Moonbox

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.

Logical fallacy. Russia's lack of expertise in one field does not equate to a lack of expertise in all fields. Could it perhaps be because Russia is a fair bit poorer and can't afford it? North Korea has demonstrated an ability to do so. I doubt that expertise is held by them alone. I admire a lot of Russian tech. American defense officials do too, as they did throughout the Cold War. My 'respect' for Russian AAW capabilities derives from knowing the Russians invested MUCH more heavily into it throughout the Cold War than did the Americans simply because they were so heavily outnumbered in aircraft by NATO.

Yeah he's probably the last economist I would trust. What did he base his numbers off of as well? Growth numbers from the last 2 quarters. Who was hit the least by the recession? Canada. Who would therefore have the least ground to make up for? Canada. His numbers are wack.

I guess my question is what's the relevance to the argument at hand? Does Israeli UAV expertise somehow show us that Russian anti-air and detection equipment is still 30 years behind??

I did not say it was inconsequential. I said that their advantage was so complete in ALL areas that stealth or not the conflict would have been over quickly and decisively. Ah. A Mirage can kill you yes, but nobody is even buying the Rafale. France isn't really a contender in the mix.

Yes but the threat is technically so overwhelming, yet realistically so unlikely, that it's not worth worrying about. What aircraft are the Israelis selling abroad?? I'm not sure what you're talking about with the French either. When they were selling Mirages to the Iraqis, Iraq was still an American ally. That's one of the more brilliant example of US foreign policy actually... Couldn't help it sorry.

There isn't much of a record. For the last 40 years the record has been of poor, small and third world backwaters getting bitch slapped by the world's biggest super power. Personally I doubt that China or Russia would have had much trouble rolling over Iraq or Yugoslavia either. Yes I know that thank you. Most of them are NATO allies, however, and don't generally sell that equipment to the USA's enemies, nor is the USA in the business of selling the tech to detect their own aircraft. Whatever they did, it was innovative and could happen again.

It's a terrible comparison. The fact that you can't see the difference is unsurprising. If we were talking simple reciprocal law then the UAE would have imposed VISA restrictions a long time ago - as in when Canada imposed their own. That's not what happened. In this case, the UAE got frustrated with the breakdown of a negotiation, and added a penalty for not getting their own way that was never part of the negotiations in the first place. A business deal which had nothing to do with VISAs. I'm not embarrassed. I'm proud. I don't think the government is terribly embarrassed either, because they're clearly not backing down. What do I have to be embarrassed about? I think the UAE misjudged the reaction they'd get. I haven't complained about a thing. I've done nothing but make fun of the UAE's leaders. I'm telling you to grow up because you look like you're trolling. I've mocked and ridiculed the UAE's leaders, and your response was to mock and ridicule me personally. That's fine, I can handle it, but your pretense of maturity is priceless. Read back a little bit. I agreed. It's not a big deal. I still think it's funny how the UAE's leaders reacted. So do a lot of people here. News to me. Blackmail was probably a bad term. Coercion would be better. "Shaking down" would be too. Any such activity, however negative it be, is actually QUITE laughable when the party you're trying to bully/coerce/shake down/blackmail doesn't care and isn't afraid of the consequences you are threatening. It's one of THE MOST satisfying things in the world to stand firm against it and laugh in its face.

What terms are you talking about? You're right, the UAE isn't third world at all, but I'm not sure what else to call their leaders. As an aside, it truly is no wonder why the US gets such lukewarm commitments from its allies. I'll certainly be glad when our troops are out of Afghanistan. It's almost like we're ridiculed more for what we did send there than not sending anyone at all.

Why do you keep bringing Brazil into the discussion? It's a completely different situation and has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. Brazil imposes VISA restrictions just like Canada and the US do. Big deal. They didn't do it because they demanded landing strips and didn't get them. They didn't try to bully and embarrass either the US or Canada into making economic concessions. That's the definition of a red herring. Give it up. Grow up. It's the UAE. Nobody cares in the grand scheme of things. It's something in the news to talk about and in this case a lot of us are finding it pretty laughable that a bunch of diva princes are wetting their pants because we're not caving in to their demands. Again though, keep telling us how we all feel. Maybe eventually you'll get a rise out of one of us. :lol: I think that immoral and injust might be a little dramatic for the situation, but contemptible, childish and sly. They tried to shake Canada down for trade concessions and couldn't, so they kicked us out of their base. That's fine. I don't see anything terribly wrong about that. The retaliatory VISA move, however, is a pretty funny. When one side has something the other wants, you negotiate for it. If the negotiations break down and you don't get what you want, you don't penalize the other side in addition to that. That's more akin to blackmail/bullying, and there's really nothing upstanding about that.

Because Russian weapons proliferate all over the world and anyone NATO fights is using them. They have no qualms about selling modern tech to whoever pays. They're doubly happy because not only do they make money off it, it also serves as a deterrent against western expansionism.