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Posts posted by Moonbox
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The fact that previous Tory governments didn't do the job, even with two majorities and good economic numbers, meant that the Liberals had to do the job. You say no real accomplishment. I disagree. And so it appears did Canadians who supported the party through these tough times.
but comparing the Tory governments of the past to today is really not a fair thing to do. Mulroney PC's were NOTHING like Harper's Conservatives. Mulroney is widely considered to have been more a liberal than a conservative. I'll remind you again that Harper quit the Progressive Conservative party in the 1980's out of disgust for their policies.
Tax cuts and spending is bad. See Ronald Reagan. Harper seems to have discovered Reaganomics.Canada is considered the world over as an over-taxed country. This is thanks to Trudeau and Mulroney and their deficit spending. The Chretien Liberals ran a balanced budget by governing through 11 years of almost unprecedented prosperity throughout the WHOLE world and by DRASTICALLY cutting social services throughout the country.
Liberal economic policy over the last 30 years has been to tax over-heavily and spend the money where they think it's needed. Lately that's been to pay back the debt they accumulated while the Canadian economy was booming which in itself is an alright thing to do...but that's not the point.
Conservative economic policy, that is REAL conservative economic policy and not thinly disguised Mulroney liberalism, is to tax lightly and let the people decide where to spend the money. This is what Harper has been doing. We are paying less taxes than we would under the Liberals and the budget is still balanced. This is good. Our economy has been cooling for a good number of years now too so it's even more noteworthy as far as I'm concerned. Either way, spending during a recession is a GOOD thing because it to some extent smoothes out the shock of a collapsing economy. It saves jobs.
I am saying that Harper's own economic record of tax cuts and spending is dreadful. Harper is not Mulroney. He seems to be modelling his economic policy on Ronald Reagan.Your failure is that you hugely exaggerate Harper's spending record. Yes, he has been spending money, but he has been doing so within the confines of his budget. Spending the money you receive in revenue and putting that money towards areas that sorely need it (ie our troops in Afghanistan, the unprotected North and Canadian industry right now) I would say is responsible governing. If he starts running huge deficits, THEN i'll agree with you. Until then, you're just exaggerating everything he does and putting a negative spin on it.
Our social services have not really been affected and I'm paying less taxes. Thank you Stephen Harper. I much prefer this to having my taxes raised back to where they were and spending extra money on consumer goods under Dion's Green Shift so that he and his government can give hand outs.
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Yeah Argus accusing someone of behaving childishly is pretty funny. Even though Joesixpack's delivery might be kind of blunt the message he brings isn't far from the truth at all. Most of what he says is true, The far right wing agenda is leaning heavily towards a police state, where the federal government is taking more control over our lives and leaving us with less and less freedom. No matter how stupid people like Argus may think Joesixpack sounds, he is obviously not voting Conservative and that alone puts him far ahead of Argus in the intelligence department.
OH WOW LOOK! How am I not surprised that Dr Greenthumb agrees with Sixpackjoe?
I will have to say this though:
Nothing you have posted, however ignorant, can even compare to the slop Joe here has presented. There are a lot of anti-conservative posters on this board. Jdobbin, Marksman and many others I have argued with have always been able to carry on a discussion from the other point of view. Where they would provoke intelligent and reasoned responses from posters, you and Joe here will only continue to get smirks and guffaws and maybe even a little pity because your best attempt at a reasoned and intelligent argument could get dismantled by a pre-teen.
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I keep hearing that but I think it will be like Manitoba. The party will fade away and most likely cease to exist.
I just think it's really unfortunate for the Liberals to have chosen Dion as their leader. Before he became the Liberal leader they were still a very relevant party with a very real base of support. From what I've seen he's shown himself to be the worst man for the job in a tough time for the Liberals and those two factors together have killed the Liberals just like Mulroney and then Kim Campbell killed the Progressive Conservatives. With that said, even IF the Liberals cease to exist as a party, another right/left fence straddling government will pop up to fill the void much like the Reform and Canadian Allliance replaced the incompetent and defunct Progressive Conservatives.
