layton, or that the party breaks up altogether like the PC's did split between them, before Ignatieff makes Layton PM. I think the rise of the NDP in the polls is more protest than anything. It's an anti-Harper vote and it's materialized because Ignatieff is every bit as ineffective as Dion was but probably even more unlikable. The Liberal Party appears to be self destructing and it's kind of sad to see to be honest.

If Jack finishes second and the Liberals support him then he'd have little to no chance of governing. The CPC would fight tooth and nail against him, the Bloc would villify them and the Liberals would be ruining themselves by supporting them. Jack needs a majority or close to it to have any chance.

Lol nicely stated. It couldn't possibly be the fact that the NDP is joke party with joke policies and joke candidates. Nope...it's all the evil media...

What's the point in presenting a platform if you're not intending to carry it (as much as possible) through?

The F-4's don't even count. They'd be nothing but missile shields in the air. Japan's running an effective airforce of about 200 Eagles and soon to be 100 Mitsubishi F-2's. Regardless, The prospect of them buying close to 400 F-35's, which would double the effective size of their airforce, is REMOTE. Considering the state of their economy I'd go almost as far as to say IMPOSSIBLE. What the hell are we supposed to take from that? I know if I look at their history they've shown a tendency towards cheaper fighters. Even their newest fighters (F15-E) are cheaper today than the CF-18 was in 1977. Now all of the sudden we're expecting them, while they're currently in the process of replacing their old cheap fighters with new cheap fighters, to go out and buy several hundred F-35's at $100-130M a pop? How does that make sense???

We haven't heard on a bunch of them but once again we've got pretty overwhelming support from the printed media for the conservatives. The Liberals are in shambles and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the NDP's platform was meant for a party who never intended to win. It's an unrealistic pile of garbage. From the Waterloo Record (a Torstar subsidiary): However, Canadians should be concerned that the higher corporate taxes and barriers on foreign investment he advocates will kill economic and job growth. Layton promises tens of billions of dollars in new spending. He says his cap-and-trade program to cut greenhouse gas emissions would raise $3.6 billion in his first year to pay for other environmental initiatives. Not only is this ambitious, it is impossible to set up such a program so quickly. Yet, so many NDP plans rest on this infirm ground. Overall, the NDP platform appears designed for an election campaign the party thought it could never win. Layton talks fiscal prudence. But his economic plan is reckless and would lead Canada in the wrong direction. At the very least, Canadians should look beyond Layton’s confident smile to the fine print of his party platform before entrusting him with a vote. And they should also question whether a party that won so few seats in the last election — just 37 — is ready to hold the reins of power. http://www.therecord.com/opinion/editorial/article/523785--record-s-view-tough-choice-facing-canadians-in-election

No your point is just confusing. You said that Hitler should have invaded Britain following Dunkirk. That would have been a bad decision (and bad military advice) because he had no control of the English Channel by sea or air. His lieutenants thought it was a bad idea too so what are you even talking about?

Japan's effective airforce isn't 6x bigger than ours. They have around 200 thirty year old F-15's and about 100 F4 phantoms which were obsolete 30 years ago so you can hardly even count them. The Japanese are also building around 100 brand new enlarged and updated F-16's which are coming online right now. If the Japs keep the same mix of new and vintage fighters moving forward, they'll MAYBE need 100 new fighters in the next 10-15 years and it's no guarantee they'll be F-35's. South Korea's airforce operates on budget fighters. They're flying the bargain F-16's and old balls F-4 and F-5 (which were getting shot down by Mig-21's in Vietnam). They've already ordered about 50 updated F-15E's to bring their airforce up to date so it's unlikely they'll be buying large numbers of F-35's. Look at the numbers again I'll say. The markets simply ARE NOT there.

The Republicans are so far out of the Canadian political spectrum the comparison is pointless. Even the Democrats in the US are more right wing than our Conservatives. As for deficits, the bulk of our debt is still a direct result of Pierre Trudeau. We had almost no debt before Trudeau took over and by the time he was gone our debt level was 50% of GDP. The interest payments on then servicing that debt were so high that even though Mulroney ran balanced operating budgets, he still ran massive deficits. Our debt is Pierre Trudeau's fault and people still worship him for selling us out to finance his legend.

Not to the Libs sorry. I know that this upsets you, but the fact that Ignatieff is campaigning in Toronto right now signals that his campaign is in full nosedive and in damage control mode. Ummm...your article says absolutely nothing about an NDP majority and doesn't even pose it as a possibility.

This is a good point. Leave it at that. Oh dear. Now you just look dumb. How do you propose the Germans would have crossed the English channel with the RAF and Royal Navy patrolling it? At least you sort of recovered with a decent analogy....

All of those countries have defence budgets similar to Canada's. Believe it or not we spend the 13th most on our military in the world. Japan's defense spending is a little over double ours. You have them pegged at buying 6 times more fighters than us. South Korea and Singapore combined have a defense budget around 30% higher than Canadas, yet you have them pegged at buying 2-3x more fighters than us. India isn't even considering the F-35 for their fighter replacement. Taiwan is nothing. Derek go over the actual NUMBERS. There REALLY isn't a market for another 2000 planes out there. Look at this chart and you'll see. Canada is the world's 13th largest military spender and we're buying 65 planes. You'd need 30 other countries like Canada to buy into the program and those countries don't exist. Even if you added up all the countries who are not buying the plane, all of them COMBINED don't have the budget for 2000 planes. It's the MONEY that's the problem. Check who has the money to spend and you'll see there's no possibility for 2000 planes in the next 20 years. No. Building parts for 3000 aircraft will not offset the cost to the government of buying 65 planes. If we were building ~10% of the plane, or the parts for it, you might have a case. The tax revenue might help offset it. As it stands we're going to be building a miniscule fraction of the jet.

FPTP is the best system of government for a federal democracy. Most of the country doesn't want to be governed by Toronto alone. You're voting for who your community/region sends to Parliament. The less energy you spend crying about it the more energy you can spend trying to affect the outcome.

What's ignorant about it? The unemployed and uneducated, according to Harris Decima, is one of the groups they identify as being most likely to agree to the telephone polling. The response rate is less than 15% and they rarely get an educated person to answer. I don't think there's any question who the unemployed and uneducated say they'd vote for. They're also one of the least likely groups to make the effort to go vote. It's too much work I guess.... Students are another group who poll high for NDP but then don't show up. That's fact. We have about 30 years of elections to support that. So again I'll ask, aside from my mild mockery, what's ignorant about what I'm saying? Did you, perhaps, take exception to my mild rhetoric and exaggeration? I apologize. I suppose I was getting annoyed with the rabid influx of delusional NDP supporters here lately, and their even more ridiculous anti-Harper rhetoric. Get over it and don't be upset when NDP numbers turn out way lower than 100 seats.