Moonbox

China isn't likely to support terrorist attacks against the West. We don't need an embassy in Iran. We don't do any business with them and they're a rogue state with nothing but violent rhetoric and fanaticism to offer us. Regardless, most Iranians in Canada want nothing to do with the government back home. They came here for a reason.

The Global Hawk? The drone we're talking about?

He's suggesting that we have long range patrol drones survey Arctic Canada, so at least there's a presence there. Our lack of recon makes it really difficult for Canada to know what's going on and therefore support sovereignty claims. To be clear, however, drones would be useless in an interdiction roll, and we would still need fighter craft for that roll.

The climate of comical/ridiculous attack ads started with Paul Martin against Harper. You don't remember his attempted portrayal of Harper as Darth Vader? That really turned around and bit them in the ass, especially when you come out with such poor choices as Dion or Ignatieff as your next leader. Harper's attack ads in the last election were so infantile they were insulting (remember the circus music?) and I think that Canadians saw them for what they were, but his opposition was so meagre that he pulled a majority off despite it. His attack ads in the Dion election, however, were extremely well articulated, as were his pre-election attack ads against Ignatieff. People can complain about this tactic all they want, but the only alternative is to get Canadians to actually care and become involved in politics (and be less stupid) which isn't likely to happen.

Haven't you seen Terminator? These robots will not be self-determining, for obvious safety reasons. I hope you guys programmed your drones properly...

Those arms will also be on the robot army we're secretly building. We're really excited by how our $100B investment into Robo-army (which is almost certain to fail) is going to open up new and exciting opportunities to waste money building Robo-Army #2 (which also won't work) and then even more money on Robo-Army #3. Who knows how many times we'll try and how much money we'll waste. We have to have balls and stick with it!

Absolutely. I don't really understand where you're coming from here Derek. Senators, even dumb and lazy ones, are supported by all sorts of legal and political advisors. They're not there to play political hack, but rather be a safeguard against them.

Really? How the hell do you use Greece to try and score points against the Conservatives? Greece's problems didn't happen overnight, or even over the last few years. It takes many years (think 10-20) for a country to get itself in the position Greece finds itself in. Your implications are pretty obvious here.

30x the scale and money flying around in the USA in terms of aerospace. Private hospitals often pay more. Yeah it takes huge balls for wealthy politicians to use taxpayer money to make themselves rich and support the companies they own. Anyone not shouting "U-S-A!" while they're at it has no balls...

It's probably the other way around actually. A small fee on devices like that would be completely irrelevant compared to the amount of piracy going on. Almost nobody in the 10-35 year old age bracket actually buys DVD's or CD's anymore. They don't purchase from iTunes either. It's more common than not that someone in this demographic would hold a library of thousands of songs downloaded from the internet. That's really the gist of it. The record companies are no longer required/wanted for the distribution of music. Beyond (usually) bad music videos, they provide no value to the industry and they'll slowly disappear. Concerts, merchandise and endorsements are how musicians will get rich now.

You mean it's not because you spend about 30x more per year on your military than Canada? Here I was thinking that the best and brightest normally go where the money is, and now I'm finding out it's not true! You're right about one thing though, you guys ARE good at spinning disasters into successes. The wasting of hundreds of billions and a long string of failures is a testament to your dogged determination and enterprising commercial spirit.

Sure! Like the Avenger II! The Americans embraced that as an "opportunity" to build the B-2. Wait...that ended up being a mess as well. As long as the disaster leads to a disaster which leads to another disaster which finally leads to a (sort of) success, it doesn't really matter right!?!?

Like the Raptor? *yawn* You can do better than that BC. You forgot to jab at the Canadian military too.

It was a pretty pointless post Shady, and I'm not really seeing any beatdown happening. All I'm seeing really is waldo trying way harder than he should to convince people who have already made up their minds and aren't listening. I agree with waldo on very very little, but I have to agree with him that the F-35's a disaster and anyone who can follow the original intention of the project to today's reality should have trouble denying it.

I was on holidays but I thought this was funny and worth commenting on. That's not my argument at all. My argument was that Quebec's lack of willingness to cooperate has left them irrelevant. Rather than trying to actually be a part of Canada and participate in the debate and formation of policy, Quebec's insisted on a direction which has wildly diverged from TROC. It's played spoiler, stomped its feet and complained/protested when this direction has not been accepted. The whole idea of the BLOC itself is quite frankly retarded, because it suggests an "us vs them" situation where Quebec's pitted itself against TROC. Unless this changes and Quebec moderates, governments are going to find it FAR easier to build (relative) consensus in anglo-Canada and ignore Quebec than to try and include Quebec in some sort of anglo-franco Canadian policy model. The NDP's success in Quebec is promising in this regard, but it remains to be seen how this relationship will work out. The NDP has to maintain this relationship with Quebec, while at the same time ensuring that they don't get bogged down with the regional demands that support from Quebec has usually required. The NDP still needs to reach out to TROC and remain focused Canada, rather than largely Quebec.