A new leader and a fresh face will do the Liberals a TON of good.
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And Liberal spending cuts and tax cuts that got the country out.
but that's the thing. This was no real accomplishment. I already said it many times. Cutting transfer payments to the provinces, accumulating unjustifiable surpluses in EI and crippling our military to balance the books that largely the same Liberals ruined is like puking on someone else's carpet, cleaning it up and then saying, "HEY! LOOK I CLEANED YOUR CARPET! I DID GOOD!"
From 2006 to 2008, it has been Tory tax cuts and spending in relatively good economic times that reduced the surplus and sent monthly accounts into deficit a few times.You act like the monthly accounts matter. They don't. It's the average that counts. Tax cuts are good. Tax and spend is bad. Tax and spend hurts the economy and consumers and the theory has been disproven by economies all over the world.
Just as some Conservatives don't care that drastic spending cuts happened in good times under the Liberals.That expression has been used by the CTF about present Conservative spending. They have never hit their target.
This is just rehashing the previous point. They drastically cut spending on social and healthcare systems to BELOW pre-Trudeau levels because Trudeau sent our country on its way so far into debt that we were headed for bankruptcy as a nation. At one point 40% of every tax dollar went to paying back debt. Why are we congratulating the Liberals for cleaning up their own mess? Don't even try to bring up Mulroney here either because Harper quit from the Mulroney Progressive Conservatives because he found them to be the same sort of crap that the Trudeau Liberals were.
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I love how economic downturns and conservative governments seem to go hand in hand. You would have us believe this is a coincidence but it is no coincidence. Conservative governments cause economic downturns. You can blame the states all you want for the economy's downturn but they are run by the right wing that Harper aspires to be. The US was far better off when Clinton was in charge. The conservatives bakrupt our governments until they have to sell off the people's assets to balance the books. We saw it with Gary Filmon in Manitoba when he sold off our telephone system, we see Harper's people using the spectrum selloff to balance theirs.
Dr Greenthumb after replying to this quote I'm more or less going to just ignore everything you have to say. There is a lot of partisanship in this forum but at least most of the posters with differing opinions from my own have something solid to offer in their arguments. Your posts in particular make me cringe at how ignorant and biased a partisan opinion can become. I've seen no exception when reading your posts and this is another example of pure and unadultered garbage. You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't even TRY to support your opinions. Your lack knowledge and understanding of basically anything related to politics makes your posts nothing but a waste of time.
For the sake of at least supporting what i just said, i'll break down your post.
You have DIRECTLY linked the slowing economy to Harper politics but you clearly have no understanding of financial or international markets or anything to do with economies in general. Canada's economy has slowed down for a good number of reasons and pretty much none of them have ANYTHING to do with what Harper did in Canada.
Here's why our economy is slowing:
1. The world credit crisis
2. The depreciation of the US dollar and the appreciation of the Canadian dollar in value
3. Rising worldwide oil prices.
Now strangely enough, all of these factors are screwing with the economy and at the same time they are making each other worse as well.
I'll give you a high five if you could explain any of it but I'm not going to hold my breath because I'm almost certain you can't and doubt you'll even try.
The economy is slowing worldwide. As foreign economies slow, so will our own. If you're going to put the blame squarely on Harper's feet then you're going to have to explain how he made oil prices higher, made the Canadian dollar more valuable, crashed the US housing market and then brought the rest of the world's economy down with him.
The only thing I'll agree with you on is that 8 years of Bush most certainly HAS made things worse but you can't even really place the bulk of the blame at his feet either.
Telling us what you think Harper aspires to be is a waste of everyone's time. You don't like him. We get it. We don't care. We DO want to hear about things he does wrong but we couldn't care less what your clueless imagination can come up with in regards to his dicatorial Darth Vader agenda.
