Moonbox

They work. They work very well. Harper succesfully branded Dion as a wimp and an out of touch leader before Dion even had a chance. Paul Martin did the same thing to Harper in his first election, although to a lesser extent. They work because the electorate is largely stupid and ignorant about politics. It's a lot easier to lie to a moron or to someone who knows nothing about what they're talking about. Think about how many times you've been fleeced by some scumbag on commission at a bank, car dealership, electronics store, insurance brokerage etc...It's the same with politics.

Umm...isn't that what led us to 18% mortgage rates back in the 1980's???

My idols? If you say so. Regardless, I do consider all three of them infinetly more intelligent than yourself and a heck of a lot more witty than you THINK you are. wyly you're missing a LOT of points here. First off, nobody is talking about Air Canada disappearing because of the UAE airlines. All the UAE wants is to be given unfair competitive advantages. They want landing slots that cannot be justified by Canada-UAE traffic, and they are unwilling to offer similar rights to Canadian carriers. It WOULD cost us jobs because the majority of the infrastructure in place to support UAE planes flying people to Dubai and then from Dubai to Europe etc would be working in Dubai, instead of Canada. Sure, you might have a smattering of service people here and there in Canada, but nowhere near what a domestic airline would have. Well what makes a company Canadian. You tell me please.

LOL that was a good line. I get flamed for making fun of that guy, but I'll give you 10/10 for that on lol.

Headquartered, operating from and serving Canada...so a Canadian airline.... First of all, I highly doubt anyone in the government is concerned whether or not know-nothings are on board with their decision or whether or not they care about Air Canada. Second, Air Canada wouldn't be getting additional landing rights in the UAE, thus the competition wouldn't be fair, thus there'd be no real benefit for Canada. All you'd be doing is stepping on your domestically operated carrier and possibly killing Canadian jobs. Right...let's see now....Air Canada and its parent company ACE are both traded publicly on the TSX, are both headquarted in Canada and all of their hubs (thus their employees) are in Canada. Delta...not so much. Try again genius.

Just to add to the earlier discussion, Germany seems to have the same issues with the UAE as Canada does: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/german-airline-enters-fray-bolsters-ottawas-stand-against-uae/article1876058/

Harper's environment policy is practically non-existent and he's not making it a priority. This is him passing the buck off to the Americans, who also don't really have a policy and will do nothing. This is all fine and good with me. The #1 concern for Canadians is not the environment. It's the economy. Harper killed the Liberals in the last election over this, and will do so again if it comes up a second time. Duh...because imposing unilateral carbon emission policies on the Canadian economy would put us at a huge disadvantage and would have about the same impact as a fart in a hurricane.

Igniatieff has spent the vast majority of his adult life outside of Canada. He CHOSE to live outside of Canada as soon as he had the means to do so, and he didn't come back for 27 years. It's hardly coincidence that he came back only when the possibility of leading the country came up. He was a university professor and a journalist. How does that make him any more wordly than so many other MPs? Because he worked in the UK and the USA? I'm not knocking his credentials, but living in the UK and especially the USA doesn't exactly make someone wordly. What's half truth about it? Ignatief hasn't defined himself or his policies. He's done little other than BS and change his mind since becoming Liberal Leader so you could say almost anything about him at this point. Attack ads aren't exclusive to the Tories. The Liberals are all about them as well. As for things to boast about, they have plenty to boast about. The CPC led the country through probably the mildest recession of the developed world and we also look like we're headed for a boom. It's held the longest running minority government in Canadian history and it's largely kept itself squeaky clean. That's a lot more than Ignatieff can say.

Popeye he took the time to point out your glaring errors in logic and was civil about it. You chose to persist in a balogna line of thought and made it rather clear you weren't going to use your brain. That's pretty solid 'ignore' criteria. Welcome to MLW.

Sure, I guess his passport says he's Canadian. I won't argue that. I also can't argue he grew up here. On the other hand, the fact that he chose to spend 27 of the last 32 years outside of the country would suggest he's about as far removed from the beating heart of Canada, and about as out of touch with its people, as a Canadian can be. I won't knock him for his education or intellecualism, but only an idiot wouldn't raise an eyebrow at the fact that he came back to Canada ONLY when the possibility of becoming PM came up. Oh please. Grow up. You and I might prefer the discourse be truthful and honest, but this is politics, and neither side is going to be honest. People as interested in politics as MLW in Canada probably account for 5% of the population. Maybe another 10-15% care enough to read the news and stay informed. The other 80-85% are either too dumb or don't care enough to know wtf is going on anyways, and they're the ones the ads target.