Greece's economic situation is incredibly easy to explain. When a country demands the benefits and wages from their government that a first-world western economy would enjoy, but lacks the work ethic/productivity to support it, you're halfway there. All you need after that is a population that tolerates/encourages corruption at such a basic systemic level that tax avoidance and bribery are the norms, rather than the exceptions, and you have Greece. The fact that you tried to blame it on right-wing government shows how poorly you understand the situation yourself.

This is typical Quebec thinking though. "He doesn't have support in Quebec, so therefore he doesn't have broad support." Wrong. He leads virtually everywhere outside of Quebec and enjoys far broader and less regional support than ANY other party. Almost guaranteed it would be Harper and the Tories, and I'll base it on very real and very recognizable idealogical differences, despite what you think. Look at Ontario's history of provincial elections and how weak NDP support typically is. Even with a total wet-noodle leader like Tim Hudak, the Tories still managed 35% support to the Liberal's 38% and the NDP's (ouch) 23%. That was WITH the Jack Layton bump too! Most of Ontario has far more in common with light Harper-esque Conservatism than it does with Quebec's desire for social spending and coddling. Look where support stands in Ontario for the NDP - Windsor, Niagara Falls, Hamilton, Northern Ontario and the dump areas of Toronto (ie places that need coddling).

What are you even trying to say? Most of Ontario outside of Toronto is blue, what little red there is had blue runner-ups, and the Tories did well in the GTA too. August I think your perception of how votes get decided outside of Quebec is pretty clueless. Harper had 44% support in Ontario last election. The NDP and Liberals combined had 50%. For the NDP to succeed in Ontario they'd need virtually ALL of the Liberal bleed to go NDP, which you'd be a fool to suggest is likely. Harper would need around 15-20% of former Liberals to vote CPC instead of NDP, and that would seal the deal. Ever heard of the red Tories? You think they'd go NDP? Ontario does NOT like the NDP.

It doesn't even matter 'when' the F-35 comes out. It's going to be a dog when that happens anyways.

HAhahahaa It was pretty funny and pretty clever actually.

It's a federation Peter. If Quebecquers are demanding policy and spending that are so far out of line with what the rest of Canada wants, and choose the protest vote instead of adjusting expectations, they polarize TROC and make it easy for the other side to win. We have the west and Quebec fairly opposed to one another in terms of idealogy, with Ontario being the deciding factor now. Ontario is far more open to the west's moderate conservatism than to Quebec's demands to be coddled, so look what happened. The Conservatives owe their majority to the spectre of the NDP and the collapse of the Liberals. If Quebec wants to continue voting for parties that TROC simply can't stomach, they'll remain irrelevant. The fact that the NDP did so well there is promising, but we'll have to see what happens to the NDP now. Is it going to go mainstream or is it going to push itself further out of touch with the average Canadian? Mainstream is very important here. We're not talking about artistic integrity or anything stupid like that. We're talking about votes. If you're not mainstream you're pretty much nothing. The Tories managed 40% of the popular vote and found support across the entire country except for Quebec. They were able to provide a moderate brand of conservatism that was conservative enough for the west, and liberal enough for Ontario and the East to stomach. The NDP is going to have to strike this balance as well moving forward if they're going ot have any chance. Coddling enough for Quebec, but not so much that it scares Anglo-Canada away. It's up to Quebecquers to make that work.

None of these were wars. You're talking about tiny, third world shit holes being crapped on by the world's greatest superpower. Only to an extent. The Saddam wars were a good illustration of what happens when the world's biggest economy comes to bear against a crap box country like Iraq. We're not comparing equal $$$ spent here. The Americans had the advantage in virtually all aspects. Technology, arms mix, training, logistics and reconnaisance, cooperation from neighbouring countries, desert terrain and an unbelievably large discrepancy in available resources all contributed to the USA's complete victory. Sure, but not really any more dumb that a hugely overpriced pos that's likely to be outclassed by upcoming future threats 5-10 years after it enters production.

The F-16 was, to an extent, a sacrifice of quality in favor of quantity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The F-4, for example, was superior to the Mig-21, but it was also at least 3x more expensive to build and wasn't 3x as effective in Vietnam (probably the only time that it faced decently trained pilots), despite massive logistical advantages. A misfortune indeed. In hindsight it would have been better to maintain numerous and more specialized platforms. It gets to the point eventually where making something more complex and expensive is subject to diminishing returns.

Cost vs Cost, the Spitfire would win by attrition lol. You could probably build 1000-2000 of them for the cost of 1 F-35, and each missile fired would cost more than the Spitfire it downed. There's a reason that the Boneyard in Arizone exists, and that's because if there ever was a full scale war again against a modern professional opponent, modern air assets would last, at best, a couple of months, and nobody could afford to replace them quickly. The F4 would be making a serious comeback.

The F-35, however, WAS supposed to be a quantity over quality design. Like the budget F-16, it was originally planned to be built in the several thousands. The thing they got wrong is that quantity over quality usually suggests you're building something cheap, like the Sherman and the F-16 or Mig-21, and not something prohibitively expensive.