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it's a pretty funny idea to think about. With that said, I think you're right that the Liberals will sort of fly off the radar for a good number of years if they get whomped this election. They'll be back when they have a real issue to campaign on.
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I think it's the polls more than anything.
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Harper has and does act in a dictatorial manner. He acts this way with his own parties candidates and MP's, with the press and is a bully in the house of commons. The fact that he wasn't happy with a minority gov't even with a weak opposition from the liberals, just goes to show that he lusts for MORE power and MORE control. I stand by my observation that Harper is a paternalistic authoritarian who wants to dictate to Canadians how to live. His social conservative agenda will come out in full force if he ever gets a majority. Check out the facebook group called "anti harper vote swap" to see how you can do your part to defeat the far right wing conservatives in the upcoming election
You're only making yourself look worse here. I said you can't support your own opinion and that you're just flinging useless rhetoric and scary words at us. You responded with more useless rhetoric and bigger scary words.
You're 'observation' is about as useful as a poo-flavored lolipop if you can't provide any relevant support for it. I'm starting to think the more I read your posts that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about 95% of the time you post.
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The Tories did not cut spending under Mulroney and raised a few dozen times. They may have inherited a problem but after eight years, they didn't solve it. In fact, after two failed constitutional talks, they made it worse in a lot of ways.
Oh you bet nobody is arguing that Mulroney did a good job either. Like I said before though, interest rates in the high teens, economic recessions and inherited debt from Trudeau DID make things harder for him. I'm not saying he wasn't an idiot and some of the debt shouldn't be blamed on him, but it was Trudeau's tax and spend that set us on that path.
Besides, the comparison between the PC and the CPC is a lot less easy to make than today's Liberals compared to Trudeau/Chretien Liberals.
Diminishing surpluses.yeah harper has diminishing surpluses in an economic downturn. The Liberals didn't really face a serious one from 1993-2006 other than the dot com crash which left Canada largely unaffected. Like I said before, it's good economics to run a balanced budget or slight deficit in a slowing economy. I won't bother explaining it to you because you probably don't care.
It is unthinkable. There was no reason for Tory spending like drunken sailors starting in 2006. They can't even point to a downturn in the economy. Now, they can't get out of the habit. Many of the spending announcements they have made in the last months have been derided by them as irresponsible prior to attaining government.Your 'spending like drunken sailors' is just colorful language again. Way to exaggerate wildly. We go back to Trudeau for drunken sailor spending. Flaherty indicated he would be increasing transfer payments to the provinces a long time ago. He said the federal surplus was too high. I can't remember who said it but it was aptly stated awhile back that "The money is in Ottawa but the need is in the provinces." What does that mean? It means it's not fair or responsible to reap huge surpluses federally while provinces run deficits from supporting an overwhelmed health care system. Besides, the budget is balanced so you're not really scoring any points there either.
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The Liberal Party may be bankrupt but it is far from gone and there are enough of you around to make sure it stays for a long time to come. Maybe it transforms itself into something more relevant or maybe it just has a few quiet years but I think your scenario is getting a little too ahead of itself.
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you can never respond with a reasoned argument to any of my posts
which you yourself constantly fail to do. Your response included:
Harper has been the most sneaky, devious and dictatorial prime minister Canada has ever had."When you start using rhetoric like this, particularly big scary words like 'dictatorial' you lose all credibility to any argument you might have been trying to make. Referring to the leader of a MINORITY DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT under a British Parliamentary system as a dictator is a clear sign of failure in intelligent reasoning and a resortment to passionate and baseless rhetoric.
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A decision made in the same day is similar to Harper's dithering for days on May's inclusion in the debates? Even today Harper is still complaining about it.
Harper never wanted her in the debate. She and Dion have quite obviously shown that they have each other's backs and why would Harper want to debate against two very similar positions? Harper still doesn't want her in the debate but decided that since Canadians want to see her speak he might as well not protest it.
