Moonbox

The US involvement in Vietnam was neither imperialistic nor colonial. It was idealogical and at no point were they interested in occupation or subjugation. They just didn't want to see communism spread any further. Except the US civil war didn't occur in a third world butthole, and one side wasn't massively supported with arms from one of the world's largest powers. To say the North Vietnamese invasion of the South was just a 'civil war' is beyond dumb. The sound of your own ranting? Oh...that's too bad. You must not get a lot of 'exercise' then....

wyly I know that using words like 'imperialism' and 'corporations' etc give you a huge hard, but this statement just shows how naive you are and how little you know of Vietnam. North Vietnam didn't go communist on its own. It did so with MASSIVE Soviet and Chinese support. The invasion of South Vietnam was supplied with immeasurable Soviet and Chinese equipment. South Vietnam had no chance without American help and it's idiotic to think that Vietnam was merely just a civil war. The USSR and China were fighting the USA by proxy.

To be fair wyly, it wasn't really a matter of the US imposing democracy on Vietnam. It was a matter of China and North Vietnam invading democratic South Vietnam in order to impose communism on them. If I was an American, I would have been pretty pissed off that my government was sending me and/or my friends on some stupid idealogical crusade in a third-world crap hole, but other than that I think it was one of their morally reasonable endeavors. The idea was right (and the UN has regularly acted in similar conflicts) but the cost in American lives and just plain $$$ was way too high.

I wasn't alive back then, no. On the other hand, I think you're giving far too much credit to Jane Fonda and the morons who followed her. South Vietnam went communist because it was right on China's doorstep and the Western world didn't have the political will to do what it would take to stop it. The jungle helped too. It wasn't the communists traitors in the US that ended the Vietnamese War either. It was parents not wanting to see their sons go die fighting in a country nobody gave a shit about. Vietnam was never supposed to be a prolonged conflict. The fact that it turned out that way doomed it from the start.

Barbarella was the worst movie I've ever seen. What's your point? How did a US sex symbol lose them the Vietnam War? I thought it was more a lack of political will to spend billions of dollars and tens of thousand of young American lives fighting for a 3rd world shit-hole nobody cared about. They didn't so much lose the war so much as US voters decided that there was no reason for them to be there in the first place.

not that I'm siding with Shwa, because I think he averages around 0.5 intelligent sentences for every 100 he writes, but what on earth are you talking about? Americans were siding with the North Vietnamese in the war? Please explain...

Yeah we've heard a ton about this bro-in law of yours. Unfortunately, you've never been able to reconcile his expert opinions with the fact that most of the world's biggest militaries are doing the exact opposite of what his (and your) expert conclusions would dictate.

Shwa we've been over this before. You don't understand the meaning of the word "reason". The fact that you even said the above shows just how poorly you're able to put the puzzle pieces together. You're a square peg in a round hole sort of guy.

Okay whatever your angle is, that's just funny.

The problem is that the planes, as of now, will not have built-in satellite communication abilities. This is problematic for Canadian pilots because there aren't a lot of communication relay towers in the Arctic circle (next to none). It's a pretty big problem for us and if it can't be fixed then the planes are more or less useless for us. That said, it's likely one of the easier problems to fix. It doesn't make the plane a lemon at all.

Cyber, I'm not sure what you're big hang-up is. They were permitted to pray. They were not permitted to pray and get paid at the same time. This is simply a matter of a minority group kicking up a stink over something that's EXTREMELY reasonable just because they think they can scare the politically correct into giving them their own, unreasonable way. As for employees screwing the pooch on company time, well of course everyone does that, muslims and non-muslims included. Muslim employees, however, I'm certain screw around during the work day just like everyone else does in addition to disappearing for prayers 5 times a day.

I think they had to leave. No good was being done there really. Obama seems to understand that US foreign policy was a disaster under the last few administrations and he's trying to do away with the perception (however correct it may be) of Imperial USA. The days of unilateral US world-policing are over under Obama. Expect US intervention over the next few years to be far less publicized, muted and as often as possible indirect.

Booya.

They are doing a "Wall Street Protest" in downtown Guelph next week. Really. Guelph. I'm actually looking forward to it. Maybe their noise will drown out the noise of all the crackheads in the Square.... Fun times.

Bureaucracies are notorious for resisting cuts to their funding. It's often almost impossible. The bureaucrats, in this case, are being given an incentive to actually find savings themselves. I think it's a wonderful idea. The public service is bloated and there are so many redundant jobs there that I would LOVE to see some cuts. Because the 'consultants' in this case are generally the best of the best in accounting and auditing etc You can't just hand Canada's books over to Joe the Accountant and have him find savings for us. He'd be buried in paperwork for the rest of his life. You'd need a of experienced professionals. $90,000/day will end up being a tiny sum in relation to the savings they'll potentially find. I'm sure he's positively quaking at the prospect of a bunch of 'activists' wetting their beds over this.

Godwin's Law. Well done wyly. Of course we can count on you for that...

I'd prefer that. I'd even be okay with the taxes being raised if they meant all the extra money went to tackling our debt. A little pain now for vastly better books in the future sounds alright to me.

Hudak has no guts period. He has no political instincts either, just like John Tory or Michael Ignatieff. McGuinty's record is so bad you could have put anyone out there with decent public speaking skills and they could have beat him. There literally could not have been an easier opportunity for the PC's to take this election, but Hudak and his advisors are just clowns. From the amateurish attack ads, the stick-to-the-script public speaking and the cowardly platform etc, I don't think they could have done a worse job.

Yeah Topaz...it was a conspiracy to be able to muzzle and jail protestors. Look out. You're surely next.

Who cares who takes the market share? The market wouldn't exist if not for massive government subsidies. Whether US or Canadian governments want to piss taxpayer money away on local manufacturers or Chinese manufacturers matters little. The money is still completely pissed away. For all the economic sense it makes, we might as well be paying people to generate electricity on bicycles. The benefits would be enormous. We'd have a healthier, leaner population, less methane (smaller farts), and we'd be producing clean energy. Nevermind that it would be prohibitively expensive and inefficient, like solar. Money doesn't matter! That's a small price to pay for a cleaner (and better looking) North America!

Just a simple question. We know the government of Ontario is subsidizing solar power in Canada to the extreme. Farmers are getting a guaranteed return on investment in solar panels and Ontarians are paying ridiculous premiums on the energy they produce. I always wonder why we're doing this. The solar panels aren't anywhere CLOSE to being cost efficient right now and at the rate things are going they won't be for another 20 years. Why are we paying big $$$ right now for instrastructure investments in inefficient and immature technology that costs everyone a fortune compared to the alternatives? Wouldn't it be better to invest in the research and improvement of the actual technology istelf? I'd prefer the technology at least be reliable and effective before we start throwing billions at it. The cost of solar power /kwh has halved over the last 10-15 years, so it's clearly feasible, but we need to be spending money helping MAKE it feasible, not wasting it on crap technology right now.

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding his martyrdom.

Well one things for certain, the clown show that is US politics has far more things to talk about than the Canadian political bore-fest, especially in the summer!

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Well I'm certainly not a member of any American political forums. Why are you here again? Seems you've taken an interest.... It seems 6/10 Americans COULDN'T find either on a map. As for how Canadians 'hitched' a ride to Afghanistan, I'm not sure what that has to do with how little the Americans know of the world at large. Did confirmation of general American ignorance, from an American source, sting? Did making fun of our military equipment somehow vindicate you? Whatever floats your boat. With the help of Canadian engineers, some of whom headed their departments within the Apollo program. That must be galling!