Oh it's no secret Harper hasn't been fiscally conservative. He's thrown money around just like any other pandering minority PM we've had. It's disappointing when you see guys like Paul Martin and Harper dropping their pants and whoring the budget off for votes when you expected better from them, but that's the way politics are.. :angry:

Hey Topaz will get his reassurances from anyone he can. If someone told him he/she'd had a prophetic dream about Michael Ignatieff curing cancer, ending world hunger and thereby finally endearing himself to Canadians and winning the next election, he'd be posting it here as fact.

Considering we have an election coming up in Ontario already, and considering Harper's desire to court the Ontario and GTA vote, I think he'll let the opposition bring down his government and let them take the blame. I can't see him calling a snap election in 2011, and after 2011 we'll be at 2012 anyways.

That's not really true. If you didn't tax corporations and only charged personal income taxes then shareholders would move to the Cayman Islands and draw dividend income and nobody wealthy would live here. You need corporate taxes so that corporations pay their share of the burden on society. Corporations are paying for the education, healthcare and infrastructure that benefit from. The question of how much to tax the corporations is a little more tricky. You try and line up supply and demand to such an extent that further tax decreases don't provide any further marginal gains and leave it at that sweet spot. Where the sweet spot is? Anyone's guess.

Yes...that's what the last two elections has proven right???

Topaz give me some credit. I probably don't like half or more of what is posted on this forum. You and I, for example, probably disagree on a good majority of things, yet I'm not here telling you to get off the forum. I enjoy discussing and arguing differences of opinions. If everyone wrote stuff I liked I probably wouldn't be here. The difference with William Ashley, however, is that he makes no effort whatsoever to think about what he's writing. I wouldn't give a crap if he came out with a few rubbish posts every so often, but when his scrambled, barely coherent and raving 'thoughts' take over fully half of the discussion board, it's just plain annoying. He's a troll. What's funny is I don't think he's even trying to be a troll. He's one of those poor souls who, while sometimes entertaining, has no idea how moronic most of the crap is that he writes. I think if he stopped posting for awhile, or at least slowed down, he'd have more time to reflect on what he was actually thinking and it might be slightly less stupid.

William Ashley, for the love of all things holy, please stop posting. You've taken over the forum and dumbed it down to a point it's never seen before. Probably over half the threads on the front page are started by you, and most of them are beyond stupid. Bumblebees and communication towers? Shut up. Please.

Productivity will increase with the value of our dollar. A low dollar does two things: 1) It provides an artificial competitive advantage and therefore complacency 2) It makes it more expensive to invest in equipment and capital With a higher dollar Canadian companies will HAVE to improve their productivity or go bust, and their investment dollars will go further when buying equipment (most of which is probably foreign built).

I don't think you have a clue what you're talking about. Tell us how you can tell just by how it 'looks'. Did you know that the Chinese don't even have an engine designed for their fighter? Did you know that they can't manufacture the composite materials needed for such an aircraft? The J-20 is even further off the horizon than the Pak-Fa, which is probably at least a decade away.

Air to air isn't everything to me. I'd be happy with a sub-par air-to-air platform if it cost $75M as was originally intended. At $125M a pop, you start to wonder.

I'm no mig luver lol. I simply think they're owed a certain measure of respect. Considering the M-21 cost 1/3 as much as the F-4, it did pretty well for itself.

What about it? That's a pretty weak reference. I can just as easily highlight the Indo-Pakistani War in 1971 where Indian pilots trounced Pakistani F-104's. Combat loss ratios weren't particularly good for the USA in Vietnam either against the Mig-21.

Testaments to the complete and utter incompetence of Arab leadership more than anything else. I don't mean to be trite, but those were just turkey shoots for the Israelis. The Arabs could not have conducted themselves more stupidly. Egypt losing their entire airforce in 1967 on the ground before the fight really even started would be an example. Syrian tank divisions losing with a 10:1 numbers advantage on the Golan Heights would be another example. If you took those same clowns and gave them F-22's and M1A1 tanks they would have still found a way to lose.

That's not really their 'philosophy' so much as it was their only option. They couldn't hope to compete with NATO air power so instead they poured a lot more money into cheaper defensive systems.

Basically anything that has shot American aircraft down over the last 50 years has been Russian built or designed. Conflicts like Iraq and Yugoslavia are hardly fair tests of Russian AAW, considering how incredibly unbalanced the forces arrayed against them were. At present I don't think anyone really knows exactly what they're capable of, but I think it's probably foolish to discount their ability to refine and improve their technology over 30 years. and the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans etc all continue to invest heavily in ground based AA to TRY to make up the difference.