This is altogether a poor analogy anyways. It's a completely and 100% different situation and I'm surprised you would even try to compare them.
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Seems he and many of the Tory supporters said it was going to be different with Harper.
and after two elections in which Harper was demonized by the Liberals, you somehow find it scandalous that he would focus Canada's attention on an assinine Carbon Tax plan that Canada doesn't want and the bumbling fool of a Liberal Leader who suggested it.
Is it no wonder that people get cynical when Harper lets the war room run around with juvenile activities?The whole website has been re-tooled for over the top antics. I think people say plenty of examples to back that up.
You're ignoring everything everyone is saying! You CANNOT muzzle every member of your party. Sooner or later one of your representatives WILL say something idiotic for the simple fact that you can't be in all of their heads. EVERY party has idiots making spectacles of themselves and the Liberals have had one recently themselves. I don't call the Liberal Party sexist because one of their MP's was telling his opponent to go back to making tea and biscuits for her man do I?
No! I notice that he was forced by his party to apologize. Let his riding decide if they want to vote him back in but don't make broad and baseless conclusions on a whole party just because it suits your political view. That's the definition of ignorance.
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America, Afghanistan is YOUR problem. We did our bit. Good luck.
PS. I would just like to add that I have mentioned our contribution in Afghastlystan in American-based fora and I have been greeted with derision and hooting. I have seen posts deriding us because our equipment is not good enough. I have seen posts deriding us because our trainig is not good enough. Screw the yanks. Bring our people home.
Nobody is saying the majority of yanks aren't ignorant just like the majority of Canadians are ignorant as well . If a yank came here and tried to mention how the US has helped Canada (and they have) you'd have Canadians frothing and telling him he is the spawn of Satan's land.
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Latest Decima poll show large majority for Tories.
40% is typically the threshold needed to gain a majority. 41% shows if anything a VERY modest majority with a margin of error in the polls.
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Yet you support the Conservatives who want an elected senate or to have it abolished outright.
No, if I vote for a party and it doesn't get elected, then I'm not represented.
But your community is presented. There are plenty of reasons why proportional representation is a bad idea the first of which is that it makes politics even more regional than they are now.
An elected Senate, on the other hand, is pretty hard to argue against isn't it?
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Harper said he would do it differently this election but as Andrew Cohen said yesterday, he really can't help himself.
You probably haven't seen enough of my posts in various threads about how stupid the negative campaign was and how incompetent it was.
My issue was the justification for it which some people seem to still be arguing here.
Personally I can't justify it any further than saying it's really just throwing the Liberal tactics of 2004 and 2006 right back in their faces. Like I've said many times, I don't think Harper can claim moral high ground on some of the issues, but I don't think anyone can. The "Dion is not a Leader" tactics I'm betting will work quite well. They're not trying to turn him into a monster like the Liberals tried to with Harper. They're saying he's a bumbling and ineffective leader and they have plenty of examples to back that up with.
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The problem with the economy is in part due to high fuel prices, which some would say are abnormally high. We know that Harper is tight with Big Oil and they're the ones who are benefiting from this situation; why would you want to vote the guy in for more of the same?
Please provide your evidence that Harper is working for big oil.
Also, while you're at it, tell us how the Green Shift is going to help us out with fuel prices.
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There is a lot of corporate interests involved in development of biofuel. Same goes for farmers; they'll grow whatever makes them the most money. But of course you'll happily foist the blame on environmentalists.
Unfortunately, biofuel is more expensive to produce. It's more expensive and the environmental benefits to it are negligible. Supporting biofuels is nothing but subsidizing unprofitable farming.
As it stands, though, the third world is starving anyway. Why? It has nothing to do with growing food for fuel, rather the cost, logistics, etc. of transporting the food to places where the population cannot be sustained.Actually, I can provide you with probably hundreds of links where economists from places like the World Bank have concluded that biofuel is the DIRECT CAUSE of the increase in food prices and the subsequent starvation in the third world.
WorldBank - Biofuels and Food Prices
Let's see one example of where they advocate it?Or is this just another example of a stupd M.Dancer post, like so many thousand of others?
At least his opinions are informed and supportable whereas yours are generally just passionate nonsense. If you would like to start a thread I'd love to debate the benefits of biofuels with you. I can provide you with plenty of evidence showing you exactly how it's more expensive, exactly how it's causing starvation and exactly why it has little to no environmental benefits to offer.
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I don't know how it would "fall flat" considering that the Greens advocate the use of alternate fuels, and would be the most committed to finding solutions to the current problem. Our dependency on oil is in part due to the willingness of the Conservatives and Liberals to allow corporations to get their way, and theoretically they should be punished by an angry electorate for allowing this to happen. Instead, one of them is likely to get elected back in and the parties (NDP and Greens) most willing to do something about it will not.
It would 'fall flat' because any drastic environmental initiatives are likely by ANY theory to make doing business more expensive in Canada. Now I'm totally for a greener Canada but making the environment your #1 issue in an election during an economic downturn is not likely to strike a chord with Canadians. Campaigning on the economy will. I wouldn't be surprised if the Greens do better this year, but I certainly don't think they're going to explode like some people think.
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Harper has the money. He just hasn't made it a high priority. The rest of what you say is pretty much true, so that despite my dissatisfaction with what the Tories have done for the military I'll still acknowledge they have treated them better, and shown more respect to them, than any government since Pearson.
You're right that he hasn't made it a priority. The reason for this, however, is that the economy is having trouble, he's doing everything he can do avoid a deficit and most centre or left of centre Canadians are violently opposed to any extra military spending.
Increased military spending would upset these Canadians who know nothing about Afghanistan or our military and would probably lose Harper the LPC/CPC swing voter. Once defeated in a minority, the LPC would just reverse whatever changes he's made.
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Pearson's French was certainly not ridiculous. It wasn't as smooth as some of today's leaders but he was able to speak without notes and without translation in the House and with French speaking leaders around the world. His high position in External Affairs was due in part to language skills and ability to articulate policy.
I didn't say his french was ridiculous. I said Harper's bilingualism is miles above most of his contemporaries. Pearson happens to be one of my very favorite Prime Ministers and was a huge boon to Canada. He was from a different time, however, and the things I liked about him are hard to find in the present crop of Liberals.
Harper owes a lot to the man who decades before showed how it was done when it comes to involving French Canadians. Who do you think recruited people like Marchand, Trudeau, Chretien and Lalonde? Chretien didn't speak a word in English when he became an MP. He communicated with Pearson in French.How successful was Pearson's legacy? At one point his successors won every seat in Quebec.
and I'm not so sure he'd be proud about what his successors have accomplished. Things like massive debt, high taxes and strained relations with our neighbours were not really Pearson's legacy.
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You always say this but it isn't true. Lester B. Pearson was a Protestant and while you might not like his French, he did speak it and used it in the House and in communication overseas.
Technically, you're right. He is remarkable nonetheless in that he's a WASP that can speak non-ridiculous french. My french is better than Dion's English and I'm not running for PM.
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I think their message will fall flat as gas prices continue to rise and the economy continues to deteriorate.
I'm also 100% certain May will not impress anyone in the debate.
Surrey Grit backs drug trafficker
in Federal Politics in Canada
Posted
The problem is that things like cocaine are extremely extremely extremely terrible for your body. To be honest, I'm not really against the legalization of marijuana because it's a pretty inane drug but cocaine and heroin and any other family of hard drug is something only an idiot politician would support.
Regardless of whether marijuana should be legalized or not, the people in question in this thread are not marijuana crusaders or anything of the sort. They are the scum of the earth and that a Liberal MP would support it just goes to show you how entitled they feel they are in their positions and how far they'll go to pander to their ethnic communities.